Works in Progress
Book Project
Armaments and Ambition: When and How Status Seeking Shapes Military Procurement Policy
States acquire a wide range of military platforms with which to equip their armed forces, but the combat utility of these platforms varies tremendously. In certain cases, such as Stalin's battleship program or Brazil's carrier program, platforms were procured that seemingly defied strategic logic and directly conflicted with national doctrine. So what explains these states' military procurement preferences? My book project seeks to answer this question by considering the broader ways that military forces can generate power, both through signaling status and deterring and defeating adversaries, and the factors that lead states to prioritize these different faces of power. Specifically, I contend that military procurement is a function of a great power's level of external threat, status as a rising or declining power, and the stability of the status hierarchy. I test this argument with a series of case studies across three countries in the 20th century.
Working Papers
Resisting Relegation to the Rank and File: Explaining When and How Military Procurement Policy is Shaped by International Status Seeking
· Under Review
When Competition Becomes Contagious: Strategic Arms Racing Spillovers and the Sino-American Nuclear Relationship (with Elliot Ji)
· Winner of the 2024 EISS Conference Best Paper Prize for Early Career Scholars
NATO’s Nordic Neophytes: How Sweden and Finland’s Accession to NATO Alters the Military Balance in Northeast Europe
Early Stage Projects
Independence or Influence? Explaining Nuclear Force Structure Among Junior Allies
In a Mirror, Darkly: The Challenges of Drawing Lessons from Foreign Wars
Seapower and Sustainment Sorrows: Naval Procurement, Fleet Upkeep, and the Future of the PLAN
Trade Expansion, Interdependence, and War. With Ben Harack and Claas Mertens.
Power, Position, and Procurement: Mapping the Geopolitics of Arms through Alliance Networks. With Michael Cerny.