The Fed, which celebrates its centennial in 2013, has been transformed in the past decade, expanding its role of maintaining full employment and stable prices to deploying trillions of dollars to boost the U.S. economy.

"Whether out of reticence, ambivalence, tactical calculation or the difficulty of making policy in Washington, the [Obama] administration's response to the human rights violators it has faced in five years in office has been mealy-mouthed and confusing," writes Jonathan Tepperman.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu met in Washington, D.C. on August 9, 2013, to discuss trade, nuclear threat reduction, and strategies to address crises in Syria and Egypt.

President Barack Obama held a press conference on August 9, 2013, to discuss oversight and transparency of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.

The NSA released this document on August 9, 2013, after Edward Snowden leaked classified documents related to the U.S. government's telephone and internet data collection and surveillance programs. This document details the history and mission of the NSA, the authority and process under which it operates, and the estimated size of its data operations.

Elliott Abrams discusses a recent meeting between Secretary of State Kerry and Jewish leaders to seek support for the secretary's "peace process" efforts.

A divergence of opinions between males and females is an "enduring characteristic of polls on the use of military force, regardless of the weapons system employed, military mission undertaken, whether the intervening force is unilateral or multilateral, and the strategic objective proposed," says Micah Zenko. Citing polls from the early 1990s to today, he investigates why this persistent difference in opinion exists and what it may mean for U.S. foreign policy.

Peter Orszag wants regulators to watch out for excessive consolidation in local hospital markets as Medicare's shift to value-based payments puts pressure on health care providers to merge and raise fees for private insurers.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released this report on August 6, 2013, which showed that between June 2012 and June 2013, "exports were up $6.0 billion, or 3.2 percent, and imports were down $2.3 billion, or 1.0 percent." The International Trade Administration's corresponding fact sheet highlights data on trade relationships with Trans-Pacific Partnership countries for the same time period.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon reports that agreement on a post-2014 bilateral security deal between Washington and Kabul is in sight.

There is surprising bipartisan agreement on most of the Senate bill's provisions and plausible paths on the issues that still divide the two parties, says CFR's Edward Alden.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper authorized the declassification and public release of documents submitetd by the National Security Agency to Congress, requesting reauthorization to collect telephone metadata, as permitted in Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

The issue of gun control is far from limited to the domestic politics of the United States: transnational gun trafficking makes armed violence a continental problem. The United States and Brazil, home to the largest arms industries in the Hemisphere, should partner to safeguard weapons stocks and staunch the flow of illegal weapons to illicit groups writes Julia Sweig.

Matthew Waxman argues that closing the facility would cause the Obama administration to spend a great deal of political capital, but would actually leave some of the most difficult issues unresolved.

On July 30, 2013, Judge Denise Lind, an army colonel, ruled in the United States v. Private First Class Bradley Manning trial that Manning is not guilty of aiding the enemy, but guilty on other counts of violating the espionage act. Manning released secret diplomatic cables and classified military reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to Wikileaks.

Policymakers are currently debating the appropriate level of U.S. military spending given increasingly constrained budgets and the winding down of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The following charts present historical trends in U.S. military spending and analyze the forces that may drive it lower.

On July 31, 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel provides an overview of the Department of Defense's Strategic Choices Management Review, which analyzed how the department will operate and what it must cut after sequestration.

President Barack Obama gives a series of speeches on his vision for the economy, which he calls "A Better Bargain for the Middle Class."

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon discusses the consequences of leaving Afghanistan.

There has never been greater urgency for expanding and improving U.S. workforce training programs. In this Working Paper, Thomas Hilliard argues that the federal government should corral the country's siloed and disjointed workforce-development programs in line with a common national strategy.