My research interests are in international security, international law, global governance, and particularly on contemporary and historical nuclear politics. I’m interested in issues of identity, status, and recognition in the global nuclear regime. I take an interdisciplinary perspective on international security that draws from political science, history, and sociology.

Book:

After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age

Many crises of nuclear security are linked to the uncertainty surrounding the possession of nuclear technology. Scholars and policymakers invest much effort forecasting when countries will “go nuclear.” But what does it mean to “go nuclear” in the first place? This book examines the social construction of nuclear and non-nuclear states. The difference between nuclear and non-nuclear states is a major component of the language of international politics: countries divide themselves along these lines and pursue particular policies as a result. But the distinction is puzzling because there is no agreed-upon way to know which is which. There is no one objective technical marker of nuclear status. Does it take a successful nuclear weapons test? Is the ability to enrich uranium sufficient? Does an advanced capability to build nuclear weapons suffice without actual construction?

This book shows that the confusion over nuclear and non-nuclear status animates many international crises around nuclear weapons and that revealing the politics behind how nuclear status is defined, helps make sense of international politics in a new way. Contestation over nuclear status emerges in technical debates about nuclear tests and uranium enrichment levels, in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s (NPT) legal separation between “nuclear weapons states” (NWS) and “non-nuclear weapons states” (NNWS), and in normative invocations of the sovereign right to develop nuclear technology. I explore how the distinction is constructed and the role it plays in some of today’s main nuclear controversies. I argue that being marked as a nuclear or non-nuclear state is not simply a function of material achievement but entails a social process of recognition. The technical possession of nuclear weapons does not always lead to legal and social recognition—a phenomenon evident in Israel, India, and Iran’s unique nuclear histories.

Works in progress:

“No Nukes: The Evolving Discourse of Nuclear Dualism”

Abstract: How did perceptions of nuclear energy and weaponry come to be so tightly bundled in the United States? And how is the connection between nuclear weapons and energy conceptualized now, at the cusp of a purported nuclear renaissance? This paper examines evolving ideas that shape public understandings of the dual military and civilian, nature of nuclear technology. I argue that the dominant conceptualization of nuclear technology that emerged in the anti-nuclear movement, which created an inherent connection between nuclear weapons and energy, is now being used to buttress pro-nuclear attitudes. This paper identifies a historical cleavage within the antinuclear movement between those who articulated an institutional connection between energy and weaponry, illuminating how the pursuit of nuclear weapons compromised nuclear power plant safety, and those who saw all nuclear technology as inherently dangerous. This latter view came to dominate broader public understandings. The contemporary pro-nuclear movement challenges this latter conceptualization and galvanizes around the irrationality of nuclear fear. The analysis provides a new way to think about the anti-nuclear movement and helps understand the tactics of the new pro-nuclear movement.

“Causation, Responsibility, and the War in Ukraine”

Abstract: The war in Ukraine has brought forth a long-standing debate between realists and liberals in international relations theory. At the center of the debate are competing explanations for the conflict. Realists primarily find fault with American and European democratization efforts and NATO expansion for upsetting an underlying balance of power while liberals blame Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule as the primary explanatory factor for the war. In this paper, I argue that this debate collapses the distinction between causation and responsibility in understanding the origins of world conflicts. Determining the agents who caused the war in Ukraine amounts to an ascription of guilt or liability whereas responsibility entails a more capacious relationship between diffuse actors in the international system. There is no doubt that Russian actions caused the war, but does this causal connection mean that Russian leaders are solely responsible? What is the responsibility of other powerful agents, including the European Union and the United States? This paper explores not only U.S. prospective responsibility to react and defend Ukraine but also the broader conditions that created the context for Russian actions, and, as such, necessitates an account of retroactive responsibility. Using the political theoretic literature on responsibility, I argue that the debate over who is responsible for the war in Ukraine has an undeniable connection to causation, but that the terms of the debate also demonstrate the theoretical and practical limitations of assuming that causation and responsibility are one and the same.  

“The Drama of Deterrence: Performativity in Nuclear Crises”

Abstract: This paper explores the 2019 Pulwama-Balakot nuclear crisis between India and Pakistan along with the 1962 Cuban Missile to reveal the important role of performative politics in sustaining the life of deterrence theory. Rather than reflecting a purported inherent or natural stability of nuclear deterrence, I argue that the endurance of the long-held doctrine of deterrence is premised on elaborate, iterated, performances. Nuclear strategists typically conceptualize deterrence as a strategy inherent to the material logic of nuclear weapons possession. I argue, instead, that deterrence is not inherently efficacious but is performed through crises. Both crises exhibit similar processes—two nuclear powers engage in mutual threats which are eventually defused through diplomatic effort, thereby demonstrating the efficacy of nuclear deterrence in assuaging tensions between enduring rivals. In reconceptualizing nuclear crises through performative politics, I argue that these near-misses are a necessary component of deterrence. That is, deterrence has to almost fail in order to be effective. Deterrence thrives because it is performed as an ultimately redeeming strategy that saves states at the very brink of destruction. Using the political theoretic literature on performativity and performance studies, this paper argues that reconceptualizing nuclear crises as performance offers a new way to understand the creation and eventual diffusion of these crises and also offers emancipatory potential to imagine an alternative performance.