Gayle Tzemach Lemmon weighs in on the U.S. government shutdown.

On September 4, 2013, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations debated the resolution: "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against the Government of Syria to Respond to Use of Chemical Weapons."

U.S. policymaking on human rights issues is sometimes hindered by poor relations between State and Capitol Hill. Fortunately, there are ways to improve cooperation.

There is a well-known adage that politics stops at the water's edge, but this tends to be more hope than reality. American history is filled with examples in which political disagreement at home has made it difficult for the United States to act, much less lead, abroad.

Read full answer

Elliott Abrams discusses the latest House hearing on the Benghazi embassy attack of September 11, 2012.

Michael Spence outlines the conflicting objectives that President Obama and the U.S. Congress must reconcile as they negotiate a new federal budget.

Carl Levin discusses U.S. defense policy and ongoing national security concerns.

Short Description: The automatic cuts in U.S. federal government spending, known as the "sequester," will negatively impact the U.S. economy in the short run and will not solve the long-term challenge of putting the United States on a sustainable budget path, says CFR's Robert Kahn.

After their loss last year, Republicans are grappling over what to do next -- and when it comes to foreign policy, small-government conservatives worried about debt are squaring off against big-military conservatives fearful of defense cuts. Fortunately, the GOP does not need a total makeover; what it needs is a renegotiated modus vivendi between the two competing camps, each of which has valuable things to teach the other.

Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke presented these prepared remarks to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on February 26, 2013. The committee provides a webcast of the whole hearing.

Shannon K. O'Neil says after Republicans' election-year drubbing, the United States has an historic opportunity to fix its broken immigration system. And the arguments against reform simply don't hold up anymore.

The expectation of dramatic change persists. The very anticipation of such change, even if it is unfounded, imparts a particular type of "meta-instability" to the Chinese system today.

U.S. foreign policy is largely directed by presidents, but Congress does have considerable influence, as this CFR Backgrounder explains.

The 113th Congress continues the trend in a gradual increase in religious diversity that is mirroring trends in the country as a whole.

Julia E. Sweig says the recent "fiscal cliff" deal marks the end of the grand bargain, and "the new normal in Washington is one of hyper partisanship, in which the Republicans have learned that if they wait long enough the Democrats will soften at the end of negotiations."

After coming to a slow crawl on the fiscal deal, this Congress will leave a legacy of the fewest enacted laws than any since 1947; Jonathan Allen writes that the best the 112th Congress has been able to do is "avert the worst."

"To gun control advocates, the opposition is out of touch with the times, misinterprets the Second Amendment, and is lacking in concern for the problems of crime and violence. To gun control opponents, advocates are naive in their faith in the power of regulation to solve social problems, bent on disarming the American citizen for ideological or social reasons, and moved by irrational hostility toward firearms and gun enthusiasts."

Americans want to see Congress and the president make a deal on the "fiscal cliff," but the incentives are strongest for policymakers to act only after the cliff has come and gone—and wreaked a great deal of havoc in the process, says Gayle Tzemach Lemmon.

Micah Zenko says, "Like Dick Cheney 21 years ago, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has engaged in an exhaustive effort to avoid both sequestration and any further reductions in the Pentagon's budget. The distinction between Panetta and his predecessors, however, is in the tactics he has employed to protect his bureaucratic turf."

Joseph Lieberman's retirement will impact the clout of the bipartisan trio, which included Senators Lieberman, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, that once dominated congressional debate on foreign policy, says the New York Times.