The Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on the Creation and Dissemination of All Forms of Information in Support of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in Time of Military Conflict was charged with reviewing PSYOP activities within the Department of Defense (DoD).
Topic:
Defense Policy, Human Welfare, and Science and Technology
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994, Public Law No. 103-160, Section 1703 (50 USC 1522), mandates the coordination and integration of all Department of Defense chemical and biological (CB) defense programs. As part of this coordination and integration, the Secretary of Defense is directed to submit an assessment and a description of plans to improve readiness to survive, fight and win in a nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) contaminated environment. This report contains modernization plan summaries that highlight the Department's approach to improve current NBC defense equipment and resolve current shortcomings in the program. 50 USC 1522 has provided the essential authority to ensure the elimination of unnecessarily redundant programs, focusing funds on DoD and program priorities, and enhancing readiness.
William M. Daley, Andrea Durbin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Martin Albrow, Stacy D. Vandeever, Anju Sharma, Stephen Clarkson, Kent Hughes, and Tamar Gutner
Publication Date:
06-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
Free trade, seen by many as the engine of world economic growth, has once again become the subject of bitter dispute. Nowhere was this more evident than at the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle at the end of 1999. There, environmentalists joined with trade unionists and advocates for developing countries in staging mass protests. These diverse groups claimed the WTO is unrepresentative and undemocratic, overlooking environmental interests and those of the world's poor in favor of big business. Inside the negotiating halls, the United States and the European Union clashed over agricultural subsidies and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Developing country representatives complained that they remained marginalized in the official talks.
Topic:
Security, Development, Environment, and Science and Technology
Since 1993, the University of Michigan Population-Environment Fellows Programs (PEFP) has linked the population and environment sectors of development both at the field level and in policy analysis. The PEFP and Denise Caudill of World Neighbors launched the Impact Assessment Project to develop a framework for assessing an integrated program. This article addresses project findings, including the successes, constraints, and obstacles of integrated/linked programs, as well as provides field examples from Ecuador and Madagascar. Denise Caudill, the coordinator for this project, offers lessons on the implications of implementing integrated/linked programs from the community to the national, regional, and international levels.
Topic:
Security, Development, Environment, and Science and Technology
The Niger Delta, a sensitive ecosystem rich in biodiversity, has witnessed considerable violence as a result of the tense relationship among oil companies, the Nigerian state, and oil-bearing communities. Environmental damage from the extraction and movement of fossil fuels is a central point of dispute among the parties while the precise extent of ecological damage remains unknown. Drawing on numerous interviews while living and working in the Niger Delta, Dr. Okechukwu Ibeanu analyzes the management of conflicts surrounding petroleum production in the region, including the role of state violence and contradictory perceptions of security held by Delta communities and the oil companies and their partners in the Nigerian federal government.
Topic:
Security, Development, Environment, and Science and Technology
Human populations have put pressure on their natural surroundings throughout history. Yet the world is now facing truly global environmental challenges and rapid population growth in the final half of the twentieth century is a critical component to understanding these phenomena. In his article, Ambassador Richard Benedick examines a host of population dynamics and their complex interlinkages with three representative environmental issue areas: forests, freshwater resources, and climate change. These connections raise the importance of meeting the commitments made at the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. Benedick maintains that investments in measures to slow the rate of population growth-and thereby to reach a stable population earlier, and at lower levels, than under current trends-would significantly reinforce efforts to address the environmental challenges of the century ahead, and considerably lower the cost of such efforts.
Topic:
Security, Development, Environment, and Science and Technology
Infectious diseases are a leading cause of death, accounting for a quarter to a third of all deaths worldwide. The spread of infectious diseases results from both human behavior such as lifestyle choices, land-use patterns, increased trade and travel, and inappropriate use of antibiotic drugs, as well as mutations in pathogens. These excerpts from a January 2000 National Intelligence Estimate highlight the rising global health threat of new and reemerging infectious diseases. The National Intelligence Council argues that the infectious disease threat will complicate U.S. and global security over the next twenty years. These diseases will endanger U.S. citizens at home and abroad, threaten U.S. armed forces deployed overseas, and exacerbate social and political instability in key countries and regions in which the United States has significant interests, according to the report.
Topic:
Security, Development, Environment, and Science and Technology
The Division of Science Resources Studies (SRS) of the National Science Foundation publishes the biennial report, National Patterns of R Resources. This report describes and analyzes current patterns of research and development (R) in the United States, in relation to the historical record and the reported R levels of other industrialized countries. For years in which the full report is not produced, current, annual statistics on national and international R trends are released in data updates like this one.
This paper explores the relationship between domestic R and the inflow of foreign capital through foreign direct investment and foreign ownership. The idea that firms invest in a foreign country in order to more easily absorb the knowledge and technology of foreign firms is tested empirically using a unique firm level data set covering foreign ownership and R for all Norwegian firms over the period 1990 to 1996. The study gives no clear evidence supporting the existence of such a motive behind foreign ownership. On the other hand, the econometric study indicates that foreign investors may try to exploit their technological advantages in the Norwegian market. The results also show that the degree of foreign ownership is more volatile when firms are highly R intensive. We hypothesize that this is due to the fact that large R investments often result in large losses as well as gains to the firms.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
The White House has loosened export restrictions in a number of high-technology sectors, setting a trend which is likely to be followed by the next administration. Tight export controls on high-tech products have become an expensive luxury that the United States can no longer afford. The liberalisation of remaining controls is therefore set to continue, whatever the partisan composition of the next Congress and the next administration.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance and Science and Technology