The Hoover Institution's Uncommon KnowledgeTM television program was a special feature of the Preventive Force Conference May 25–27 at the Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park.
The two-day conference was sponsored by the Hoover Institution, the Hewlett Foundation, and Stanford University's Institute for International Studies.
Practitioners, scholars, and officials experienced in international security affairs met to discuss the issue of preventing threats to security through the use of force. The gathering was the outgrowth of discussion and consideration of the Bush administration's National Security Strategy, published in 2002. The strategy argued that, in the twenty-first century, it is necessary for the United States not merely to defend itself from attacks but to use military force to prevent terrorist threats and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
A volume based on the proceedings from the conference, and on additional meetings in Washington, D.C., and in Europe, is scheduled to be published in the future.
On May 26, participants and attendees from the conference adjourned to the Hoover Institution, where they watched the Uncommon Knowledge program "The Best Defense: Preventive War." The program was taped just two hours before the Hoover showing and a dinner that followed.
Program host Peter Robinson moderated lively discussion by Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; Stephen Stedman, professor of political science at Stanford University; and Victor Davis Hanson, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Hoover, all of whom participated in the conference.
The program will be broadcast beginning July 22 on PBS stations across the United States.
