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Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security
The story of how FDR and fellow New Dealers created the idea of national security, transforming the meaning of defense and vastly expanding the US government’s responsibilities.
National security may seem like a timeless notion. States have always sought to fortify themselves, and the modern state derives its legitimacy from protecting its population. Yet national security in fact has a very particular, very American, history—and a surprising one at that.
The concept of national security originates in the 1930s, as part of a White House campaign in response to the rise of fascism. Before then, national self-defense was defined in terms of protecting sovereign territory from invasion. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his circle worried that the US public, comforted by two vast oceans, did not take seriously the long-term risks posed by hypermilitarization abroad. New Dealers developed the doctrine of national security, Andrew Preston argues, to supplant the old idea of now even geographically and temporally remote threats were to be understood as harms to be combated, while ideological competitors were perilous to the “American way of life.”
Total Defense shows it was no coincidence that a liberal like Roosevelt promoted this vision. National security, no less than social security, was a New Deal the state was obliged to safeguard Americans as much from the guns and warships of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan as from unemployment and poverty in old age. The resulting shift in threat perception—among policymakers and ordinary citizens alike—transformed the United States, spearheading massive government expansion and placing the country on a permanent war footing.
National security may seem like a timeless notion. States have always sought to fortify themselves, and the modern state derives its legitimacy from protecting its population. Yet national security in fact has a very particular, very American, history—and a surprising one at that.
The concept of national security originates in the 1930s, as part of a White House campaign in response to the rise of fascism. Before then, national self-defense was defined in terms of protecting sovereign territory from invasion. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his circle worried that the US public, comforted by two vast oceans, did not take seriously the long-term risks posed by hypermilitarization abroad. New Dealers developed the doctrine of national security, Andrew Preston argues, to supplant the old idea of now even geographically and temporally remote threats were to be understood as harms to be combated, while ideological competitors were perilous to the “American way of life.”
Total Defense shows it was no coincidence that a liberal like Roosevelt promoted this vision. National security, no less than social security, was a New Deal the state was obliged to safeguard Americans as much from the guns and warships of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan as from unemployment and poverty in old age. The resulting shift in threat perception—among policymakers and ordinary citizens alike—transformed the United States, spearheading massive government expansion and placing the country on a permanent war footing.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published May 6, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 2, 2025
This is an outstanding study of the idea of national security; I'm sure it will be a classic text for decades. National security is a pervasive term in the foreign policy world today; I literally just finished working for a Department of National Security Affairs. But it's often taken for granted how this term changed the way we think about foreign policy and defense.
In a concise but thorough book, AP shows how the idea of national security arose in the early 20th century, with the most critical time being the New Deal and WWII. While some of the Founders used the term nat sec, for the most part Americans thought about their safety in terms of national defense. This meant ensuring that the safety and integrity of the American state was safe from foreign invasion or interference, an inherently more limited concept. This didn't mean the US was disengaged from the world, but it did mean that it launched relatively few wars outside the Western hemisphere and avoided having a large peacetime military establishment.
This mentality started to change in the early 20th century as American society became more interdependent with the rest of the world, creating both opportunities and vulnerabilities. During the Progressive Era, Americans worked to rationalize, professionalize, and ultimately bring order to a modernizing society. That meant greater attention, across the board, to not only dealing with crises as they arose but managing life, the economy, society, and foreign relations. This mindset shift, embodied in Woodrow Wilson, led the US to care more about shaping the international environment in ways that best safeguarded the homeland.
But the concept of national security in its full, modern form didn't arise until the confluence of the New Deal and the Second World War "warfare state.' In the New Deal, the government took on the responsibility of bringing security into ordinary people's lives in an age where macro-economic shocks created the potential for democracy-destroying crises. The government became not only an intervener but a manager of the economy and much of social life. As the fascist threat built in the 30s and 40s, this expanded into a desire for national security, the assumption of which was that the US democratic/capitalist system could not survive in a world dominated by hostile powers. The US had to actively shape the international system, not only defeating threats as they arose but creating systems and capabilities that ensured the containment of threats.
Social security and national security went hand in hand in this era because ensuring domestic social order and prosperity, as well as a healthy and educated population, was seen as crucial to making national security possible. World War II solidified this mindset; this is one of Preston's key interventions, because it wasn't the Cold War that created the modern national security mindset; it was the confluence of the New Deal and WWII.
