Welcome to the webpage of Dr. Ariel Ilan Roth. Dr. Roth holds a Ph.D in international relations from The Johns Hopkins University (Click here for CV), where he is currently the associate director for the graduate program in National Security Studies.
Dr. Roth has previously taught at Goucher College, a liberal arts college in Towson, Md.
Dr. Roth's dissertation, "The Role of Leadership in the Creation of Effective Balances of Power", challenged the structural neo-Realist assumptions about balancing behavior in Great Britain prior to WWII.
Dr. Roth also has several published articles. Nuclear Weapons in Neo-Realist Theory, published in the International Studies Review, traces differences of opinion in the absolute deterrent value of nuclear weapons as lying at the heart of the debate between offensive and defensive Realists in international relations theory. Balancing and the Bible, which appeared recently in Security Studies, uses the novel data set of the Hebrew Bible to show how leaders of states with immature authority structures often choose to intentionally endanger the state if doing so enhances their own personal standing.
Dr. Roth has several working papers which include a piece entitled, Reassurance: A Strategic Basis of US Support for Israel, which argues that US support for Israel restrains Israel's unilateral impulses and renders the Middle East a more benign environment for US foreign policy than it would otherwise be, thereby reaping a strategic dividend from its investment.
Dr. Roth's current research focuses on why the pursuit of nuclear weapons is rational for some states and why efforts to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons are likely to fail.
Dr. Roth is a member of the International Studies Association, the American Political Science Association and the Committee for the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy, and presents regularly at conferences. Roth is an occasional commentator on foreign policy and security matters in local and international newspapers and a frequent guest lecturer on international security matters.
Among Dr. Roth's newspaper columns are:
Arming Israel Lessens Nuclear Danger - The Baltimore Sun
Dr. Roth can be contacted at: 202-452-1954