Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart has long stood out as one of the nation’s foremost experts on national security. Possessing both a deep knowledge of defense policy and first-hand experience of the political realities that influence American security and defense strategy, Hart brings unique insight to his most recent book, The Shield and the Cloak: The Security of the Commons. Hart argues that the new challenges confronting America require an entirely new security strategy. The old security required massive weapons in massive numbers. Faced now with a terrorist threat that has no state and no geographic home base, and thus no real target for the world’s largest and most sophisticated military force, America must make important strategic shifts.

This was the first meeting in which former Senator Hart was speaking in his new capacity as Distinguished Scholar in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program.