Foreign affairs have captured (or recaptured) the attention of Americans. The murderous attacks of September 11, 2001, war in Afghanistan, war and insurgency in Iraq, and the continuing dangers of terrorism have triggered profound concern about threats to American security and the nature of America's role on the world stage. The end of the Cold War had ushered in a decade in which the public often appeared indifferent to the outside world and policymakers seemed unsure of the United States' mission in world affairs. To be sure, events sometimes rudely intruded – as in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and smaller scale terrorist attacks – but the sense of dire threat that pervaded the previous half-century had vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and so did abiding concern over foreign policy.

The vacation from the wider world proved to be temporary, but while it lasted America cut its spending on international affairs and on defense as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), downplayed the subject in newspapers and on TV network news, and dwelled hardly at all on foreign and national security policy in election contests for President and Congress.

This was not a turning inward – globalization, trade, the Internet, and inexpensive travel connected Americans to other cultures – but foreign policy was far from most people's minds. As a sign of the times, in the first year of his presidency Bill Clinton was reluctant to devote sustained attention to the subject.