The Congressional Research Service has produced its latest annual report on U.S. arms sales abroad (pdf). The CRS report, authored by Richard F. Grimmett, has become a standard reference in the field since it is based on closely held official data.
“This report is prepared annually to provide Congress with official, unclassified, quantitative data on conventional arms transfers to developing nations by the United States and foreign countries for the preceding eight calendar years for use in its various policy oversight functions.”
Like other CRS products, this report is not made directly available to the public by CRS. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
See “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005,” October 23, 2006.
Further information and analysis are available from the FAS Arms Sales Monitoring Project.
Among other noteworthy new products of the Congressional Research Service are the following (all pdf).
“Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North Korea and Pakistan,” updated October 11, 2006.
“Extradition Between the United States and Great Britain: The 2003 Treaty,” updated October 10, 2006.
“Russian Political, Economic, and Security Issues and U.S. Interests,” updated October 19, 2006.
“The National Institutes of Health (NIH): Organization, Funding, and Congressional Issues,” October 19, 2006.
“Journalists’ Privilege: Overview of the Law and 109th Congress Legislation,” updated October 3, 2006.
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.