Insanity Defense

Why Our Failure to Confront Hard National Security Problems Makes Us Less Safe

By: Jane Harman

Narrated by: Jane Harman

Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

This program is read by the author.

An insider's account of America's ineffectual approach to some of the hardest defense and intelligence issues in the three decades since the Cold War ended.

Insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. As a nation, America has cycled through the same defense and intelligence issues since the end of the Cold War. In Insanity Defense, Congresswoman Jane Harman chronicles how four administrations have failed to confront some of the toughest national security policy issues and suggests achievable fixes that can move us toward a safer future.

The reasons for these inadequacies are varied and complex, in some cases going back generations. American leaders didn’t realize soon enough that the institutions and habits formed during the Cold War were no longer effective in an increasingly multi-power world transformed by digital technology and riven by ethno-sectarian conflict. Nations freed from the fear of the Soviets no longer deferred to America as before. Yet the United States settled into a comfortable, at times arrogant, position as the lone superpower. At the same time our governing institutions, which had stayed resilient, however imperfectly, through multiple crises, began their own unraveling.

Congresswoman Harman was there - as witness, legislator, exhorter, enabler, dissident and, eventually, outside advisor and commentator. Insanity Defense is an insider’s account of decades of American national security - of its failures and omissions - and a road map to making significant progress on solving these perennially difficult issues.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

©2021 Jane Harman (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Not about Defense- self-aggrandizing political memoir

I bought this book because I thought it was about the defense department and ability to fight future wars. Instead, I got a political memoir from Jane about how great she was during her career, The importance of the congress, and how her judgment alone with prescient. I suffered through the entire book, and I’m no better for it.