And the Welcome to Conversations, I'm Bill Crystal, and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Eric Edelman,

Hurtog practitioner at Johns Hopkins-Sice.

You teach there other places, think tanks, galore,

a major figure in the Washington Foreign Policy Community,

a Foreign Service officer for what 30 years I think,

Ambassador to Finland and Turkey under Secretary of Defense and the

Georgetown Bush administration. So huge amount of experience and also a PhD if I'm

not mistaken. You kind of suppressed that you

hide that in your resume there from Yale right misspent youth from Yale that's okay yeah

that other school right so that was now so one of the most thoughtful, I really mean this

observers of having been a practitioner and a student, one of the most thoughtful

observers of foreign policy. We had a conversation a year ago as I recall that

stressed a little more on your background, your history, your stint in Turkey in particular.

But let's talk about the world today. So how worried should I be?

Well, I think it's fair to be worried because the international order is under enormous strain. It's under enormous strain in part because of developments that have been ongoing for a number of years,

the rise of a revocious Russia in Europe, the rise of a China that although people hoped would rise peacefully

has as one would expect from the history of the international system been more disruptive than people

anticipated.

The continuing problems we have with terrorism and the emergence of a new nuclear power in North Korea,

potentially with the ability to reach the United States,

and the potential that Iran will become a nuclear power at some point down the line, all of which

has stressed the international system enormously.

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