Michael Makovsky

Michael Makovsky joined JINSA in 2013 as CEO. A U.S. national security expert, he has worked extensively on Iran’s nuclear program, the Middle East, and the intersection of international energy markets and politics with U.S. national security. From 2006-2013, Makovsky was the Foreign Policy Director for the Bipartisan Policy Center where he managed projects on a new U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear development, a new U.S. strategy toward Russia, how to augment U.S. Government capacity in stabilizing fragile states such as Yemen, devising a new bipartisan U.S. foreign policy, and how to make strategic public diplomacy an effective tool of U.S. foreign policy in Egypt and elsewhere. Makovsky served as special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and was Director of Essential Services in the Washington office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the postwar Allied entity that governed Iraq, advising senior Defense, National Security Council and Energy officials on Iraqi and Middle Eastern energy policy. Prior to his work in the Pentagon, Makovsky worked as a senior energy market analyst for various investment firms, and is founder and president of MSM Consulting LLC, an energy and political risk consulting firm. Makovsky has written articles, op-eds and editorials on U.S. national security issues primarily involving the Middle East as well as energy markets, related to Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Israel and Yemen for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Weekly Standard, and The New Republic, and been interviewed on CNBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, Voice of America (Persian), and other media. He is also author of Churchill’s Promised Land (Yale University Press), a diplomatic-intellectual history of Winston Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism. Makovsky has a Ph.D. in diplomatic history from Harvard University, an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School, and a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago.