Miriam Barnum is a Rosenwald Fellow in US Foreign Policy and International Security at Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. She studies the motivations and constraints that shape states’ arming choices.
A central component of this research agenda is a book project, Lesser Evils? WMD Pursuit Beyond Nuclear Weapons, which addresses why states pursue and use chemical and biological weapons, despite their limited strategic utility relative to other options, and their prohibition (during some time periods) under international law. Leveraging original quantitative data and in-depth case studies, the book demonstrates that internal threats to a state’s governing regime, though often neglected in theories of arming and weapons proliferation, play a significant role in driving states’ choices to pursue these weapons.
At the Dickey Center, Miriam will complete revisions to this book manuscript, build on the book’s data and theoretical insights to ask and answer other questions about the role of chemical and biological weapons in international security, and continue pursuing two additional lines of research: improving historical measurement of the distribution of economic resources, military power, and threat in the international system in order to analyze long-run patterns and drivers of states’ investment in arms; and understanding variation in states’ commitment to and engagement with arms control.
Before joining Purdue, Miriam was a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Southern California in 2022.
