The year began with chaos in the U.S. House of Representatives and ended much the same. Along the way, we saw technology demonstrate its potential to reshape human productivity and creativity; we have seen wars and violence; and we have worried aloud about the health of American Democracy. Dr. Evelyn Farkas helps us take stock of all of that and name our 2023 “Story of the Year.”

Farkas is one of the nation’s premier voices on American foreign policy and geopolitics, and one of the nation’s most-trusted experts on U.S.-Russia relations. Some of her former positions include: the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, the U.S. Department of Defense’s top Russia expert under President Barack Obama and advisor to three U.S. Secretaries of Defense during her tenure at the Pentagon. She serves as a Senior Fellow, German Marshall Fund of the United States and worked in Congress as well as the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). She was a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Marine Corps University and is the author of “Fractured States and US Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s.” Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe, and more.