Book Project 1: The Adversary’s Veto
Book Project 2: Brave New World
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Working Papers and Manuscripts Under Review
Manuscripts in Progress
The Adversary’s Veto: Why Grand Strategy Succeeds or Fails in Military Alliances
Great powers in the modern era rely critically on allies and partners to implement their grand strategic plans. But allies do not always readily adapt their military capabilities to the requirements of the leading alliance power’s grand strategy. They sometimes acquire insufficient capabilities when the leading power needs them to independently confront the adversary. At other times, allied capability buildups far exceed the great power’s grand strategic preferences, fueling concerns about unintended escalation and conflict.
The Adversary’s Veto argues that leading alliance powers often fail to promote their desired military capabilities among smaller allies because the demands of their grand strategy clash with the risks presented to the allies by a hostile great power that is scrutinizing the alliance’s actions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is little the leading power can do to fundamentally alter how its ally navigates the implications of these risks. When push comes to shove, allies must calibrate their military choices primarily with an eye toward how vulnerable they are to the adversary’s countermeasures, even if this means frustrating the leading power’s grand strategic plans.
I substantiate this perspective by examining an array of important cases in which great powers sought to implement their grand strategic plans in their alliance relationships. In each case, I show that concerns about the opposing great power imposed harsh constraints on how the extent to which allies could adapt their military capabilities to the leading alliance power’s preferences. I draw on extensive primary sources to offer, among other things, a fresh analytical perspective on landmark historical episodes like the failure of the United States’ early Cold War plans to offload its military responsibilities in Europe by devolving nuclear capabilities to France and West Germany, as well as the difficulties the Soviet Union encountered in trying to realize its strategic visions for China and Cuba. I also use data from exclusive interviews with high-ranking policymakers in Japan and South Korea to shed light on these allies’ responses to Washington’s grand strategic efforts in East Asia.
This book pushes scholars to revisit and refine their understanding of how grand strategy works in the context of military alliances. It also offers a wealth of material for policy practitioners and general readers who wish to develop informed perspectives on U.S. grand strategy, alliance politics, and great power competition in the 21st century.
In production at Cornell Studies in Security Affairs series, Cornell University Press (expected 2026)
Brave New World: Great Power Politics in a Future with Peer Hegemons (with John J. Mearsheimer)
This book sets out to answer one of the most enduring questions of American foreign policy: Should the United States—which has been the hegemon of the Western Hemisphere since the late 19th century—fear another great power rising to a similar position elsewhere in the world? While American scholars and policymakers have traditionally feared the prospect of facing a distant regional hegemon, powerful intellectual voices in recent years have questioned whether this concern remains strategically relevant in the 21st century. These critiques typically highlight the security advantages offered by America’s geographical insularity and robust nuclear arsenal—advantages that many believe will safeguard U.S. vital interests from external threats no matter how much power a rival amasses in a distant region.
In Brave New World, we argue that the United States’ efforts to safeguard its vital interests would be seriously jeopardized should any other great power attain a hegemonic position in one of the core regions of Eurasia. We ground this argument in a theoretical framework that shows that being a solitary regional hegemon markedly reduces threats to a great power’s vital interests by facilitating the maintenance of local military preponderance and favorable access to the world’s core economic regions. The theory further specifies how, in a world of two regional hegemons, each side has a strong incentive to erode the other’s regional dominance and thereby undercut its rival’s ability to project significant power outside its neighborhood. The resulting security competition, over time, puts significant duress on both hegemons’ ability to defend their territorial integrity and political autonomy, as well as their ability to accumulate wealth through global economic engagement.
This book will become a key resource for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand whether and how the balance of power in distant regions affects U.S. national security. In particular, it should directly inform how they think about the security competition between China and the United States, which is bound to be the dominating feature of international politics for the remainder of this century.
Under advance contract with Yale University Press
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
9. “Performative Violence and the Spectacular Debut of the Atomic Bomb,” American Political Science Review 2025 (with Austin Carson).
8. “Black Troops, White Rage, and Political Violence in the Postbellum American South,” American Political Science Review 2025 (with Hyunku Kwon).
7. “Stuck Onshore: Why the United States Failed to Retrench from Europe during the Early Cold War,” Texas National Security Review 7, no. 3 (Fall 2024): 9-36.
6. “Under No Circumstances? What the Chinese Really Think about the Wartime Use of Nuclear Weapons,” International Studies Quarterly 68, no. 2 (June 2024): 1-13 (with Changwook Ju).
