Scholar

While most economic sanctions are explicitly announced, Chinese economic sanctions tend to be vague — not explicitly announced. China rarely threatens sanctions — instead, it directly executes them. What explains these vague and executed Chinese sanctions?…

China’s defense spending is opaque, and China spends more on defense than its official 2024 defense budget of 1.67 trillion yuan ($232 billion) indicates. Some analysts claim China’s defense spending is equivalent to $700 billion, approaching the level of…

Is statesmanship compatible with constitutional government? Scholars have posited the possibility of “constitutional statesmanship” in America but have done little to probe its historical reality or to evaluate its consequences. To illustrate some of the…

American leaders and scholars have long feared the prospect that hostile foreign powers could subvert democracy by spreading false, misleading, and inflammatory information by using various media. Drawing on both historical experience and empirical literature,…

Climate change will have significant effects on military power, capabilities, effectiveness, and employment. Yet, scholars have paid little attention to this topic. We address this gap by investigating the effects of changing ocean conditions on anti-submarine…

Recent years have seen retired general and flag officers make a variety of political statements and campaign endorsements, sparking enormous controversy and debate among scholars about the fate of the military’s norm of nonpartisanship. Despite this, we have…

For nearly a century, the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has been just over the horizon, and yet that horizon is always receding. Dramatic advances in commercial AI once again inspire great hopes and fears for military AI. Perhaps this time will be…

There is rising apprehension that U.S. partisan polarization is making it harder for the United States to keep its international commitments. This could have profound implications for one of the most critical elements of U.S. foreign policy: its commitment to…

What is the origin of Xi Jinping’s strongman rule? A “victorious Xi” thesis argues that Xi simply won his fight to gain power. But this raises the question of where Xi found the political support to do so. A “collective support” thesis suggests that…

Geopolitics has become marginalized in modern international relations scholarship despite its foundational role. This essay seeks to bring geopolitics back to the mainstream of international relations through conceptual, historical, and theoretical analyses. I…

Contemporary civil wars frequently involve numerous armed groups. How do armed groups compete with rival organizations for popular support? Existing research posits that militant organizations operating in the same conflict will often compete for support by…

For over 30 years, policymakers and scholars have taken for granted that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait simply to seize its oil. That narrative misleadingly suggests that the Iraqi invasion happened to coincide with, but was unrelated to, the dawn of the…