Prompted by the critical security challenges facing our country, and the growing need to fully engage the private sector in meeting these challenges, the Council is sponsoring the Roundtable Series on the Role of the Private Sector in Homeland Security. The series is directed by Dr. Stephen Flynn, the Council's Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies. The aim of the Roundtable is to vigorously address some of the pressing issues highlighted in Flynn's recently released book, America the Vulnerable, How Our Government is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism.

The design of the initiative is a sustained dialogue between homeland security experts and a small high-level group of decision makers from the private sector. Bringing these two groups together, the Council hopes to promote a forum for frank discussion leading to valuable insights into difficult security issues and the pursuit of solutions in the context of our present political and economic environment.

This study will test the hypothesis that an incentive-based policy is more effective in promoting market economies and democratic politics than an approach in which Washington relies on the ostensibly transformative effects of civil society, regime change in Iraq, regional peace, or the willingness of Arab leaders to pursue reform.

In this book, the author analyzes how the U.S. ought to manage immigration, taking into account politics, sociology, economics, and international relations. He calls for a benign attitude toward illegal immigration, a policy stance he supports even in the wake of September 11.

Expected publication date: Spring 2006

This project will lead to a book where the author will examine the desirability of dollarization for emerging market economies, the possible contributions to international financial stability it could bring, and suggest ways the U.S. can help foreign governments address political objections they may face in trying to implement this policy.

This project will result in a pamphlet examining current immigration reform attempts in the context of past immigration law reform.

This project will result in a book analyzing how the U.S. ought to manage immigration, taking into account policies, sociology, economics, and international relations. He calls for a benign attitude toward illegal immigration, even in the wake of September 11.

This series has been made possible by the generous support of the Population Resource Center.

After the Knowledge Economy: What America Must Do to Win the Technological Race with Asia argues that the United States is currently the world’s technology leader, but can no longer assume its technological superiority will continue indefinitely. The American innovation system is weakening; globalization is changing how and where innovation occurs; and new, serious competitors are emerging in Asia.

Asia’s ascendancy is more than the next competitive challenge for a few American technology companies. The United States’ status as a superpower is at stake. Economic dynamism, military power, and political influence all flow from the United States’ technological predominance. Failing to ensure that the American economy remains the most innovative means accommodating ourselves to a future where other countries reap the lion’s share of the benefits of technological development; potential rivals strengthen their militaries and threaten our core security interests; and Asia replaces the United States as the source of new ideas and inspiration for the world.

The study group will result in a book in Fall 2007 that will provide an introduction to and analysis of important technology actors in Asia—players who could represent growth opportunities for as well as potential competitors to American business. In addition, the book will make practical policy suggestions about how the United States should foster technological entrepreneurship at home and what it should demand from its trading partners abroad.

This project is made possible by the generous support from the Kauffman Foundation.

This project will result in a book considering the prospects for the regionalization of the international monetary system. The authors will begin by comparing the various exisiting and soon-to-exist forms of currency consolidation and then examine the prospects for future monetary unions, particularly among NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and East Asian nations.

This study group examines Russia's considerable influence in international gas markets and proposes strategies that the United States might pursue to either reform or out-manuever Russia's dominant gas supplier, Gazprom. Particular attention will be paid to the role of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the gas markets of future, as well as the role of domestic power consumption, regulation, and conservation in determining future demand.

The findings from this study will help Dr. Victor write a scholarly article to be placed in a major foreign policy journal.

This project will lead to a book explorning how China is moving to reshape the political, economic, and security landscape of Asia and what steps the United States must take to ensure that its interests continue to be addressed in this changing environment.

This roundtable series examines the prospects for regional monetary integration and other developments likely to affect the organization and functioning of the international monetary system.

Since September 11, 2001, U.S.-Middle East policy has sought to promote reform in the Arab and Islamic World as a U.S. national security priority. This roundtable series sheds light on the complex issues that the countries of the Middle East present and explores the different avenues available to U.S. policymakers seeking to promote change in that region. By drawing on the experience of a variety of speakers with particular expertise on social, political, and economic reform, women's issues, education, and the media, this roundtable series intends to enrich the current debate on reform promotion in the Arab world with a range of top-tier perspectives and policy recommendations in an informal discussion setting.

America's ability to encourage innovative ideas has helped to establish it as the world's economic and military leader. However, technological developments over the past thirty years have spawned an increasingly globalized world and created new challenges to American pre-eminence. This roundtable series investigates how the government's response to these challenges will affect America's global economic and political standing.

For fifty five years, the United States and Saudi Arabia were solid partners. Since 9/11 this partnership has been sorely tested. InThicker than Oil: Ameica's Uneasy Relationship with Saudi Arabia(forthcoming Oxford University Press), funded in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, Rachel Bronson shows why the partnership became so intimate and the problems that it spawned.

Drawing on a wide range of archival material, declassified documents, and interviews with leading Saudi and American officials, Bronson chronicles a long history of close contact. Contrary to popular belief, Bronson shows that the relationship was never just about “oil for security.” Saudi Arabia’s religiously motivated foreign policy was deemed an asset when fighting “godless communism,” as was Saudi Arabia’s geographic location. From Africa to Afghanistan, Egypt to Nicaragua the two worked to beat back Soviet influence. Overlapping strategic interests helped compartmentalized differences around issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. But decisions taken for hard headed Cold War purposes left behind a legacy that today enflames the Middle East.

In today’s fight against terrorism Saudi Arabia is both part of the problem and part of the solution. Not withstanding real troubles, Bronson outlines the dangers of allowing the relationship to further deteriorate. Saudi Arabia, she notes, faces a violent and zealous opposition. If this opposition gains complete control of the state's huge resources, it will direct its efforts towards destroying the United States, auguring a true clash of civilizations.