Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security

On October 21, 2026, the Clements Center for National Security will host “Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security,” with Andrew Preston, Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy, Statecraft, and History, University of Virginia. Join us at 12:15 – 1:30 pm in Sid Richardson Hall, (SRH), Room 3.122, The LBJ School of Public Affairs.

The idea of national security can seem timeless. Preston argues it is not. In Total Defense, he traces the concept to the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt and his fellow New Dealers set out to persuade a public shielded by two oceans that distant threats, and even ideological competitors, endangered the American way of life. National security, Preston contends, was a New Deal promise on par with social security: the state would protect Americans from foreign danger as it protected them from unemployment and old-age poverty. The result reshaped American government and laid the foundation for the modern national security state.

Garage parking is available for a fee at the Manor Garage and the San Jacinto Garage. Parking will not be validated.

Speaker Biograpy

Andrew Preston is W.L. Lyons Brown Jr. Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy and Statecraft, and Professor of History, at the University of Virginia. Before moving to UVA last summer, Preston taught for 20 years at Cambridge University in the UK, and in 2021 he served as President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). He has published 11 books, most recently Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security (Harvard, 2025), and is currently researching a book on the U.S. and the origins of World War II in Asia and the Pacific.