Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. Very pleased to be joined again by my friend, Eric

Adelman, who had accommodated a very distinguished career in government as undersecretary of

defense number three position for policy, the number three position, the defense department

from 2005 to 2009. Very relevant to this discussion we're going to have today on the crisis

and civil military relations or not such a civil military, but potential crisis within

the military and the politicization of the military. Some of it, the product perhaps

of trends over decades and some of it, though a lot of it, I'm afraid product of very recent

developments, which Eric's been very closely monitoring and involved in a few efforts

to prevent the worst from happening in terms of politicizing our military or parts of

our military against other parts and so forth. So, Eric, thanks for joining me for this

discussion. Great to be here. So, I mean, we probably should go back a little into

the broader question of civil military relations, something that's preoccupied and anyone

who has thought about democratic governance for centuries, and certainly the founders

are very interested in it, but I do want to come to why I think this is this way. I think

I think this is set about a very unusual moment now in light of the last few years, especially

of the Trump administration and then the attacks on parts on the military and appeals to parts

of the military against the rest of the military. By retired military and by the most recent

former president, just we're speaking here in a real image alive as we speak. So, give

us a little context here for the question of the politicization. I don't even like to

call it civil military because it's a lot of its intramilitary. But the politicization

of the military is something we've, Americans have spent a lot of time, serious people spent

a lot of time over the last decade, centuries, really thinking hard about how to have a strong

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