The steady stream of new military doctrinal and other publications includes several items which will be of interest and importance to some Secrecy News readers.
“Counterland Operations” (pdf), Air Force Doctrine Document 2-1.3, 11 September 2006, refers to the use of U.S. air and space assets against enemy land-based forces.
Security for U.S. ships crossing the Panama Canal is the subject of a new Navy Instruction. “Vessels transiting the Panama Canal encounter situations in which they are isolated from any forces of the United States which could provide additional security if required. These instances provide an opportunity for unfriendly agents to harass or damage a vessel, or potentially embarrass the United States.” See “Definition and Security Requirements for High Value Transits of the Panama Canal” (pdf), OPNAV Instruction 3100.9A, October 2, 2006.
The U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s “Operational Law Handbook” (pdf) has recently been updated (August 2006). The Handbook “provides references and describes tactics and techniques for the practice of operational law….[and is intended to] help judge advocates recognize, analyze, and resolve the problems they will encounter in the operational context.”
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.