The Chairs of the National Security Initiative’s lead project -- Professors Ernest May, of Harvard University, and Philip Zelikow, of the University of Virginia -- have published their recommendations for a new American foreign policy framework in the September/October issue of the American Interest.

Health care reform has been a political hot potato for decades. But in the highly-charged atmosphere of the political arena, compromise can be risky. Now, four former majority leaders of the U.S. Senate have come together to try and bridge the political gap, and break the impasse.

By: David Makovsky, Simon Henderson, and Michael Makovsky

Source: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Date: 12/14/07

On December 17, a donor conference will convene in Paris with the goal of bolstering Palestinian governance in the West Bank -- the first such meeting since the 2006 Stockholm conference.

Author: Michael Makovsky

Source: Wall Street Journal

Date: 08/16/07

The expected withdrawal of British forces from southern Iraq highlights a critical but little discussed aspect of the conflict: The security of the southern oil sector, which is essential to Iraqi stability and important to the international oil market.

By: Michael Makovsky

Source: Weekly Standard

03/19/07

Volume 012, Issue 22

On March 27, 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy secretary of defense, predicted that Iraq's oil revenue would "finance" its reconstruction and do so "relatively soon." With wise investment and management, Wolfowitz might have been right. Even though its oil sector accounts for 95 percent of the Iraqi state's revenue and is essential to the country's ability to one day pay its own way, the United States has yet to make a serious effort to boost the Iraqi oil industry, which controls the second or third largest reserves (mostly undeveloped) in the world. President George W. Bush's recent Iraq plan is no better in this regard.