<p>America’s allies and partners have been its force multiplier in political and military terms. Recognizing their pivotal role in upholding stability and prosperity and addressing transnational problems, the US has invested heavily in broadening and deepening its network of allies and partners. Not everyone reciprocated by aligning with Washington. In particular, the global swing states—a group of middle powers with significant military, economic, and diplomatic capabilities to affect international and regional security and power dynamics—have shown varying preferences for security cooperation with Washington. Distinguishing alliances from alignments, this study is set to investigate security alignment choices of the global swing states and conditions under which they favor security cooperation with the US. It leverages the scholarship on intra-alliance negotiations to propose a theoretical framework accounting for the swing states’ alignment choices and probe its plausibility on the case studies of Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and India. The proposed theoretical framework traces the global swing states’ alignment choices to their assessment of the threat environment and embeddedness in the regularized and institutionalized relations with the US.</p>