My research examines the security preferences and strategies of the Global South. Developing countries face a governance dilemma when the international order provides limited solutions to emerging security threats. They must balance the need to adapt the order to address problems effectively while also constraining great powers to prevent potential abuses and asymmetries.
I explore this theme through two related questions: How do developing countries react when (a) the behaviors of great powers challenge international legal constraints, and (b) existing arms control institutions do not provide efficient responses to security crises? I use various methods to address these questions, including archival research, elite interviews, text analysis, case studies, process tracing, comparative historical analysis, survey studies, and descriptive statistics.
My research’s main takeaway is that, for developing countries, the international order should constrain great powers, not only address problems or depend on great powers’ restraint. Understanding the order preferences and actions of developing countries is crucial, as they will play a significant role in defining what constitutes acceptable behavior in international politics in a world marked by a shifting, uncertain distribution of power.
Global South and Constraining Armed Force
The first strand of my research examines developing countries’ attempts to raise the costs of using military force. Why do developing countries agree to modify limits and regulations on the use of force, particularly those elements they have employed to protect themselves from the interference of great powers? An example of this apparent contradiction occurred in the debates on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The debates around R2P opened a discussion of the trade-offs between protecting populations from mass atrocities and preventing great powers from interfering militarily in weaker states.
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.
Nuclear Technologies and the Global Nuclear Order
The second strand of my research analyzes the participation of developing countries in the global nuclear order. The dual-use nature of nuclear capabilities complicated the governance dilemma for developing countries. Atomic energy can be harnessed for military purposes, but also for resources to promote industrialization at potentially lower cost. How have these states tried to guarantee their access to peaceful nuclear technologies while reducing the threat of nuclear war? Developing countries generally support nuclear arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation while defending their access to peaceful applications of nuclear technologies. At the same time, they have questioned their growing set of governance commitments as nuclear powers appear to be backtracking on their disarmament pledges. Through multiple projects, I comprehensively study developing countries’ nuclear governance preferences, innovative governance mechanisms, the instruments they support or oppose, and their preferred definitions of the objects of governance.
Work in Progress
Working Papers
“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.
“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.
Work in Progress
Balancing Proliferation: Persistent Dilemmas for Latin America in the Global Nuclear Order, book project
“Latin America and Nuclear Ordering.”
“Global Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy Polarized in Shadow of Zaporizhzhia,” with Lauren Sukin, Stephen Herzog, et al.
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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.