Scholarship

Introduces the concept of presidential extra-territorialization, whereby presidents use executive agreements to act through foreign jurisdictions and evade domestic legal or political constraints, engaging in jurisdictional arbitrage to accomplish policy goals affecting US citizens' rights that would be blocked domestically.

Analyzes Woodrow Wilson's 1916 defeat of Republican Charles Evan Hughes in the context of the emergence of the modern presidency and the war in Europe.

Analyzes a little-studied international crisis which occurred between the United States and the United Kingdom in 1916 and which both sides feared may lead to war, showing that the Wilson administration's policy towards the war was more historically contingent than often realized.

Argues that US foreign policy discussions overemphasize competition for resources between global regions and military power, while underemphasizing how complementarities between regions can advance American goals and the value of softer diplomatic tools.

Challenges the view that Trump's foreign policy broke with Wilsonianism, arguing that both Wilson and Trump's approaches were premised on ensuring the survival of a racially-defined Western civilization in a globalized world, revealing illiberal continuities in American foreign policy.

Argues against applying counterinsurgency theory and civil war concepts to challenges facing American democracy, warning that such frameworks risk normalizing state violence, misdiagnosing political opposition as insurgency, and undermining democratic principles in the name of defending them.

Analyzes the Biden administration's promise to conduct foreign policy for the middle class, arguing that this represents both a genuine response to declining living standards and an attempt to build domestic support for international engagement in an era of populist skepticism.

Explores how competing ideological frameworks—modernization theory and agricultural economics—shaped American approaches to land reform in South Vietnam during the 1960s, revealing that modernization theory was not the only constellation of economic ideas informing U.S. nation-building efforts during this period.

Examines the program of American civilian advisers embedded in South Vietnam's rural provinces, analyzing how corruption discoveries in the mid-1960s Mekong Delta exposed fundamental weaknesses in US nation-building strategy and the challenge of reforming client states.

Critiques the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary series on the Vietnam War, arguing that its emphasis on individual experiences and emotional reconciliation obscures deeper structural causes and prevents critical examination of American decision-making and imperial patterns.

Reveals how political scientist Samuel Huntington offered surprisingly dovish private advice on Vietnam to policymakers while maintaining a hawkish public stance, highlighting tensions between academic expertise, political positioning, and the intellectual's role in wartime.

Analyzes lessons from U.S. involvement in conflict in the Asia-Pacific for coping with 'hybrid warfare' from Russia in Europe.

Argues that successful counterinsurgency requires understanding rebel legitimacy as locally contingent rather than universal, challenging standard frameworks that assume insurgents derive support from ideology or coercion and emphasizing the importance of context-specific governance strategies.

Analyzes how Hollywood films depicting different phases of US involvement in Vietnam—intelligence operations, advisory missions, and conventional warfare—reflect evolving understandings of counterinsurgency and shape public memory of the war's strategic and moral dimensions.

Examines methodological debates in studying American nation-building efforts in South Vietnam, exploring the tension between individual agency and structural constraints in explaining policy outcomes and arguing for balanced analytical frameworks that incorporate both perspectives.

Analyzes how the Ford administration navigated the crisis of American credibility following the Fall of Saigon in 1975, examining efforts to reassure allies in the Asia-Pacific region and maintain US strategic commitments despite domestic opposition to intervention.