![The Air Force’s Personnel Center hosted the 2019 Civilian Personnel Training Summit in San Antonio, Texas, July 22-26, 2019.](https://cdn.defenseone.com/media/img/cd/2019/12/26/D1-image-to-post/860x394.jpg?1627437551)
The Air Force’s Personnel Center hosted the 2019 Civilian Personnel Training Summit in San Antonio, Texas, July 22-26, 2019. U.S. Air Force / Angelina Casarez
Best of 2019: Ideas
Revisit some of the best op-eds and commentary we had the privilege of publishing over the past year.
National Security Is Made of People
Loren DeJonge Schulman: We need a way to measure the readiness of our civilian national-security workforce. Then we need to fix it.
The Magpies and the Cuckoos: A Disinformation Fable
Jessica Malekos Smith: The magpies have a complex and vigorous society. What happens when two conniving cuckoos come to town?
10 Hard Realities of America’s Next Syria Policy
Christopher J. Bolan: The troops are leaving, but the U.S. still has regional and global interests in what happens there.
Brexit’s National-Security Impact: It’s More Than the Economy, Stupid
Michelle Shevin-Coetzee: The Trump Administration must broaden its trade-focused perspective, lest it find itself even more isolated from Washington’s closest allies and partners.
The US Wants to Sell Taiwan the Wrong Weapons
Enea Gjoza: The proposal to send tanks, and not A2/AD weapons, exposes a flawed American strategy.
US Forces Can’t Hide from Ubiquitous Satellites. They Need to Fool Them.
Josef Koller: A new generation of deception-and-denial ideas is needed to counter global monitoring from space.
How Smaller States are Choosing Sides in the Indian Ocean
Viraj Solanki,Antoine Levesques: From Sri Lanka to Kenya, governments try to balance major-power influence — except in arms purchases.
How We Tamed the F-35’s Spiraling Costs — and Created a Model for Controlling Waste
Ash Carter: The former defense secretary says defending America means defending taxpayers’ dollars.
Two Cheers for Esper’s Plan to Reassert Civilian Control of the Pentagon
Loren DeJonge Schulman,Alice Hunt Friend,Mara E. Karlin: One might believe that leaving more decisions to uniformed experts would depoliticize policy. The opposite is true.
Nixon’s Leniency After My Lai Hurt Veterans. Trump’s May, Too.
James E. Wright: A president’s actions in 1971 helped turn public opinion against those who fought the Vietnam War.
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