With the failure to stop and reverse the spread of nuclear weapons, military planners do not have the luxury of ignoring the possibility that such weapons might be used against military or civilian targets, abroad or at home.
A new Department of Defense doctrinal publication (pdf) defines policies and procedures for managing “the consequences from all deliberate and inadvertent releases of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear agents or substances, and high-yield explosives with potential to cause mass casualties and large levels of destruction.”
See “Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosives Consequence Management,” Joint Publication 3-41, Joint Chiefs of Staff, October 2, 2006.
Another new DoD policy addresses protection of military installations “against terrorist use of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosive weapons.” See “DoD AntiTerrorism Standards” (pdf), DoD Instruction 2000.16, October 2, 2006.
And a recent DoD Directive offers a new glimpse of the organization of U.S. nuclear command and control. See “U.S. Nuclear Command and Control System Support Staff” (pdf), DoD Directive 3150.06, August 25, 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.