ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a valuable roadmap to the complex debates that surround United States foreign policy in the present era and proof of enduring relevance as the United States struggles to define its international role in a changing world. The unprecedented power advantages that the United States enjoys over other states and the absence of coordinated efforts to balance U.S. strengths provide American policymakers with considerable freedom of action. Multilateralism allows states to make mutually beneficial tradeoffs, to share burdens, and to address collective problems that cannot be managed by individual states acting alone. Communism represented an all-encompassing political and economic order with universal pretensions and was sponsored by a great rival power, the Soviet Union. Terrorism, by contrast, is a political tactic that has been employed by varied states and nonstate actors. The principal terrorist threats directed against the United States today arise from militant Islamic groups such Al Qaeda and allied organizations.
