Benjamin Miller (Hebrew: בנימין מילר) is an Israeli scholar of international relations and a professor at the University of Haifa, where he also serves as director of the National Security Center. He is a former president of the Israeli Association of International Studies.
Miller's work has explored the causes of war and peace at both global and regional levels, with particular attention to grand strategy, state-to-nation balance, and power dynamics.
Contents
Education
Miller earned his B.A. from the University of Haifa in 1977, followed by an M.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988 under the supervision of Kenneth Waltz.
Career
Prior to his academic career, Miller completed the Israeli Foreign Ministry's cadet course and worked in the Israeli delegation to the UN. He has held academic appointments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa. His research fellowships include positions at Harvard University, under Samuel Huntington, MIT, under Barry Posen, Princeton University, and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). From 2021 to 2022, he was a visiting scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Research and work
Miller's research has addressed debates in international relations, especially the causes of conflict and cooperation, and the formation of regional and global orders.
In 1995 and then in a 2nd paperback ed. in 2002, Miller published a book titled When Opponents Cooperate: Great Power Conflict and Collaboration in World Politics. A review by Randall L. Schweller in The Journal of Politics stated that this book "raises important theoretical and empirical puzzles and advances many plausible explanations" and adds "to anyone seeking to understand what makes the clock tick in international relations". While describing this book as a "valuable addition", he also mentioned that "Miller's book is not without flaws", as it "offers only an impressionistic treatment of unit-level factors" and "artificially forces his dependent variables into polar opposition". Stephen R. Rock reviewed the book in the American Political Science Review and suggested that this is "One of the best books on international relations theory to be published in recent years". The review in the Mershon International Studies Review highlighted that "Miller's theory is multileveled and quite detailed" and "his analysis is clearly and systematically presented". According to Michael Clarke of King's College London, "Miller's analysis represents an important contribution on a number of fronts" and "confident enough to spell out both descriptive and predictive hypotheses". He also noted that "Miller's analysis is unlikely to be persuasive" to people who are skeptical about international relations theory, as readers will feel "uneasy at the reduction of some historical materials almost two centuries apart to such glib theoretical types".
A review by Randall L. Schweller in The Journal of Politics stated that this book "raises important theoretical and empirical puzzles and advances many plausible explanations" and adds "to anyone seeking to understand what makes the clock tick in international relations". While describing this book as a valuable addition, he also mentioned that "Miller's book is not without flaws", as it "offers only an impressionistic treatment of unit-level factors" and "artificially forces his dependent variables into polar opposition". Schweller concluded the review writing that "the strengths of Miller's book far outweigh its weaknesses."
Miller's 2007 book, States, Nations, and the Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace, presented the differences between different types of cold and warm war and peace, applied these types to different regions, and explained them by integrating the effects of the state-to-nation balance, with the effects of the international system. On the debate between realist causes vs. liberal causes of Regional War and Peace, Miller proposed that the degree of congruence between state borders and national identities (the "state-to-nation balance") explains regional war-proneness. A higher balance correlates with peaceful regions, while imbalances increase the likelihood of conflict. G. John Ikenberry commented that the book is "full of useful insights about potential pathways toward regional peacemaking, particularly in regard to the Middle East". Anessa L. Kimball, an assistant professor at the Université Laval, characterized the book as an "interesting theory capable of explaining both civil and interstate conflicts within a regional context". However, she emphasized that the book's framework was theoretically complex since it failed to "differentiate between the internal and external elements of incongruence". Richard Little regarded it as a "major contribution to the literature on war and peace". He additionally remarked that "Historians may complain that the framework oversimplifies the complexities of regional war and peace". However, he promptly dismissed this, adding that "in the social sciences, this book raises the bar considerably". Kal J. Holsti described this book as a "major and novel approach to the classical war and peace puzzles" and it "significantly addresses the shortcomings of other approaches". He also discussed how Miller's "tendency to explain war proneness in materialist or broad sociological terms" prompts him to overlook the "normative dimensions of war-making".
Honors
2020 – Provost Prize for a Distinguished Senior Researcher, University of Haifa
2024 – Lifetime Achievement Award, The Israeli Association for International Studies