Most Americans and Europeans think that we have gone to space, settled it, conquered it, and now own it.  They think we have driven off all the alien threats and don’t need to worry about them.  What most people don’t realize is that, despite the thousands of worlds we have settled, we are truly small on a galactic scale.  We hold dominion over space a few hundred lightyears from Earth.  The aliens traveled thousands of lightyears to reach us.