Best of 2019: Ideas

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.