Reid Pauly is Assistant Professor of Political Science and the Dean’s Assistant Professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at Brown University's Watson School for International and Public Affairs. He studies nuclear proliferation and nuclear strategy, coercion, and secrecy in international politics. Pauly is the author of The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma (Cornell University Press, 2025). His scholarship has also been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, and Foreign Affairs. Pauly earned his Ph.D. from MIT and has held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Schmidt Futures International Strategy Forum, and Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding.
Reid Pauly studies coercion, nuclear weapons proliferation, nuclear strategy, face-saving, and wargaming.
Pauly is the author of The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma (Cornell University Press, 2025), which examines when and why targets of coercion believe that they will not be punished after they comply with demands.
Pauly also studies why states sometimes cover up the transgressions of adversaries. This work applies especially to the nuclear nonproliferation regime, where the deniable nature of dual-use technologies aids enforcers. Violators are more likely to come into compliance if they can deny that they were ever out of compliance.
He is also working to bring wargaming methods to the study of international relations. Wargames can introduce human interaction to the social scientific study of crisis decision-making—all of the human fallibility, miscommunication, emotions, hubris, pride, and reputations that color decision-making in group settings.
“How Coercive Diplomacy Works: Making Threats in International Crises,” in Hillary Rodham Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo (eds.), Inside the Situation Room: The Theory and Practice of Crisis Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 2025). With Jessica Chen Weiss.
“Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t: The Assurance Dilemma in International Coercion,” International Security, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Summer 2024): 91-132.
“The Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship” International Security, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Winter 2022/2023): 9-51. With Rose McDermott.
“Wargaming for International Relations Research,” European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2022): 83-109. With Erik Lin-Greenberg and Jacquelyn Schneider. Reviewed in H-Diplo.
“Deniability in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime: The Upside of the Dual-Use Dilemma,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 66, Iss. 1 (2022).
“Caught Red-Handed: How States Wield Proof to Coerce Wrongdoers,” International Security, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Fall 2021). With Cullen G. Nutt.
“Would U.S. Leaders Push the Button? Wargames and the Sources of Nuclear Restraint,” International Security, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Fall 2018): 151-192.
“Bedeviled by a Paradox: Nitze, Bundy, and an Incipient Nuclear Norm,” The Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 22, Iss. 3-4 (2015): 441-455. Policy Writing:
“Putin and the Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship,” Foreign Affairs, May 30, 2023. With Rose McDermott and Paul Slovic.
“Don’t Be So Confident in Nuclear Decision-Making,” Lawfare, February 26, 2023. With Rose McDermott.
“What to Do When Predicting Pandemics,” Foreign Policy, September 11, 2020.
“Why Invading Iran Would Be a Military Disaster,” The National Interest, January 12, 2020. With Daniel Khalessi.
“This is Why Trump’s Strategy for Iran Will Fail,” The National Interest, December 21, 2017. With Mahsa Rouhi and Sahar Nowrouzzadeh.
“The Tangled Fates of Pittsburgh and Paris,” War on the Rocks, June 12, 2017.