Jonathan D. Caverley is Professor in the Strategic & Operational Research Department of the Naval War College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies, where he served as the inaugural director of the Bernard Brodie Strategy Group from 2020 to 2022. He is a Research Affiliate in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His research (CV, pdf) identifies incentives at the international and domestic levels for increased arming and war, with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy. He is currently examining how states use the international arms trade and training of foreign militaries as tools of influence. He also studies how factors such as gender, military status, and expertise allow elites to identify threats and mobilize defense efforts. Finally, he studies great power maritime competition and the prospects for crises in the Western Pacific.

His book, Democratic Militarism: Voting, Wealth, and War, examines the distribution of the costs of security within democracies, and its contribution to military aggressiveness. 

Caverley was formerly Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern, where he founded and co-chaired the Working Group on Security Studies at the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies.

Caverley previously served eight years as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy and as an Assistant Professor of Naval Science at Northwestern University, where he taught undergraduate classes in Naval Engineering and in Leadership and Management.

His Ph.D. and M.P.P. are from the University of Chicago, and he received his A.B. in History and Literature from Harvard College.