The Leitner Program presents
Brett V. Benson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University.
“Provocative Cooperation: Military Assistance, Power Shifts, and War.”
His research interests lie in the areas of international relations, political economy of conflict, and Chinese politics and East Asian relations.
Professor Benson has worked on military alliances and interstate conflict and is the author of Constructing International Security: Alliances, Deterrence, and Moral Hazard from Cambridge University Press (2012). His current research focuses on military alliances, economic dependence and conflict, theories of armed conflict, and the role of arms markets and arms trade networks in international politics. He is also involved in a research project related to China-Taiwan relations and security.
Benson teaches courses on international relations, political economy of conflict, international political strategy, East Asian relations, and Chinese politics.
Benson is on sabbatical leave from Vanderbilt University and is residing in Taipei, Taiwan where he is currently a visiting research professor at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan (2020-21).
Benson received a Ph.D. (Political Science) and a a M.A. (Economics) from Duke University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University in the Program for Quantitative and Analytical Political Science in 2010-2011. He was also a POSCO Visiting Fellow in residence at the East-West Center in Honolulu, HI in 2010 to work on counter-proliferation strategies directed toward North Korea’s nuclear program.