My research examines the security preferences and strategies of the Global South. I am particularly interested in analyzing how developing countries establish and enforce regulations on the use of military force. I explore the governance mechanisms these states favor when (a) the behaviors of great powers challenge international legal restraints, and (b) existing arms control institutions do not provide efficient responses to security crises triggered by technological advancements.

I use various methods to collect and analyze data, including archival research, elite interviews, text analysis, case studies, process tracing, comparative historical analysis, survey studies, and descriptive statistics. My research thus bridges the study of international security and the international order preferences of the Global South.

Global South and Constraining 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. The first strand of my research examines why 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 more powerful states.

Book Manuscript

  • Binding Powers: Latin America and the Ordering of Humanitarian Interventions 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. Binding Powers 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

  • “Nuclear Preference Management: How Global Publics Accept Both Nuclear Deterrence and Disarmament,” with Lauren Sukin 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.

  • “La contribución de América Latina y las zonas desnuclearizadas a la paz y seguridad internacionales.” Chapter for A 80 años de la era nuclear, ¿dónde estamos y a dónde vamos? Una mirada desde México y América Latina, edited by María Antonieta Jáquez Huacuja and Abelardo Rodríguez Sumano.

Work in Progress

  • Negotiating Inequality: Asymmetries in the Origins and Development of the Global Nuclear Order, book project.

  • “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.

  • “The Strategic Logic of Nuclear Abstinence in the Global South,” with Agostina Dasso and Luis Schenoni.

  • “NATO is Not a Monolith: Member Country Heterogeneity and Nuclear Alliance Management,” with Lauren Sukin and Stephen Herzog.

  • “Latin America and Nuclear Ordering.” Paper for the Beyond Nuclear Deterrence Working Group, part of the Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence Research Network at Harvard Belfer Center.

  • “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.