This chapter introduces the reader to how narrative politics shaped US hard power after the Cold War. It reveals a fundamental problem with claims of significant and sustained reductions in US defense spending during the 1990s: the highly selective use of data. This creates the illusion of a starkly reduced US post-Cold defense burden, which equates to less than nine months of the annual US defense budget for 1989. A critical review of conventional explanations for the case of the missing peace dividend shows they rely on mixed evidence at best. As the chapter explains, a moment of rupture such as the end of the Cold War should be seen as a permissive condition for political agents not only to innovate at the level of policy but also to push ahead on the current path, to maintain the status quo despite the changing context. Peeling back the layers of perceived transformation which nurture our understanding of a radical break from the past allows us to see lingering path dependencies and residue. The chapter establishes the centrality of a narrative approach to understanding the course and direction of US post-Cold War defense policy.