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. 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.