The internationalization of foreign languages in U.S. higher education has largely focused on the demands of national security. As a central language policy, the 1959 Title VI of the National Defense Educational Act (NDEA), which originally emerged as a response to the Soviet sputnik of the Cold War, mandated the indispensability of national, linguistic, and intercultural resources to address the urgencies of an increasingly contested global system of powers. More recently, following the 9/11 attacks, Arabic, a language envisaged to solve inter-civilizational dissonance and political turmoil, generated unprecedented, bipartisan interest in U.S. policy, resulting in the expansion of federal intervention in language education. In fact, Title VI mobilized several provisions, most importantly fellowships and funds for research and study abroad programs to improve instruction, develop curricula, and promote language socialization and intercultural awareness in areas deemed critical for world peace (i.e., Middle East and North Africa). As such, this chapter attempts to unpack the rootedness of the national security ideology underlying the Arabic language in U.S. higher education, arguing for a foreign language advocacy that thrives on crisis and geopolitical hegemony, permeating from the national to the international discourses.