A new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service synthesizes what is known, believed and speculated about the recent North Korean nuclear explosive test, and sketches out the options for U.S. policy.
“The most fundamental U.S. goals of the confrontation with North Korea are to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to prevent an attack — either nuclear or conventional — on the United States or on its allies in the region,” the report says.
“The options available to U.S. policymakers to pursue these goals include the acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power, bilateral or multilateral negotiations, heightened legal and economic pressure on North Korea, adoption of a regime change policy through non-military means, military action or threats, and withdrawal from the conflict.”
A copy of the new CRS report was obtained by Secrecy News.
See “North Korea’s Nuclear Test: Motivations, Implications, and U.S. Options,” October 24, 2006.
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.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.