Democracy, the Military, and America’s Future: A Conversation with Admiral McRaven

“The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within,” wrote Admiral William McRaven for the New York Times in 2019, reflecting on what he sensed from his military colleagues during the first Trump administration.  In that op-ed, McRaven stressed the importance of American values in the face of the erosion of institutions and norms that underpin the strength of United States abroad.   What do the challenges to those values look like today? How does the increasingly partisan and polarized environment, and an unprecedented aggrandizement of presidential power, impact a military designed to be above politics?  Can the U.S. military be expected to help defend democracy or is this the purview of Congress, courts and civil society? Join Aaron David Miller as engages Admiral McRaven in a wide-ranging discussion of the state and fate of the American republic at home and abroad, on Carnegie Connects.