The Department of Defense has updated its policy on “humanitarian and civic assistance activities,” which are “conducted in conjunction with authorized military operations” abroad. See DoD Instruction 2205.02 (pdf), December 2, 2008.
Medical assistance is a potentially important element of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, argued a senior military medical officer earlier this year. See “The Role of Medical Diplomacy in Stabilizing Afghanistan” (pdf), by Donald F. Thompson, Defense Horizons, May 2008. (Interestingly, however, he noted that such assistance can sometimes backfire by “undercutting the confidence of the local population in their own government’s ability to provide essential services.”)
Former Senator Bill Frist has called for increased investment in medical diplomacy, and warned against letting U.S. adversaries get “ahead” on this front.
“We cannot allow countries in direct security and economic competition with America … to use health diplomacy as a means of building new alliances, attracting new followers, or otherwise strengthening their position vis-a-vis our nation,” he wrote in Yale Law and Policy Review (Fall 2007).
Even the best-designed policy rests on assumptions about who will staff it, how it will be funded, whether the responsible institutions have ever coordinated, and if the goals are achievable. Those assumptions usually go unchecked until a program is already struggling, stalled by capacity bottlenecks, overlapping authorities, and other predictable implementation problems. To dig into […]
These fellows will be working to turn ambitious ideas into actionable policy – from improving how frontier AI models are evaluated for government use to strengthening biosecurity protections and building the workforce needed to keep AI systems safe.
The goal: help communities approach data center development with stronger negotiating tools and a clearer understanding of what’s possible.
Just as sports fanatics had plenty to celebrate this year, so does the heat policy team at FAS. In response to recent heat events, leaders across the country have taken steps to build heat resilience.