On behalf of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, I am delighted to welcome you to the Princeton Project on National Security. Under the stewardship of honorary co-chairs George Shultz and Tony Lake, the Princeton Project seeks to develop a sustainable and effective national security strategy to address the increasingly interconnected security threats confronting the United States.

In his February 2004 address at Princeton in honor of George Kennan’s 100th birthday, Secretary of State Colin Powell observed, “because Kennan could see more deeply, he could predict more accurately.” In this spirit, the Princeton Project is a bipartisan effort to strengthen and update the intellectual underpinnings of U.S. national security strategy.

The Princeton Project is based on the work of leading U.S. academics and policy makers and informed by consultation with top thinkers around the globe. The Project was formally launched at a high-level conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson School in May 2004. Since then, through conferences, working groups, roundtable discussions and commissioned papers, nearly four hundred individuals have contributed their time and talents to the Project.

While most of the Project’s events are by invitation only, we invite all who are interested in these issues to browse the suggested readings, review the Project’s working papers, and check back for updates and announcements of public events. The Princeton Project does not seek to duplicate or compete with the important efforts currently underway in this field. Rather, our aim is to link these efforts together in a comprehensive fashion. If you have suggestions of other work being done in this area, please let us know.

Anne-Marie Slaughter
Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton University