Research

Research Agenda & Major Projects

My research asks how domestic political and economic institutions shape the ability of states to generate and use military power. I have three main lines of research:

(1) Industrial mobilization and the wartime conversion of economic resources into military power

(2) The origins and impact of the design of national security organizations

(3) Forward deployments, extended deterrence, and alliance commitments.

A fourth project, with a co-author, examines how competition with China is reshaping American domestic institutions.

Methodologically, I combine multilingual archival research with original cross-national datasets, with a geographic focus on Japan and East Asia.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Do Tripwires Deter? How Small Forward Deployments Contribute to Extended Deterrence (with Samuel Leiter)

Forthcoming in the Journal of Strategic Studies

Abstract: Forward-deployed tripwire forces are one tool used to enhance the credibility of security guarantees. Conventional wisdom holds that these vulnerable deployments improve deterrence by increasing the credibility of the sending state’s commitment to fight to defend the host, but recent scholarship has questioned their effectiveness. Critics argue that because tripwires lack capability and publics do not punish leaders who back down, they do not deter. After distinguishing tripwires from other forward deployments, we find in three case studies drawing on archival evidence that tripwires enhance credibility through the mechanisms of international reputation and brinkmanship.

American Arms and Industry in a Changing International Order. Defence Studies. 2024. With Rosella Cappella Zielinski, Frank Finelli, Isak Kulalic, and Mark Wilson. (link)

This paper argues that the U.S. defense industrial base has been optimized for peacetime efficiency and low-attrition conflicts since the end of the Cold War, privileging cost savings over capacity, flexibility, and resilience. The paper shows why the rise of China as a peer competitor and the demands of potential protracted conflict require a more intentional and direct U.S. role in shaping defense industrial capability and capacity.

Paying the Defense Bill: Financing American and Chinese Geostrategic Competition Texas National Security Review. 2023. With Rosella Cappella Zielinski. (link)

This paper examines domestic political constraints on defense spending in the United States and China, showing how institutional and political incentives shape military budgets beyond simple threat-based or regime-type explanations. The paper highlights how internal political tradeoffs condition states’ ability to sustain military investment over time. We warn that U.S. debt is becoming unsustainable, that therefore the U.S. needs to raise taxes to provide a more sustainable foundation for military power, but conclude that it likely will not. The paper draws on an original analysis of China’s official government budget data to argue that China’s tax-funded defense spending is more sustainable over the long-term.

Featured on the War on the Rocks Net Assessment Podcast (link)

Working Papers

Leaders, Legislators and the Design of National Security Organizations

[Revise & Resubmit, Security Studies]

Abstract: This article addresses why democratic leaders succeed or fail in redesigning national security organizations. Prevailing accounts emphasize shifts in leader preferences or external threat, but these often fail to produce reform. I develop a domestic political theory centered on competition between leaders and legislators over the balance of policy control. While leaders seek greater control over national security policymaking, legislators resist centralization that threatens their policy influence. Policy failures attributed to organizational design can open windows for reform by raising the political cost of legislative resistance. Whether reform is adopted depends on whether it threatens an effective veto player’s influence and, if so, whether compatible protections can secure that actor’s consent. I code the formal rules of NSCs in forty-eight democracies (1945-2023) and use this data to inform case selection. Paired comparisons of failed and successful reform attempts in Japan (2006-2007, 2012-2013) and Germany (2022-2023, 2025) provide evidence consistent with the theory. Treating national security organizations as objects of political contestation reveals when domestic bargaining permits or blocks centralizing reform, with implications for leaders’ capacity to control national security policymaking.

Industrial Mobilization for War: Conversion Distance, State-Business Relations, and Wartime Production (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: Why do some states generate military power from economic resources more effectively than others? Standard answers focused on regime type, wealth, or aggregate resources cannot explain why countries matched on these characteristics often diverge sharply in mobilization outcomes. I argue that the effectiveness of industrial mobilization depends on two characteristics: conversion distance—the gap between peacetime economic output and wartime production needs—and whether state-business relations enable effective state intervention in the economy. When conversion distance is short, increasing military production is faster and less costly. When state-business relations combine insulation from parochial interests, access to firm-level information, and authority to reallocate resources and discipline private actors, states can develop and administer sound mobilization policy. An original Military Production Dataset allows measurement of outcomes and supports case selection. I then evaluate the argument with cross- and intra-case evidence drawn from a most-similar comparison of Japan and Italy in World War II. Despite comparable economic resources, regime type, military strategies, and conflict expectations, Japan produced more than 4.5 times more equipment in priority sectors between 1940 and 1943. The argument refines materialist and institutional accounts of power generation with implications for the measurement of the balance of power and the duration and outcomes of war.

Order Maker, Taker, and Breaker: American Political Development and the U.S. Response to the Rise of China (with Matthew J. Conklin)

[under review]

Abstract: The rise of China has placed sustained pressure on U.S. economic and security interests and strained the post-Cold War international order. But China’s rise has produced an uneven U.S. response rather than coherent balancing. Why? Balance of power logic would predict a strategic overhaul: military reorientation toward the Asia-Pacific and a complementary economic policy. Instead, the U.S. has produced a policy bundle that seems to lack strategic coherence: an uneven, at best, military rebalance to Asia, ad hoc tariffs, fragmented export controls, and a halting revival of industrial policy. Drawing on the International Relations-American Political Development (IR-APD) tradition, we argue that this policy bundle reflects the interaction between international pressure and historically constructed U.S. domestic institutional orders. An IR-APD framework shows how the United States responds as order maker, taker, and breaker: it competes within institutions built to sustain the U.S.-led international order, repurposes inherited authorities for competitive ends, and selectively undermines arrangements it once upheld. We illustrate our argument with brief cases addressing key policy domains–international economic, military, and domestic industrial policies–to show how U.S. balancing has emerged as a result of the interplay of international pressures and historically given institutions.

Datasets

Military Production Dataset

Annual output of major weapons systems by defense industrial powers in wartime.

National Security Council Dataset

Data on the formal design characteristics of NSCs in 48 major democracies from 1945 to 2023.

Image Source: Eberhard Grossgasteiger