While the challenges of foreign policy change over time, the principles do not. In this first of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway highlights the difference between government’s role in domestic and international affairs. Part 2 of "Rethinking Foreign Policy Part 3 of "Rethinking Foreign Policy During the almost 50 years of the cold war, most Americans grasped that Moscow was the sworn enemy of the United States and had to be opposed. By focusing on that single truth, U.S. foreign policy maintained a rough coherence—although it was riddled with pragmatism, altruism, and compromise. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, this organizing truth of U.S. foreign policy has vanished. The elements of national self-interest that inhered in America's anti-Soviet posture, and thereby leavened all of the country's foreign policy, have diminished greatly, and the formerly diluting elements of pragmatism, altruism, and compromise have become the policy's main theme. The results can be seen around the world, in the actions and inactions of the post-cold war Bush and Clinton administrations.