Faculty

Sarah Kreps is an assistant professor in the Department of Government, the co-director of the Cornell Law School International Law-International Relations Colloquium, and an affiliate of the Einaudi Center for International Studies’ Foreign Policy Initiative. Her research focuses on issues of international security, particularly questions of conflict and cooperation, alliance politics, political economy, and nuclear proliferation. Current projects examine the effect of war on domestic institutions; the ethics of conflict; and war finance.

Her book is called Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2011). It looks at instances of American military interventions after the Cold War and shows why multilateralism often prevails for even the most powerful countries such as the United States. It clarifies why unilateralism is desirable in some cases but why these tend to be exceptions. Finally, it spells out why multilateralism can take many forms and how lead states choose among them.

Kreps’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, Foreign Policy Analysis, Polity, African Security Review, the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Intelligence and National Security, and Polity. Her opinions have been featured in a series of media outlets including The Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, CNBC, and Reuters tv.

Kreps teaches classes on international law, weapons proliferation, peace and conflict studies, and international relations theory. She has a B.A. from Harvard, M.Sc. from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown University. Before going to graduate school, she served as an acquisitions and foreign area officer in the United States Air Force. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.