Jonathan D. Caverley is professor in the Strategic & Operational Research Department of the Naval War College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies. He is also a visiting Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is completing a book on the global defense industrial base with support from the Defense Security Cooperation University. 

His research (CV, pdf) identifies incentives at the international and domestic levels for 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 crisis stability in the Western Pacific.

At the Naval War College, he recently served as the interim Director of the Naval War College Press, and was 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. 

Prior to joining the Naval War College, Caverley was a Research Scientist in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program and an 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.