5. “Remember Kabul? Reputation, Strategic Contexts, and American Credibility after the Afghanistan Withdrawal,” Contemporary Security Policy 45, no. 2 (2024): 265-297 (with D.G. Kim and Jiyoung Ko).
4. “More than a Number: Aging Leaders in International Politics,” International Studies Quarterly 67, no. 1 (March 2023): 1-15 (with Austin Carson).
3. “Punishment and Politicization in the International Human Rights Regime,” American Political Science Review 116, no. 2 (May 2022): 385-402 (with Rochelle Terman).
2. “Regional Security Cooperation against Hegemonic Threats: Theory and Evidence from France and West Germany (1945-1965),” European Journal of International Security 7, no. 2 (May 2022): 143-162.
1. “The Geopolitical Consequences of COVID-19: Assessing Hawkish Mass Opinion in China,” Political Science Quarterly 136, no. 4 (Winter 2021): 641-665 (with D.G. Kim and Sichen Li).
Working Papers and Manuscripts Under Review
“Just Tell Them You’re Sorry! Assessing the Impact of Shaming on Support for Policies of Atonement in International Politics.” With Changwook Ju (Working paper).
Governments often “shame” international aggressors for failing to atone for their historical crimes. A commonplace assumption is that such pressure works best when issued by a wide array of actors, and especially the victims of the aggression in question. We argue that the identity of the shamer matters in ways that contravene this received wisdom. The reason is that individuals vary their support for atonement to former victims depending on the strategic benefits they expect to accrue from the gesture. We test this relational logic through a survey experiment fielded in Japan, finding that shaming is more likely to improve public support for atonement when issued by the United States, that is, a friendly state that was not victimized by the original act of aggression, than when issued by South Korea or China, who were direct victims of Tokyo’s offenses and harbor open hostility toward Japan regarding its colonial past.
“The Paradox of Nuclear Sharing: U.S. Grand Strategy in NATO’s Nuclear Age” (Working paper).
Modern great powers have sometimes turned to “nuclear sharing” as a strategy to bolster the military position of smaller allies against formidable adversaries while minimizing the costs of doing so. Under what conditions will the allies successfully adopt the capabilities prescribed by this ambitious strategy? I argue that nuclear sharing is likely to fail when extended to highly vulnerable allies—i.e., those that possess meager power resources and are geographically proximate to the adversary—precisely because it promises a significant power shift in their favor. Substantive nuclear sharing takes time to materialize, giving the adversary incentives to take forceful measures to arrest its neighbor’s militarization before losing the option altogether. Paradoxically, then, nuclear sharing is unlikely to succeed when extended to allies that ostensibly stand to gain most from it. By extension, a strategy of “nuclear monopoly” will produce opposite outcomes: while vulnerable allies will moderate their military postures accordingly, relatively invulnerable allies are likely to adopt independent capabilities that defy the leading power’s strategic priorities. Primary-source evidence from U.S. nuclear strategy in Cold War NATO offers powerful support for these claims. My findings offer lessons for contemporary debates on the nuclear dimensions of U.S. grand strategy and alliance policies.
“Unruly Friends: Grand Strategy and Strategic Incoherence in Soviet Alliances” (Working paper).
When a great power attempts to check a rival, why do its allies sometimes reconcile their military capabilities with its grand strategy and sometimes appear reluctant or unable to do so? Against conventional wisdom, I argue that a leading great power’s failure to achieve “strategic coherence” in its military alliances cannot be uniformly attributed to the generosity of its security commitments. Instead, strategic coherence is shaped by the interaction between the leading power’s grand strategy and the military vulnerability of its allies. If the leading power implements an outsourcing grand strategy, strategic incoherence will ensue in relations with allies that are highly vulnerable to military predation while coherence obtains with allies that are relatively invulnerable. By contrast, if the leading power adopts an insourcing grand strategy, strategic incoherence will obtain with the relatively invulnerable allies and coherence with highly vulnerable allies. Evidence from primary material and a rich historiography of the Soviet Union’s relations with China and Cuba offers powerful support for these arguments. My findings suggest that the alliances of leading powers in the 21st century will be attended by radically different patterns of strategic coherence and incoherence depending on what their grand strategy asks allies to do militarily.
Manuscripts in Progress
“The Paradox of Power and U.S. Revisionism in Postwar Europe.”
“War Widows and the Construction of Political Order in the Postbellum American South.” With Hyunku Kwon.
Joshua Byun 