Another interesting aspect of this relationship between foreign policies and domestic matters reflects America's attitude towards its own national government. Basically, since the nation's beginnings, Americans have hated having a national government. Americans would never even have won the Revolutionary War without the immense assistance of the French. Many contemporary observers tell us how indifferent Americans had become to events in the last years. M. Duportail wrote that there was more excitement about the American Revolution in the cafes of Paris than he found in America. Washington spent most of his time writing desperate letters pleading for help, letters that often were ignored.

The proximate cause of the American Revolution, Britain's imposition of taxes designed to help pay its vast expenses in securing victory over the French in the Seven Years' War (a.k.a., the French and Indian War), a war which greatly benefited American colonists, reflected the colonists' hatred of paying taxes. Little has changed in two and a quarter centuries. There are many Americans who view Washington as the distant capital of an occupying Roman power.

They have matured to this extent since the Revolution: they are willing to pay taxes for the military, although not much else.

This strange arrangement has a profound effect on foreign affairs.