Jordan Becker

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Academy Professor at United States Military Academy

Why do countries mutually agree to constraints on their behavior? Why do they comply with such constraints in the absence of enforcement mechanisms? More specifically, why did NATO allies, with disparate geography and perceptions of the international security environment, agree to ‘aim to move towards’ increased defense spending (2% of GDP on defen...

Theoretical and empirical research on causes and consequences of defense spending is plentiful. Most of this research uses ‘top line’ defense spending data, either as a share of GDP or as a raw monetary figure. Empirical research has been limited, however, by the ‘blunt’ nature of this data, which does not help to explain what countries are spendin...

Do informal international agreements without coercive mechanisms affect states’ behavior? While scholars have long been interested in this question, answering it often poses empirical challenges, particularly in the arena of international security. By asking and answering a narrower question—Is NATO’s Wales Pledge on defense spending working?—I can...

The public places an important constraint on funding security in Europe, and austerity risks making the constraint tighter. Several recent studies show that curtailing military spending is a popular way to reduce debt in Europe. Yet it remains unclear if military spending aversion persists when threats are salient. We fielded an original survey exp...

Does “shaming” work in NATO? More precisely, does publicly using negative language criticizing allies’ defense spending improve burden-sharing, or is it counterproductive, leading to lower spending? We evaluate the effectiveness of public shaming language; specifically, whether it increases allies’ defense spending or whether other considerations l...

This article reviews the broad political economy literature on transatlantic security, while noting applications to the current challenges ranging from burden-sharing to enlargement to NATO/EU relations, all in the context of renewed state-centric threats to allies emanating from Russia in particular. Thinking about the policy practicalities of tra...

Table 1 is simply a list of the national strategic documents underlying the text as data analysis in this chapter, and table 2 is a full list of the dimensions of strategic culture outlined in the literature.

What sort of military assistance has Ukraine received to date from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members since 2014? What has driven NATO allies’ decisions to provide military assistance to Ukraine? This essay addresses both questions. It offers a preliminary examination of how strategic, economic, and risk considerations might have sha...

This is a master dataset with which any of my research can be replicated with current data

This article introduces ten essays capturing ten panel discussions held by the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy on 3-4 February 2022, in support of the drafting of NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept. While the shadow of the Russo-Ukrainian war hung heavy over the proceedings, participants sought to take both a long and...

This is both aggregated and disaggregated (into personnel, equipment, infrastructure and "other" - primarily operating & maintenance) defense spending data.

In the large literature on military spending and growth, the heterogeneity of the categories of expenditure is seldom considered. Military spending is used to pay for a variety of things, including salaries, large weapon systems, and physical infrastructure, along with ongoing operations, training, and readiness - each of which might be expected to...

This is the replication data for Why Commit? NATO, the EU, and the Political Economy of Burden-Sharing in the Nordic States

The allocation of scarce resources is a grand strategic question – burden-sharing behaviour has clear effects on states’ ability to contribute to collective defence. Both NATO and the European Union encourage members not just to spend more on defence, but to focus those expenditures on equipment modernization and shared operational requirements. Af...

Scholars and practitioners continue to debate transatlantic burden sharing, which has implications for broader questions of collective action and international organizations. Little research, however, has analyzed domestic and institutional drivers of burden-sharing behavior; even less has disaggregated defense spending to measure burden sharing mo...

Divided Armies is a ground-breaking work of social science and military history. Among many contributions, Divided Armies should have enduring influence in the study of international affairs for three reasons. First, by introducing the Project Mars dataset, Jason Lyall (2020b) contributes mightily to addressing selection bias in the study of war, w...

This research is the author's alone and does not represent any official US Government position Strategic and military culture are highly contested concepts-so contested, in fact, that scholars disagree as to whether they have any analytical value at all (Echevarria and Hoffman 2017). A useful analysis of NATO and its members from a strategic cultur...

In this chapter, I offer a definition of strategic culture that enables students of NATO, and of international relations and security more broadly, to identify observable dimensions of strategic culture, separate them conceptually from behavior, and test their relationships with material behavior. I embed this definition in strategic culture debate...

Competition with China has become the main lens through which the United States looks at the world. How will this affect US strategy in Europe? First, Washington's increased focus on China leaves fewer US resources available to influence security developments in and around Europe. This compels US policy-makers to seek ways to preserve a favorable r...

The now important issue of Europe’s strategic autonomy must be supported by growth in investment in the field of security. That itself requires a more collective approach in order to become more effective whilst at the same time strengthening the industrial capability of the countries concerned.

The Economics of the Global Defence Industry, Keith Hartley & Jean Belin (eds.), 2020, pp. xxiii+615 London and New York: Routledge. £150.00, (Hardback), ISBN 978-1-138-60809-2. The Economics of the Global Defence Industry is a thorough treatment of a challenging subfield of defence economics. It is an important addition to the libraries of scholar...

This is the master dataset that I use for most of my research on transatlantic security. It contains a host of political, economic, social and security variables.

