He was president of the International Studies Association/West and co-edited, with Ted Gurr at the University of Colorado, a series of Sage books on "Violence, Conflict, Cooperation."

He specialized in international relations and received a Fulbright award to France to study the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and took a pre-doctoral year at the Mershon Center of the Ohio State University.

At the University of Colorado, he served as Director of the Conflict and Peace Studies Program and as Chair of the Boulder Faculty Assembly.

In his publications he considers the formation and functioning of international alliances through the theoretical ideas of postrealism.

Beer's scientific publications has specialized on the nature, causes, and consequences of war and peace and their dialectical essence.

Beer in his publication "Integration and Disintegration in NATO: Processes of Alliance Cohesion and Prospects for Atlantic Community" has shown how geopolitical actors who joined military-political alliances, such as NATO, for example, create local international communities that are essentially both integrative and disintegrative.

So the Alliance's institutions provide a framework through which members contribute a variety of resources and receive both collective and private benefits.