Rightsizing Alliances and Incentivizing Burden Sharing

The Strategy Sessions is a limited-run podcast hosted by Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Today, Emma talks with Michael Beckley, an associate professor at Tufts University and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Emma and Michael discuss whether or not American policymakers can use multilateral institutions to the U.S.'s advantage, United States’s “declining” power, and how leaders can rightsize the U.S.'s  “alliance portfolio.”

Emma and Mike’s discussion is part of the New Visions for Grand Strategy Project, a collection of essays, videos, and podcasts in which out-of-the box thinkers discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy.

*The  Strategy Sessions Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.

Show Links:

• Emma Ashford, First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy for a Multipolar World (Yale University Press, 2025)
• Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, The Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022)
• Michael Beckley, “A Free World That Works” in New Visions for Grand Strategy, edited by Emma Ashford and Nevada Joan Lee, The Stimson Center. Washington, D.C., USA 

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