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About Me

My name is Alexander Lanoszka. I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and in the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo. I am also an Associate Fellow at the UK-based Council on Geostrategy as well as a Senior Fellow at the Ottawa-based MacDonald-Laurier Institute. I am a co-director of the Réseau d'Analyse Stratégique and a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Natolin. I am also director of the Master of Public Service program at Waterloo.

 

I was previously a Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London and held postdoctoral fellowships at Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I received my Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2014.

 

My research addresses issues in alliance politics, nuclear strategy, and theories of war, and has appeared in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, International Affairs, and elsewhere. My books include Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation (Cornell, 2018) and Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century (Polity, 2022). I have done work on East Asia but Europe is my primary regional focus, with special emphasis on Central and Northeastern Europe. I have two places that I consider home: Windsor-Detroit and Krakow, Poland.

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On this website, you will find information about my books, monographs, and published articles as well as information on my academic research, teaching, and commentary.
 

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Latest Publications

"Winning Hearts and Minds? How the United States Reassured ..."

with Lauren Sukin and Stephen Herzog

Journal of Conflict Resolution

Decades of scholarship hold that great powers shore up global confidence during crises with strong demonstrations of resolve. A much smaller literature critiques these assumptions, suggesting that restraint may strengthen confidence. When and why do restraint or resolve reassure, and for whom? In light of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we appraise early U.S. attempts to reassure allies and partners using public opinion surveys in 24 countries on six continents. Our novel data, which cover rarely surveyed publics, illuminates conditions under which restraint or resolve reassure. We introduce theoretical mechanisms that predict individuals’ propensity to be reassured by resolve or restraint: prior beliefs about the use of force and geopolitical positioning. The results challenge dominant scholarly narratives. Respondents worldwide were reassured by restraint. Forgoing direct intervention in the Russo-Ukrainian War strengthened the U.S.-led order, successfully balancing NATO members’ interests with those of U.S. Indo-Pacific and Global South partners.

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LATEST NEWS

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NEW JCR ARTICLE

13 AUGUST 2025

Lauren Sukin, Stephen Herzog, and I published a new article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution that examined global attitudes towards U.S. reassurance efforts in the context of the Russ-Ukrainian War in June 2023. Our piece is available via open access.

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NEW IT ARTICLE

28 APRIL 2025

I have a new peer-reviewed article published in International Theory that examines non-aggression pacts. I show that the literature to date has neglected to place these agreements in their proper interwar context and so overlook how certain revisionist states have used them. Read more here.

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NEW BOOK CHAPTER

24 MARCH 2025

I contributed a book chapter that conceptualizes how 'alliances', 'partnerships', and 'alignments' relate to one another, with discussion on the extent to which each form of security cooperation will be a feature of international relations in the foresseable future. Read more here.

What I am reading now

Although the inconsistent use of Polish diacritics drives me nuts, Joshua Zimmerman's new biography of Józef PiÅ‚sudski is highly readable, well-crafted, and informative. The duality of PiÅ‚sudski's liberalism and authoritarianism is a central theme of the book.

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© 2025 by Alexander Lanoszka.

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