I study how weaker states participate in the international order, seeking security institutions that address threats while constraining great powers. These states are neither passive rule-takers nor unconstrained agents.

My central argument is that during ordering moments, when the rules and norms of the international order prove inadequate to address emerging security threats, these states seek a governance balance. They pursue two objectives that can pull in opposing directions: adjusting the order to address security threats effectively, and constraining great powers to prevent them from abusing any revised framework. This is not a dilemma to be resolved but a balance to be navigated.

My ongoing research theorizes the specific mechanisms through which weaker states insert their preferences into international ordering processes. It spans multiple security domains and combines archival research, interviews, and cross-national public opinion surveys.

In nuclear politics, my work challenges dichotomies that structure mainstream scholarship, such as deterrence versus disarmament and Global North versus Global South. It informs my broader 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. The region’s centuries-long, understudied tradition of active order-making in international security exemplifies the governance balance and creative strategies that define the bounded agency of weaker states.

Book

Latin American states long championed the principle of nonintervention. Why, then, did they help build the Responsibility to Protect, a norm that could authorize military force in response to humanitarian crises?

My first book, Orders to Protect: Latin America, Humanitarian Intervention, and Constraints on Great Powers(forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), shows that they joined the negotiations to set R2P’s terms. Drawing on the diplomatic record and interviews with negotiators, I trace how Brazil, Chile, and Mexico sought to make collective responses to atrocities possible while building in constraints against their abuse.

Republican ordering, the framework I develop, runs counter to accounts of the international order that rest on great-power restraint. Latin American governments sought rules and institutions that constrain powerful states regardless of their intentions.

Reaching from a century of Latin American diplomatic thought to current debates over nuclear and autonomous weapons, the book shows how the Global South helps order international politics, and what happens when great powers stop respecting international rules.

Work in Progress

Working Papers

  • ““Power Asymmetries and Creative Expedience during the Origins of the Global Nuclear Order,” revise and resubmit.

  • “What Is a Nuclear Weapon? Imprecision, Bargaining, and the Limits of International Security Law,” with Debak Das, revise and resubmit.

  • “Global Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy Polarized in Shadow of Zaporizhzhia,” with Lauren Sukin, Stephen Herzog, et al., under review.

Work in Progress

  • A second book project on Latin America and the global nuclear order.

  • “Nuclear Latency in Developing States,” with Agostina Dasso Martorell and Luis Schenoni.

  • “Process Lessons for Nuclear Diplomacy: How the Negotiation Journeys of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones Can Inform the Middle East,” with Hassan Elbahtimy and Karla Mae Pabeliña, commissioned by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, forthcoming.

  • “Arms Control at Sea: Reformist Contestation, Innocent Passage, and Nuclear Military Transit,” with Elizabeth Mendenhall.

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Research Networks

I am a member of several research initiatives on nuclear governance:

  • The research consortium organized by the University of Southampton, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and in collaboration with the Wilson Center.

  • The Alva Myrdal Centre 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.

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

I co-organized an interdisciplinary 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.

With Christy Thornton, I co-edited a special issue of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs featuring papers from this network on Latin American engagements with the liberal international order.

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