Research in Progress


​Nuclear command and control
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(1) "Command and Control in Regional Nuclear Powers"

This paper provides a new conceptual framework for classifying nuclear command and control systems and explains variation in regional nuclear power command and control arrangements using original interview data with political and military elites from India and Pakistan. Manuscript in preparation.
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Nuclear platform diversification

(1) "Nuclear Platform Diversification: A New Dataset, 1945-2018" (with Kyungwon Suh)

This paper provides a new quantitative dataset that measures the operational delivery systems that nuclear states deploy and provides an empirical application that illustrates the importance of nuclear capabilities in making extended deterrence guarantees more credible. Manuscript in preparation.


Challenges in nuclear policymaking

(1) Atomic Backfires: When Nuclear Policies Fail (co-editing with Stephen Herzog and Ariel F. W. Petrovics)

This edited volume examines some of the most common foreign policy tools for addressing nuclear dangers - such as economic sanctions, kinetic counterproliferation, and arms control - to highlight a range of underappreciated costs and consequences inherent to nuclear policymaking. The volume offers theoretical and policy-relevant analysis to identify the opportunities and constraints that face decisionmakers when fashioning foreign policy in the nuclear realm.

(2) "Squeezing the Balloon: Nuclear Responses to Regime Change Threats," in Giles David Arceneaux, Stephen Herzog, and Ariel F. W. Petrovics, eds., Atomic Backfires: When Nuclear Policies Fail

This chapter evaluates the unintended consequences of foreign-imposed regime change on the operational nuclear behavior of emerging proliferators. The chapter shows how U.S.-backed regime change efforts in countries such as Iraq and Libya encourage emerging proliferators to develop operational nuclear doctrines that threaten U.S. national security.

Illustration of vulnerability of Pakistan's primary lines of communication to conventional attack (figure from 2018 interview)