The lecture has been canceled. We will reschedule the lecture at a later date.
Date: 25 March 2020
Location: UMW Dahlgren Campus – University Hall (Room 110)
Refreshments will be served at 8:00am, and the lecture begins promptly at 8:30am.
The lecture is open to the public. Registration is requested as space is limited (registration form below).
Summary: The core purpose of the presentation is to make sense of US alliances since the end of the Cold War. The US has advocated multiple rounds of NATO expansion and has entered into a variety of security partnerships. It is important to start with a recognition that alliances serve different purposes in a system of bipolar rivalry than they do in the unipolar world that emerged with the Soviet Union’s collapse. In a unipolar world, allies facilitate military operations (e.g., through bases and overflight rights), project stability, contribute to burden-sharing, and provide political support for US positions. The presentation will provide specific discussion of the new alliances the US has entered into since 1990 from the security partnerships with the Gulf States through NATO’s admission of North Macedonia. I will conclude with a detailed discussion of alliance burdensharing in the post-Cold War era with a focus on allied contributions to US-led military operations.
Bio: Jason Davidson, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary Washington, earned a Ph.D. (2001) and an M.A. (1999) in government from Georgetown University, and a B.A. (1996) in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Davidson is the author of the following books: The Origins of Revisionist and Status-quo States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), America’s Allies and War: Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and (with Fabrizio Coticchia) Italian Foreign Policy During Matteo Renzi’s Government: A Domestically-Focused Outsider and the World (Lexington Books 2019). His articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Foreign Policy Analysis, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Contemporary Security Policy, and Security Studies. His most recent project is a book titled America Entangled, Explaining US Alliances 1776 to the Present (forthcoming with Georgetown University Press).
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