My DPhil research explores how international politics is reshaped when foreign policymaking becomes highly personalized and masculinized—driven not primarily by institutions or ideologies, but by individual leaders who, to the outside world, appear to exercise discretionary control over their states’ international conduct as strongmen.

Centering on the current U.S.–China rivalry, I examine how personalist rule in both states, and the status competition it sparks, alters the calculus of war and peace. Under certain conditions, strongmen can forge brittle forms of cooperation that marginalize liberal democracies and suppress domestic as well as transnational dissent. Once the international arena is populated by these strongman figures, the environment can encourage additional leaders to emulate their style. To situate today’s dynamics historically, the project also draws comparative lessons from the Concert of Europe, Axis and Allied strongmen before and during the Second World War, and late-Cold-War exchanges between Soviet and American leaders.