The Origins of War and Peace in the Human Species (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), forhcoming 2026

This book explores the paradoxical human inclination for both war and peace. No other species combines the propensity to conduct intergroup coalitionary killings of members of the same species (intergroup conflict) with the inclination for extensive peaceful cooperation between groups (intergroup peaceful cooperation). In short, our species is Janus-faced. In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of gates and presided over beginnings and transitions, including the transition between war and peace and vice versa. The temple of Janus in Rome had a double gate which remained open during times of war but closed during periods of peace. Accordingly, Janus is usually depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions, thus implying the duality of two contrasting dimensions, like war and peace. Like Janus, we exhibit a duality, a paradoxical combination of war-proneness and of peaceful, cooperative interactions between groups unseen in the natural world. This is the fundamental puzzle that this book seeks to explain: What are the origins of this contradictory feature of our species? When, why and how did we develop our Janus-faced inclination for both war and peace?
 
To tackle this question, the book synthesizes and integrates the findings from a wide variety of disciplines, leveraging evidence from biology, primatology, comparative ethology, anthropology, archaeology, genetics, neurosciences, criminology, social psychology, demography, linguistics, and climatology. Thereby, this book embarks on a journey spanning several million years, leveraging findings from 12 disciplines, to unravel the evolutionary origins of our peculiar inclination for both peace and war.
Awakening to China's Rise. European Foreign and Security Policies toward the People's Republic of China (Oxford University Press, 2022)
Awakening to China's Rise provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of how Europe's major powers have responded to the re-emergence of China as a great power in world politics since the end of the Cold War. To do so, it puts forward a unique cross-regional comparison of how the major European powers (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) have confronted Chinese assertiveness both in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe. Firstly, it analyses their response to China's increasingly muscular regional posture in the Asia-Pacific through the development of diplomatic and security initiatives with partners in the region. Secondly, it delineates how they have confronted China's inroads into Europe, looking at the measures that they have taken to tackle Chinese investments in, and supply of, technologies in strategic sectors such as critical national infrastructures, dual-use technologies, and in the digital domain, including Huawei's 5G networks. A longstanding assumption in the IR literature has been that European foreign policies toward the People's Republic of China have been driven by a 'naïve' and self-interested focus on the economic opportunities presented by such a vast market, overlooking security considerations. This book challenges such common belief through a detailed examination of the policies of France, Germany and the United Kingdom from 1989 to the present. Its central argument is that, whereas this assessment aptly characterized the first two post-Cold War decades, Beijing's growing assertiveness after 2009 caused the three major European powers to awaken to China's rise. In the 2010s, heightened threat perceptions of China, coupled with increasingly competitive bilateral economic relations with the PRC, have gradually and cumulatively caused the hardening of their policy goals which, in turn, translated into the formulation of new policy instruments to confront such a challenge. To substantiate this argument, the book relies on a large body of previously undisclosed primary sources, including: 223 interviews conducted with senior officials in Europe (Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris), in the United States (Washington DC), and in Asia (Beijing, Shanghai, New Delhi, Seoul); declassified archival documents from France, the UK and Germany; leaked US diplomatic cables; and new data on European naval deployments.
The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces (Oxford University Press, 2016), co-edited with Marco Wyss

The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. For details, click here.

Reviewed in International Affairs, the Journal of Common Market Studies and Defence Studies
Trading with the Enemy: The Making of US Export Control Policy toward the People's Republic of China (Oxford University Press, 2016)

In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in US-China relations, Trading with the Enemy examines how the United States has balanced its potentially conflicting national security and economic interests in its relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC). To do so, the it investigates a strategically sensitive yet under-explored facet of US-China relations: the making of American export control policy on military-related technology transfers to China since 1979. Trading with the Enemy is the first monograph on this dimension of the US-China relationship in the post-Cold War. The book is based on 199 interviews, declassified documents, and diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks. For more details, click here.

Reviewed in Foreign Affairs and The China Quarterly, and also available as Audiobook.
Origins and Evolution of the US Rebalance toward Asia: Diplomatic, Military, and Economic Dimensions (ed) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

This book provides a multifaceted analysis of the so-called US 'rebalance' (or 'pivot') toward the Asia Pacific. Most existing literature has focused almost exclusively on the military dimension of the US pivot toward Asia, depicting this as a US 'grand strategy' to contain a rising China. In contrast, this book brings to light the breadth and complexity of what is a diplomatic, military and economic repositioning of the United States toward (and within) the Asia Pacific region. The first section of the volume assesses the international and domestic drivers and policy objectives underlying the US rebalance toward Asia by analyzing the multiple diplomatic, military, and economic dimensions at play, as well as their mutual linkages. The second section examines regional reactions to this composite policy shift in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Russia, and Europe. For more details, click here.
La politique étrangère: approches disciplinaires [Foreign Policy: Disciplinary Approaches] (Montreal: Montreal University Press, 2018), co-edited with Christian Lequesne

Most existing handbooks on foreign policy analysis examine this field of study either thematically, geographically or theoretically (i.e. through different theories of foreign policy analysis). This book offers a original and innovative perspective on the study of foreign policy. Through a multidisciplinary approach, its ambition is to provide an overview of the main questions, theories, concepts and methods that cut cross the different disciplines of human and social sciences (e.g. political philosophy, history, sociology, political science, psychology, geopolitics) and that can enrich and refine the study of foreign policy. For more details, click here.