War: A Breakdown in the Bargaining Model
December 2023
This essay examines the Russo-Ukrainian war through the lens of a commitment problem, arguing that the conflict stems from a fundamental breakdown in bargaining over Ukraine's future. It analyzes Russia's decision to invade as a strategic miscalculation and argues that the war's outcome hinges on a shifting balance of power and a new framework for state-to-state relations.
Russia’s Shifting Power Structures
March 2025
This essay traces the evolution of power networks in post-Soviet Russia, from the criminal underworld of the 1990s to the consolidation of elite influence under Putin. It argues that the figures who emerged after 1991 no longer fit the traditional definition of oligarchs as their power is now contingent on Kremlin approval rather than independent political standing.
Reforming U.S. Sanctions Strategy Towards Russia
December 2025
Essays
The current sanctions regime has failed to alter the Kremlin's political calculus or meaningfully degrade its war effort in Ukraine. This memo analyzes how Russia has leveraged its status as a commodity superpower to sustain trade with China, India, and Türkiye, and offers recommendations for shifting toward supply chain targeting as a more effective instrument of pressure.
When Universities Resist
Forthcoming
The Ethics of Targeted Killings in Forever Wars
May 2026
My honors thesis asks whether a university’s international embeddedness, at the national, institutional, or individual level, affects its ability to resist government control. I test the claim that the closer a country or university links to the West, the more tools of resistance it has. I draw on event data, legal texts, and Russian-language sources to compare Hungary, Turkey, and Russia.
This essay argues that US drone strikes clear the legal bar for war but fail the ethical one. Drawing on Walzer's just war framework, it traces how the Bush and Obama administrations used legal ambiguity to make targeted killing defensible on paper while evading real scrutiny — and argues that removing risk from drone operators has helped produce a war with no borders and no end.