I am a scholar of international security and global governance, studying how weaker states strategically shape international security institutions. My central argument is that these states are not passive rule-takers in the international order. They face a recurring governance dilemma: when the existing international order fails to address an emerging security threat, they must push for normative and legal adjustments while simultaneously constraining how great powers might abuse any revised framework. My book project traces how Latin American states navigated this dilemma during the origins and development of humanitarian intervention norms, developing a theoretical framework for understanding how developing countries participate in adjusting the international order during moments of order instability.
My ongoing research extends this framework by theorizing the specific mechanisms by which weaker states insert their preferences into international ordering processes. My empirical research spans multiple security domains and uses a mix of methods, including archival sources and cross-national public opinion surveys. In nuclear politics, my research challenges the conventional deterrence-disarmament dichotomy that structures mainstream nuclear scholarship, demonstrating that both the Global North and Global South hold complex, non-categorical nuclear preferences. This finding empirically grounds my broader theoretical claim that dominant frameworks for international security governance reflect great-power logics that poorly capture the preferences and strategies of the rest of international society.
Latin America is my primary empirical focus throughout. This is a region whose centuries-long, understudied tradition of active order-making in international security exemplifies the governance dilemmas and creative strategies that define weaker state agency in the international order.
Book Manuscript
My first book manuscript, Binding Powers: Latin America and the Ordering of Humanitarian Interventions, examines why Latin American countries, traditionally wary of great power interference, shifted their stance on interventions and endorsed a norm that legitimized the use of military force to protect populations. I argue that most countries in the region supported R2P because they could modify proposals, infusing this norm with constraints on great powers. By participating in the R2P negotiations, they moved from objecting to engaging with the norm to improve it. Their relationship with the United States influenced the revisions they advocated, with countries closer to Washington requesting fewer changes to norm proposals. Through the R2P deliberations, most Latin American countries eventually supported this humanitarian intervention norm, enhanced its legitimacy and validity, and made it more acceptable for themselves and other developing countries.
Work in Progress
Working Papers
“Republican Ordering: Why Latin America Shaped Humanitarian Intervention Norms.”
“Creative Expedience and the Latin American Origins of the Global Nuclear Order.”
“NATO’s Nuclear Types: A Typology of Tactics for Alliance Management,” with Lauren Sukin and Stephen Herzog. Under review.
“The Strategic Logic of Nuclear Abstinence in the Global South,” with Agostina Dasso and Luis Schenoni.
Work in Progress
Balancing Proliferation: Persistent Dilemmas for Latin America in the Global Nuclear Order, book project
“Global Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy Polarized in Shadow of Zaporizhzhia,” with Lauren Sukin, Stephen Herzog, et al.
“Definitional Battles: Negotiating Uncertainty into the Making of the Global Nuclear Order,” with Debak Das.
“Nuclear Military Transit at Sea: Reformist Contestation and Innocent Passage,” with Elizabeth Mendenhall.
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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.