Journal articles

You can find abstracts and links for my peer-reviewed articles below (newest first). 

Why did the United States invade Iraq in 2003? Most scholars cite the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a neoconservative desire to spread democracy, or placating domestic interest groups as the Bush administration’s objectives. Instead, I proffer the “performative war” thesis, resting on the concepts of status, reputation, and hierarchy to explain the Iraq war. Hegemons desire generalized deterrence, such that others do not challenge their territory, preferences, or rule. However, the challenging of a hegemon’s authority, as occurred on 9/11, generates a need to assert hegemony and demonstrate strength to a global audience. Only fighting a war can demonstrate such strength; no peaceful bargain, even a lopsided one, can achieve the same effect. Consistent with this framework, the U.S. fought Iraq mainly for its demonstration effect—defeating the recalcitrant Saddam would lead other states to fear the U.S., submitting to its authority and global order.

The Pakistan Army is a politically important organization, yet its opacity has hindered academic research. We use open sources to construct unique new data on the backgrounds, careers, and post-retirement activities of post-1971 corps commanders and directors-general of Inter-Services Intelligence. We provide evidence of bureaucratic predictability and professionalism while officers are in service. After retirement, we show little involvement in electoral politics but extensive involvement in military-linked corporations, state employment, and other positions of influence. This combination provides Pakistan’s military with an unusual blend of professional discipline internally and political power externally – even when not directly ruling.

Secessionist wars are considered the most important source of violence in international politics. Scholars studying why states adopt coercion or concessions against secessionists have only pointed to domestic factors, such as ethnic heterogeneity or political institutions. By contrast, I argue that state strategy is determined by the external security implications of the secessionist movement. Because secession entails a large and rapid shift in the international balance of power, it generates a commitment problem: only a state sanguine about future threats can be conciliatory to separatists. Conversely, if the state fears war after border changes, either against the seceded state due to deep identity divisions with the ethnic separatists, or an existing regional adversary due to the war-proneness of its neighborhood, it will adopt coercion. If states choose to coerce, their calibration of violence depends on secessionists’ external support; for both materialist and emotional reasons, the more third-party support, the more violent the state. Using data from more than 110 interviews, diplomatic papers, and news archives, I test the theory first by contrasting Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce with Israeli intransigence on Palestinian statehood at Oslo, an outcome existing theories would not predict, and then by examining internal variation in India, the country most beset by separatism, across three states in the 1980s: Assam, Punjab , and Jammu and Kashmir. 

This paper addresses Pakistani Islamists' street power - their ability to organize rallies, protests, and demonstrations. Building on research on religion and collective action, I first demonstrate how Friday prayers aid Islamist mobilization. Mosques on Friday serve as a filtering and coordination tool, as tactical "choke" points in urban neighborhoods, and as incitement through the imam's sermon. I then show how Islamist street power affects Islamization in Pakistan. I argue that Pakistan's foundational religious nationalism acts as an "opportunity structure," and affords Islamists agenda-setting and veto power. The success of Islamist agitation depends on the issue contested, the type of regime targeted, and the era in which it is practiced. I use interviews, participant observation at Islamist rallies, an original dataset of all rallies and protests in Pakistan from 2005 to 2010 (n=4123); and government and local newspaper reports from the 1940s onward to buttress my claims.

Scholars have argued that acquiring nuclear weapons should allow states the luxury of exiting conventional arms races. In turn, a decreased budgetary focus on conventional arms should make possible greater spending on social welfare. I contest this logic of nuclear substitution by examining its most likely exponent, Pakistan. As a poor, under-developed state, a nuclear Pakistan should have welcomed the opportunity to cease its arms race with India, and spend greater sums on its population’s welfare. Instead, I show Pakistan has doubled down on its pre-nuclear conventional posture, mainly because of its revisionism over Kashmir. More generally, I show nuclear substitution should happen only rarely: when a state is satisfied with the territorial status-quo, and its security challenges are amenable to pure nuclear deterrence. An empirical overview of conventional postures in Britain, China, France, India, Israel, the Soviet Union, and the United States shows these conditions are met rarely, and never sustained. The argument has implications concerning the marginal welfare effects of nuclear weapons, the stability-instability paradox in South Asia, and the standoff between Iran and the West.

This article questions the validity of anarchy as an assumption in International Relations theory. I argue that powerful states often provide public goods to smaller states in return for their acquiescence on matters of interest. By doing so, these powerful states act similarly to central governments in domestic environments, thereby replicating the hierarchic structure of domestic politics. The anarchy-hierarchy distinction, which rests on a neat separation of international and domestic structures, is therefore highly contentious. One public good that great powers provide, largely ignored by the literature on hierarchy, is that of justice. Powerful states can provide a forum for aggrieved parties to settle their disputes, and thus contain conflicts before they escalate to war. If such a forum is no longer provided, the system reverts to anarchy, where escalation – and therefore, war – is more likely. I argue that South America's war-prone decade can be explained by the variation in structural conditions on the continent. Due to the Depression, isolationism, and its Good Neighbor policy, the U.S. was less interested in South American affairs in the 1930s, resulting in a more anarchic structure and a higher propensity for war.