Book Project 1: The Adversary’s Veto
Book Project 2: The Two-Leviathan Problem
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Working Papers and Manuscripts Under Review
Manuscripts in Progress
The Adversary’s Veto: Rival Powers, Alliance Politics, and the Limits of Grand Strategy
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 late 2026)
The Two-Leviathan Problem: Why Rival Hegemons Cannot Coexist (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 The Two-Leviathan Problem, 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.
In production at Yale University Press (expected early 2027)
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
9. “Performative Violence and the Spectacular Debut of the Atomic Bomb,” American Political Science Review 120, no. 2 (May 2026): 759-778 (with Austin Carson).
8. “Black Troops, White Rage, and Political Violence in the Postbellum American South,” American Political Science Review 120, no. 1 (February 2026): 1-20 (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.
“U.S. Revisionism in the Postwar Era” (Working paper).
Power helps states secure advantages at the expense of their competitors, and yet powerful states often fail to achieve their goals in crises and wars. I address this paradox with a general logic: Superior power brings diplomatic rewards by helping a state credibly commit to revising the status quo in its favor, but this same mechanism also raises the likelihood that the state will get involved in high-profile confrontations in which it must yield to weaker adversaries to avoid strategic disaster. I illustrate this argument by examining patterns of U.S. revisionism in post-World War II Europe. Drawing on a wide array of sources, I show that the United States tended to pursue revisionist policies when it enjoyed a clear lead in power vis-à-vis the Soviet Union/Russia. I further show that this revisionism produced considerable diplomatic gains during peacetime but also embroiled the United States in militarized confrontations wherein the balance of resolve was decidedly skewed against it. My analysis contributes to debates on the consequences of military primacy, the “stability-instability paradox,” and U.S. grand strategy.
Manuscripts in Progress
“War Widows and the Construction of Political Order in the Postbellum American South.” With Hyunku Kwon.
Joshua Byun 