"In the cosmopolitan alternative, the world reshapes America. In the imperial alternative, America remakes the world. The end of the Cold War eliminated communism as the overriding factor shaping America's role in the world. It thus enabled liberals to pursue their foreign policy goals without having to confront the charge that those goals compromised national security and hence to promote nation building, humanitarian intervention, and 'foreign policy as social work.' The emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower had a parallel impact on American conservatives. During the Cold War America's enemies denounced it as an imperial power. At the start of the new millenium conservatives accepted and endorsed the idea of an American empire and the use of American power to reshape the world according to American values."
--Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, 2004

I tend to agree with the author. The external threat placed some braking on the tendency of most to view government as a charitable enterprise rather than one of self interest. Private charity is motivated by humanitarian impulses voluntary in nature and efficient in execution. Government charity is funded by extortion and carried out in typical inefficient manner. This includes underwriting the retirements of ex-auto workers, financiers, and those who don't pay for their own health insurance (or housing, or ...).