Why do states agree (or fail to agree) alliance treaties? Arguing about Alliances is a smart re-imagining of a central problem in international relations (IR) – the origin of alliances. Paul Poast situates his work alongside Stephen Walt’s (1987) Origins of Alliances and Glenn Snyder’s (1997) Alliance Politics – “rather than knocking Walt or Snyder...

Does “naming and shaming” of allies by US Presidents work? More precisely, does publicly criticizing members’ financial commitments to NATO increase allies’ defense spending and improve burden-sharing, or is it counterproductive, leading to lower contributions? We argue that the answer is likely neither. At best, excessive public shaming of allies...

Resource allocation to and within defense budgets is grand strategy. NATO and the EU coordinate defense planning and encourage fair burden-sharing among their members. We analyze the effect of agreed planning processes, namely the “NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP)” on the conversion of political will to resources and then to capabilities develo...

While the causes and consequences of populism have drawn much attention from researchers, transatlantic burden-sharing captivates not only scholars, but populist politicians themselves. A populist President in the United States has called for significant changes in the way the U.S. leads, focusing on burden-sharing as a bone of contention with alli...

Cultural Backlash is a leader in a crowded field of research on the origins and implications of populist politics in Western societies. Among many contributions, Cultural Backlash adds value for scholars of international affairs in three main areas. First, by conceptually differentiating between authoritarian populism and the populist radical right...

Both theorists and practitioners continue to show interest in transatlantic burden-sharing. Resource allocation choices – both to and within defense budgets – are grand strategic choices, and membership in alliances and security communities affects how states make those choices. International security and political economy scholarship offers plausi...

The Handbook of European Defence Policies & Armed Forces, Hugo Meijer and Marco Wyss (eds.), 2019, pp. xxxvi+960 Oxford: Oxford University Press. £135.00, (Hardback), ISBN 978-0-1987-9050-1. European Defence is a wide and fragmented field of study. In The Handbook of European Defence Policies & Armed Forces, Hugo Meijer and Marco Wyss offer a broad...

Absorbing the Blow: Populist Parties and their Impact on Parties and Party Systems Edited by Steven Wolinetz and Andrej Zaslove. London: ECPR Press/Rowman & Littlefield International. 2018. 340pp. £49.00. ISBN 9781785521492. Absorbing the Blow evaluates the effects of populist parties on the party systems of which they are part. The editors, Steve...

Resource allocation to and within defense budgets is grand strategy. NATO and the EU coordinate defense planning and encourage fair burden-sharing among their members. We analyze the effect of agreed planning processes, namely the “NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP)” on the conversion of political will to resources and then to capabilities develo...

The allocation of resources and the sharing of defense burdens among states in the transatlantic security community is central to ordering and organization among its members. While economists have shed light on variation in burden-sharing behavior among states and measured as top-line defense spending, only qualitative work in the security studies...

POPULISM AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS Six recent books addressing the topic of populist politics offer important insights into what may be the most significant political phenomenon of the current era. Each contributes to defining, delimiting, and understanding populism. Four offer detailed discussions of the causal origins of the phenomenon, and two focus o...

While recent work has attempted to update the research agenda for transatiantic defense burden-sharing, there remain significant gaps between the public choice defense economics literature and the security studies literature. The presence of such a gap is unfortunate, because defense spending choices are likely shaped by factors identified by the p...

We argue that NATO allies exhibiting more “Atlanticist” strategic cultures allocate a greater share of their defense resources to Alliance priorities than those exhibiting “Europeanist” strategic cultures. Our analysis builds on policy discussions regarding imbalances in burden-sharing in transatlantic security. Scholarship in the fields of interna...

National security culture is a meaningful independent variable affecting state behaviour, argue Emil J. Kirchner and James Sperling (eds.), in National Security Cultures: Patterns of Global Governance; Routledge 2010 xviii+ 308 pp. Kirchner and Sperling seek to explore the effects of national security culture on national security governance policie...

The persistence and future of the North Atlantic Treaty Association (NATO) have long been topics of interest for scholars of international relations and security studies. In Understanding NATO in the 21st Century: Alliance strategies, security and global governance; Routledge 2013 xxiii+ 259 pp., Graeme P. Herd and John Kriendler (eds.) offer a bri...

Scholarship on the relationships between key macroeconomic variables and defense investment is divided on both the appropriate level of aggregation for such analysis, and the direction of causality between macroeconomic variables and defense investment. Both NATO and the EU, through the European Defence Agency (EDA) have established formal or infor...

Policy discussions on the future of land power often address the utility of U.S. troop deployments as a tool of influence. Analysis in the field of international relations offers analytical and prescriptive discussion of the utility of land forces, but empirical analysis of the effect of the stationing of U.S. troops on the foreign policy orientati...

Policy discussions on transatlantic security frequently focus on the topic of burden sharing, highlighting the imbalance between U.S. and European military expenditures. Alliance scholarship in the fields of international security and political economy offers plausible explanations for this imbalance, based on the perspectives of balance of threat,...

Policy discussions on transatlantic security frequently focus on the topic of burden sharing, highlighting the imbalance between U.S. and European military expenditures. Alliance scholarship in the fields of international security and political economy offers plausible explanations for this imbalance, based on the perspectives of “balance of threat...