But the Cold War, especially the conservative backlash against the social welfare state, did distort the linkage of social and national security in favor of the latter. The US built up a huge national security state and basically defined the entire world as crucial national interests (leading to far-flung wars like Vietnam), but it underdeveloped the welfare state, at least in comparison to the warfare state. That's a really useful way for thinking about the key mentalities that shape America's role in the world to the present day.
This book is a great example of what historians should do: take a term that everyone takes for granted and then destabilizes it, showing that it came from somewhere, from a combination of human agency/ideas and larger contextual forces. It's not terribly long and moves briskly, and it's a bold interpretation of US diplomatic and political history that everyone in the field (and many people without) should read.
In a concise but thorough book, AP shows how the idea of national security arose in the early 20th century, with the most critical time being the New Deal and WWII. While some of the Founders used the term nat sec, for the most part Americans thought about their safety in terms of national defense. This meant ensuring that the safety and integrity of the American state was safe from foreign invasion or interference, an inherently more limited concept. This didn't mean the US was disengaged from the world, but it did mean that it launched relatively few wars outside the Western hemisphere and avoided having a large peacetime military establishment.
This mentality started to change in the early 20th century as American society became more interdependent with the rest of the world, creating both opportunities and vulnerabilities. During the Progressive Era, Americans worked to rationalize, professionalize, and ultimately bring order to a modernizing society. That meant greater attention, across the board, to not only dealing with crises as they arose but managing life, the economy, society, and foreign relations. This mindset shift, embodied in Woodrow Wilson, led the US to care more about shaping the international environment in ways that best safeguarded the homeland.
But the concept of national security in its full, modern form didn't arise until the confluence of the New Deal and the Second World War "warfare state.' In the New Deal, the government took on the responsibility of bringing security into ordinary people's lives in an age where macro-economic shocks created the potential for democracy-destroying crises. The government became not only an intervener but a manager of the economy and much of social life. As the fascist threat built in the 30s and 40s, this expanded into a desire for national security, the assumption of which was that the US democratic/capitalist system could not survive in a world dominated by hostile powers. The US had to actively shape the international system, not only defeating threats as they arose but creating systems and capabilities that ensured the containment of threats.
Social security and national security went hand in hand in this era because ensuring domestic social order and prosperity, as well as a healthy and educated population, was seen as crucial to making national security possible. World War II solidified this mindset; this is one of Preston's key interventions, because it wasn't the Cold War that created the modern national security mindset; it was the confluence of the New Deal and WWII.
But the Cold War, especially the conservative backlash against the social welfare state, did distort the linkage of social and national security in favor of the latter. The US built up a huge national security state and basically defined the entire world as crucial national interests (leading to far-flung wars like Vietnam), but it underdeveloped the welfare state, at least in comparison to the warfare state. That's a really useful way for thinking about the key mentalities that shape America's role in the world to the present day.
This book is a great example of what historians should do: take a term that everyone takes for granted and then destabilizes it, showing that it came from somewhere, from a combination of human agency/ideas and larger contextual forces. It's not terribly long and moves briskly, and it's a bold interpretation of US diplomatic and political history that everyone in the field (and many people without) should read.
October 3, 2025
An account of America’s pivot from a concrete ideology of defending borders to the abstract ideology of defending America’s Way of Life, characterized as going from national defense to national security. Preston builds on the luxury of “free security” that U.S. enjoyed from the War of 1812 to WWII. Protected by two vast oceans, unthreatened by two weak neighboring countries, and blessed with an abundance of natural resources, the country required very little relative investment in its defense capabilities. All of this changed with attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entrance into WWII.
Preston argues that the welfare state erected by the New Deal enabled the warfare state that prosecuted the war and remained in place for the Cold War. He makes the case liberal impulses gave ever increasing momentum to the national security state which led to the strategies of containment, domino theory, and ultimately the debacle in Vietnam.
Preston argues that the welfare state erected by the New Deal enabled the warfare state that prosecuted the war and remained in place for the Cold War. He makes the case liberal impulses gave ever increasing momentum to the national security state which led to the strategies of containment, domino theory, and ultimately the debacle in Vietnam.
January 2, 2026
No complaints as to the line that this book followed - I think it was a great study in the epistemological assumptions underlying the modern security state, and compelling linked them to the New Deal, rather than the cold war. Would recommend reading.
September 5, 2025
Interesting genealogy of "national security" if one that's rather tendentious at times
December 4, 2025
Really nice analysis.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews