The National Security Initiative is committed to developing realistic and robust bipartisan policy recommendations for the principal national security and foreign policy issues confronting the United States.

With a number of ongoing projects, NSI works with ideologically diverse groups of distinguished experts to address today’s rapidly evolving international challenges. Our projects range in focus from determining appropriate policy responses to very specific and timely international situations to considering more broadly the shape and direction of global politics in the 21st century.

Bipartisan Policy Center Statement on the Passing of Professor Ernest May

Projects

Stabilizing Fragile States

This project aims to develop concrete policy and legislative recommendations for augment U.S. government capacity to assist fragile states to stabilize themselves. When states are unable to carry out basic functions, they can undermine U.S. strategic interests by contributing to terrorism, international crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and limited access to vital natural resources. It seeks to examine the efficacy to date of existing U.S. bureaucratic and operational capacity to effectively buttress weak states through the spectra of security capacity, governing services, and civic resilience. Read more

Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development

This timely project addressed the challenges of a potentially nuclear Iran to U.S. policy, challenging existing assumptions in the policymaking community about the strategic implications of a nuclear Iran; examining, in real depth, the practical ramifications of the various policy options available to the U.S.; and recommending a coherent, bipartisan U.S. strategy towards Iranian nuclear development. Read more

An Open, Civilized World

The National Security Initiative’s pioneer project was motivated by the absence of an overarching conceptual framework to guide American foreign policy and command public support, five years after 9/11 and more than fifteen years after the end of the Cold War. The purpose of this project was to create an overarching strategic framework that defines and prioritizes U.S. interests, values and objectives, and develop a strategy of how to achieve them. Read more