- Taking War Seriously by Michael Miklaucic
- Time To End DoD’s Earmark Dependence by Dan Savickas
Nicholas Eberstadt | AEIdeas
The years since the Cold War ended have been extraordinary. Yet during this moment of unparalleled prosperity, Nicholas Eberstadt shows, that things quietly started going wrong for many Americans. The unease so many in the US feel today reflects that contradiction. Curiously, the most indispensable of the Cold War’s many victors, the American people, now suffer from a failure to thrive. Their social wellbeing has been faltering for some time. By 2021, estimated median wealth per adult was lower in the US than in most Western European NATO allies. Further, performance in wealth building has been decidedly weaker in the US than in most Cold War allies in Asia and Europe. Read Part I here. >>
Who Won the Cold War? Part II
Nicholas Eberstadt | AEIdeas
Nicholas Eberstadt looks at health trends in America since the end of the Cold War. Despite intervening economic progress and medical advance, mortality rates in America were no better for the men and women born in 1990 by the time they reached their late 20s than for their parents’ generation. For Americans born in 1990, death rates at age 20 are universally lower for US treaty allies’ populations than for Americans. Further, mortality curves for those in their 20s generally remained much flatter for these allies than for the US. Consequently, the divergence in mortality risks between the US and its allies tended to increase over young adulthood for Americans born in 1990, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Read Part II here. >>
Who Won the Cold War? Part III
Nicholas Eberstadt | AEIdeas
Nicholas Eberstadt takes a broader look at adult health in the post–Cold War era. Some countries embroiled in the Cold War have enjoyed pronounced and incessant improvements in survival from the end of the World War II though the end of the Cold War and to the present day. In Japan, each successive cohort traces a survival trajectory more favorable than the cohort before it. Now compare this with the survival trends in adulthood for the USA. Instead of consistent space between successive cohorts’ mortality curves, there are plenty of tangles, with later cohorts suffering from higher death rates in adulthood than the Americans who came before them did. Read Part III here. >>