Faculty

Sarah Kreps is an assistant professor in the Department of Government 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, international peacekeeping, and nuclear proliferation. Current projects look at why states underestimate the cost of conflict; the ethics of conflict; and the political economy of war.

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, African Security Review, the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, and Intelligence and National Security. 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 the PhD field seminar in international relations theory. She co-directs the Cornell Law School’s International Relations-International Law seminar series. She has a B.A. from Harvard, M.Sc. from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown University. Before going to graduate school, Kreps served as an acquisitions and foreign area officer in the United States Air Force.