KATHLEEN HICKS is a leading scholar-practitioner o U.S.
defense policy. As a top Pentagon ocial in the Obama
administration, she led the Defense Department’s eorts
to pivot to Asia and helped devise contingency plans for
crises the U.S. military might face in the decades ahead.
In “Getting to Less” (page 56), Hicks, now a senior vice
president and director o the International Security
Program at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, argues that although it is possible to decrease
U.S. defense spending, drastic cuts would require
dangerous shifts in strategy.A uent Pashto speaker, CARTER MALKASIAN spent two
years in Afghanistan as a U.S. State Department ocial,
working mostly in the war-torn district o Garmser, often
traveling without a security detail to meet with village
leaders. He reected on that work in War Comes to Garmser,
one o the best books yet written about the U.S. war in
Afghanistan, before going on to become an adviser to the
chairman o the Joint Chiefs o Sta, General Joseph
Dunford, from 2015 to 2019. In “How the Good War Went
Bad” (page 77), Malkasian explores the factors that have
made U.S. success in Afghanistan unlikely—and the
decisions that have made it impossible.ANNE CASE AND ANGUS DEATON have dedicated their careers
to studying the economic issues that shape the lives o
everyday people. Since receiving her Ph.D. in economics
from Princeton, Case has focused her research on human
health outcomes, examining, among other things, how
childhood circumstances aect health and economic status
in adulthood. Deaton, raised in Edinburgh and educated
at the University o Cambridge, has shed light on people’s
saving and consumption choices, both in the aggregate
and at the level o individual households—work for which
he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015.
Today, both live in Princeton, where they have con-
ducted groundbreaking research on the rise in deaths from
drug abuse, alcohol-related illnesses, and suicide in the
United States. In “The Epidemic o Despair” (page 92),
Case and Deaton warn that other countries could
succumb to this American disease.CONTRIBUTORS
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