Next Steps in Nuclear Arms Control, and More from CRS
Negotiating a treaty to reduce nuclear weapons is so cumbersome and fraught with political minefields that it can actually retard the process of disarmament. “It usually takes far longer to reduce nuclear forces through a bilateral arms control treaty than it takes to adopt unilateral adjustments to nuclear forces,” according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service.
“If the Obama Administration reduces U.S. nuclear forces in parallel with Russia, but without a formal treaty, the two nations could avoid months or years in negotiation,” the CRS report says. See Next Steps in Nuclear Arms Control with Russia: Issues for Congress, April 10, 2013.
“Recent data… challenge the belief that the [U.S.] manufacturing sector, taken as a whole, will continue to flourish,” says a newly updated CRS report. “One interpretation of these data is that manufacturing is ‘hollowing out’ as companies undertake a larger proportion of their high-value work abroad. These developments raise the question of whether the United States will continue to generate highly skilled, high-wage jobs related to advanced manufacturing.” See “Hollowing Out” in U.S. Manufacturing: Analysis and Issues for Congress, April 15, 2013.
A rich compilation of information about discretionary government spending was presented in Trends in Discretionary Spending, April 15, 2013.
Some other new or newly updated CRS reports that Congress has not made publicly available include the following.
Federal Authority to Regulate the Compounding of Human Drugs, April 12, 2013
Federal Traffic Safety Programs: An Overview, April 1, 2013
The STOCK Act, Insider Trading, and Public Financial Reporting by Federal Officials, April 12, 2013
International Trade and Finance: Key Policy Issues for the 113th Congress, April 15, 2013
Why Certain Trade Agreements Are Approved as Congressional-Executive Agreements Rather Than as Treaties, April 15, 2013
The United Kingdom and U.S.-UK Relations, April 15, 2013
With targeted policy interventions, we can efficiently and effectively support the U.S. innovation economy through the translation of breakthrough scientific research from the lab to the market.
Crowd forecasting methods offer a systematic approach to quantifying the U.S. intelligence community’s uncertainty about the future and predicting the impact of interventions, allowing decision-makers to strategize effectively and allocate resources by outlining risks and tradeoffs in a legible format.
The energy transition underway in the United States continues to present a unique set of opportunities to put Americans back to work through the deployment of new technologies, infrastructure, energy efficiency, and expansion of the electricity system to meet our carbon goals.
The United States has the only proven and scalable tritium production supply chain, but it is largely reserved for nuclear weapons. Excess tritium production capacity should be leveraged to ensure the success of and U.S. leadership in fusion energy.