I examine inequalities in international orders, focusing on the international security preferences of the Global South. I am particularly interested in analyzing how developing countries advance limits on the use of force through international law and organization. I explore the governance mechanisms these actors favor when a) the behaviors of great powers challenge restraints and b) existing rules and institutions do not offer responses to the security crises that technological advancements produce.

Global South and Regulating Armed Force

International security governance is hierarchical. Rules and institutions tend to benefit powerful states, and these countries usually have more rights and privileges in decision-making. Despite this characteristic, the Global South has not merely rejected the international order outright as a legitimation of asymmetries. Instead, these countries have repeatedly sought to reform and even strengthen the institutions that have governed that order over time.

Book Manuscript

  • Limited Intervention: How the Global South Adjusts the International Order Limited Intervention studies how developing countries address international security challenges when existing rules and norms offer insufficient responses. I explore the Latin American involvement in codifying the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which intended to amend the nonintervention principle to respond better to humanitarian crises. By examining the diverse Latin American lawmaking strategies, I show that when a component of the international order offers insufficient responses to shared problems, developing countries prefer an adjusted version that simultaneously addresses the issue and prevents abuses by great powers. Limited Intervention thus shows that, even if limited, developing countries have agency when updating security governance.

Technological Advancements and Limits on the Use of Force

I analyze how the Global South reacts when technological advancements challenge existing limits on the use of force. For example, my research reconstructs the attempts of Global South actors to delegitimize the threat and use of nuclear force, secure their access to peaceful nuclear technologies, and include environmental and humanitarian considerations in nuclear agendas.

Work in Progress

Working Papers

  • “Negotiated Inequality: Latin America and the Making of the Nuclear Club.”

  • “Bounding Commitments: Mexico and the Balancing of Nuclear Perils and Promises in the 1960s,” commissioned chapter for Re-writing the Constitutional History of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty project, edited by Jonathan Hunt. Under review.

  • “The Fragile Balance of Orders: Latin America, Nuclear Ordering, and Geographies of Nuclear Commitments.” Paper for the Beyond Nuclear Deterrence Working Group, part of the Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence Research Network at Harvard Belfer Center.

  • “Nuclear Morality in the Global South,” with Lauren Saukin and Stephen Herzog. Paper for the Ethics, Law, and Nuclear Deterrence Working Group, part of the Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence Research Network at Harvard Belfer Center.

  • “Defending Humanity: Latin American Approach to Arms Control and Emerging Technologies.” Paper for the Arms Control and Emerging Technologies Working Group, part of the Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence Research Network at Harvard Belfer Center.

  • “Freedom to Develop and Freedom from Fear: Latin American Approaches to Managing Nuclear Risks.” Paper for the Nuclear Risk Perceptions project at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

  • “Definitional Battles: Negotiating Uncertainty into the Making of the Global Nuclear Order,” with Debak Das.

Work in Progress

  • “Dismantling Empires: The Effects of Decolonization on Mexican Republican Internationalism.”

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I am a member of different research initiatives on nuclear governance, including:

  • The Research Consortium “Re-writing the Constitutional History of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” organized by the University of Southampton with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and in collaboration with the Wilson Center,

  • The Alva Myrdal Center Working Group on Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, organized by Uppsala University,

  • The steering committee of the “Arms Control and Emerging Technologies Next-Gen Working Group: An International Network for New Thinking on Deterrence,” organized by CSIS and IFSH, and

  • Harvard Belfer Center and MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence.

I co-organized an inter-disciplinary network of scholars with the Latin America in a Globalizing World Initiative at Johns Hopkins University and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University. I co-edited a special issue with Christy Thornton for the Cambridge Review of International Affairs with papers by scholars in this network on Latin American engagements with the liberal international order.

Find more information about my research projects on my C.V.