Michael Flynn is a professor of political science and director of the security studies program at Kansas State University. His research focuses on the political economy of foreign policy and U.S. overseas military deployments. His work has been published in leading journals including the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Quarterly. He has also contributed analyses and op-eds to platforms such as The Conversation and Political Violence @ a Glance, with his research featured in media outlets including The Economist, Al Jazeera, and Newsweek. His book on the politics of U.S. overseas military deployments was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.

Gulan: In your recent analysis of NATO’s internal cohesion, you highlight how U.S. pressure on allies to support operations related to Iran may risk eroding its influence within the alliance. From your perspective, where is the line between effective leadership and counterproductive pressure in alliance politics?

Michael E. Flynn: Regarding the line between effective leadership and counterproductive pressures, I’d say the answer is “it depends”. There may be instances where the U.S. pushes for its preferred policies and NATO allies are not fully on board, but so long as they view the alliance and their relationships with the U.S. as a net positive, they are likely to find ways to work through the disagreement. But there’s research that shows that attempts to shame allies over burden sharing issues, or threatening to withdraw from NATO altogether, can backfire and can lower public support for remaining in NATO in allied populations. I think once you’ve reached the stage where the US is threatening its alliance partners so openly and publicly, we’ve probably crossed over into counterproductive territory, though.

Gulan: Your research on U.S. military deployments emphasizes both their strategic benefits and their political costs. Based on your findings, what do policymakers most often misunderstand about how host societies perceive the presence of foreign troops?

Michael E. Flynn: I think policymakers often view deployments in very broad terms, whether they are combat deployments or longer-term peacetime deployments. In either case, inserting thousands of military personnel into another country immediately creates an array of new social, political, and economic networks and issues that weren’t there before. Navigating these relationships can be really difficult, and it can often be hard to predict what they’re going to look like in advance. Even in combat operations, once the fighting stops you still have to manage relationships between military personnel and civilian populations. Ultimately taking these various dimensions seriously and managing public relations are incredibly important tasks, and I think navigating these issues is something civilian policymakers often struggle with and often don’t anticipate being so important.

Gulan: You focus on the political economy of national security. How do economic considerations—such as burden-sharing, domestic costs, and resource allocation—shape decisions about maintaining or reducing overseas military deployments?

Michael E. Flynn: All states—even the U.S.—deal with resource constraints. While the U.S. has maintained a large proportion of its military forces overseas since the end of World War II, issues related to spending have always been somewhat contentious—both within the U.S. and in host countries. Overseas military spending associated with the Vietnam War and the growing balance of payments deficits caused the Nixon and Ford Administrations to explore drawing down U.S. deployments to help reduce overseas spending. After the end of the Cold War U.S. policymakers were hoping to see a “peace dividend”, which in part stemmed from reducing the U.S.’ overseas military presence.

The U.S. has also been concerned with burden sharing issues for decades, but these issues really came to the forefront of U.S. foreign policy under the first and second Trump Administrations. President Trump has repeatedly discussed reducing the size of U.S. forces in Europe and East Asia as a response to what he argues is shirking by U.S. allies. While it’s true that many European states in particular did not meet defense spending commitments for several years, they do help to offset the costs of maintaining large overseas deployments through a variety of mechanisms.

Research also shows us that withdrawing military forces and even abandoning alliance ties, can have second-order economic consequences that could leave everyone worse off. States often form security ties to protect their economic interests, but those security ties (and the stability they often produce) can in turn increase economic activity between security partners. So, it’s possible that while the U.S. might spend less in the short-term, weakened security ties might also lead to reduced economic activity overall.

Gulan: In light of the current tensions between the United States and several NATO allies over Iran, how do you assess the strategic value of forward military deployments today? Do they still function as credible tools of deterrence, or are they increasingly constrained by political resistance within allied states?

Michael E. Flynn: This is a tough question because in many ways it asks us to think about what the world would look like without these deployments—we’re kind of thinking about the “dogs that didn’t bark”. As with some of the spending issues discussed above, other actors would adjust to the removal of U.S. personnel, so we know we can’t just assume the rest of the world would continue to look the way it does now.

It’s clear that U.S. deployments don’t deter every act by every actor that is opposed to U.S. interests. But there are certain issues, like freedom of navigation of the seas, that we have long taken for granted that could be seriously adversely affected without a global U.S. military presence. Forward deployments are also vital for facilitating disaster relief and humanitarian relief operations, which are incredibly popular and generate a lot of good will for the U.S. Other countries contribute to these efforts, too, but the United States’ ability to project resources rapidly and at enormous scale is unrivaled.

The issue of disagreements within alliance blocs is also not new, and managing those disagreements and political divisions is just a part of managing the alliance. I think U.S. deployments in Europe have long strengthened societal connections between he U.S. and NATO partners. If anything, I think over the last decade we’ve also seen a strengthening of the NATO alliance in many ways, largely as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. U.S. forces have deepened partnerships with countries like Poland and European countries have begun to invest more seriously in defense and defense production.

I think the central question is how closely aligned with NATO will the Trump Administration remain over the next couple of years. It’s entirely possible that we see a stronger Europe emerging that’s less dependent upon the U.S., but that will take time. U.S. deployments also contribute to deeper connections at the societal level. But the degree to which U.S. adversaries feel deterred by U.S. deployments will depend a lot on the signals the Trump Administration sends.

Gulan: Recent developments suggest growing divergence among NATO members regarding both threat perception and willingness to engage militarily. From a political and military standpoint, how sustainable is alliance cohesion when members no longer share the same priorities or risk calculations?

Michael E. Flynn: Like I noted above, managing these kinds of disagreements within the alliance is not new, and it’s always been a central feature of NATO. Even during the Cold War, members of the alliance often had different preferences over various issues. I think alliance relations are certainly being strained right now, but it’s largely by the Trump Administration. I think there is certainly a desire among European governments to maintain the alliance—particularly as a response to the war in Ukraine. There’s also still a fairly high level of support for NATO among the American people.

Regarding alliance sustainability, I think there are a couple of key questions. The first is whether or not European states see a future beyond the Trump Administration that’s conducive to rebuilding alliance relations. If so, then they may be looking for ways to manage the next couple of years under the assumption that a friendlier Democratic or Republican Administration will return to power and they’ll return to the pre-2017 status quo. The second question is whether there are any outside options that are more attractive than NATO itself. Without a better alternative, I expect the alliance will persist, even if its members aren’t quite as strongly connected as before. This might look like a more distant U.S. and a NATO that becomes more European-centric in its organization.

Gulan: In the context of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where U.S. military presence operates within a complex environment of internal political divisions, regional pressures, and evolving public perceptions, how might continued or shifting U.S. deployments affect governance, legitimacy, and long-term stability? Additionally, how could these dynamics influence local economic structures and informal systems of power in ways that reshape the broader security landscape?

Michael E. Flynn: This is really not in my area of expertise. Sorry!

By Kobin Ferhad