After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Discuss U.S. policies of economic and territorial expansion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
   
• Explain how major shifts in the global balance of power led to two world wars and the subsequent rise of U.S. primacy on the world stage.
   
• Describe the institutional foundations and ideals representing U.S. foreign policy in thepostwar period.
   
• Identify the foreign policy challenges the United States faced immediately after the Cold War.