The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) offers a rich variety of fellowships that allow early-career scholars to focus on a variety of security topics and participate in seminars to interact and collaborate with leading faculty and researchers.

In this Q&A CISAC fellow X. Zhang discusses the unexpected motivations behind military retaliation, how cosmopolitan experiences may influence leaders toward aggression rather than peace, and the complexities of Iran’s escalation management strategies in the Middle East.

Your dissertation challenges the traditional view of military retaliation as a deterrence tactic by proposing that revenge often drives actions. Could you expand on the implications of this for policymakers? How might acknowledging a revenge-driven motivation in conflict dynamics change the strategies for managing or mitigating international rivalries?

My dissertation on revenge offers three main implications:

First, military retaliation intended to deter may instead provoke the adversary's public to support continued or escalated aggression, fueling a cycle of vengeance that prolongs conflict and magnifies its costs. Without an understanding of revenge dynamics, policymakers and analysts may systematically underestimate how their own acts of retaliation can increase an adversary's willingness to fight in order to seek revenge. This oversight can lead to underestimating both the costs and the duration of conflicts.

Second, the implications of revenge in conflict resolution and peace settlements suggest that strategic policymakers should anticipate an adversary's desire for revenge and exercise restraint proactively. For example, after Prussia's decisive victory over Austria in 1866, Otto von Bismarck successfully argued that Prussia should agree to a lenient peace with Austria to avoid fueling Austrian desires for revenge. In contrast, following the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Bismarck's argument for leniency did not prevail, and harsh peace terms involving significant territorial concessions and war reparations were imposed on France. The anticipation of the adversary's desire for vengeance and the exercise of restraint in the former case made the subsequent German-Austrian partnership possible, while the failure to manage French revanchism offers useful lessons for contemporary policy debates—especially concerning a future peace settlement between Russia and the West over Ukraine.

Third, successful escalation management hinges on managing the adversary's desire for revenge. How a state retaliates against security challenges can alter the adversary's preferences. While it is often tempting to punish perceived transgressions by maximizing the adversary's suffering, doing so can create an incentive for the adversary to retaliate further, making a security-seeking adversary indistinguishable from a truly aggressive one. Therefore, if decision-makers are interested in maximizing deterrence while minimizing the risk of triggering a revenge cycle, they could design their retaliation to demonstrate military capabilities while minimizing the adversary's suffering—particularly in terms of human lives, especially civilian casualties. Indeed, we have seen Iran take some of these steps in its recent retaliations against Israel: they have provided advanced warnings and delayed retaliation to allow targets to evacuate and prepare, so that when the retaliation occurred, there was minimal human suffering as a result.

Your findings suggest that leaders with cosmopolitan experiences might actually be more prone to international conflict, challenging conventional wisdom that link such experiences with pacifism. What do you believe drives this apparent shift in behavior, what are the policy implications of this finding?

I argue there are two mechanisms at play. First, the experience of leaders living abroad can have an expatriate nationalist effect. Identity is largely defined in relation to an "other." For someone who spends their entire life among their compatriots, national identity rarely plays a salient role in daily life except during moments of international conflict. However, living abroad constantly reminds individuals of who they are and where they come from. This expatriate nationalism can lead cosmopolitan leaders to become more belligerent because they are more concerned with their country's international status and prestige.

The second mechanism involves leaders' "against-type" behavior in domestic politics. For politicians, cosmopolitan experience can be a political liability. They may be more vulnerable to attacks accusing them of being foreign agents or, as former British Prime Minister Theresa May phrased it, "citizens of nowhere." For example, recently, Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz was accused by congressional Republicans of being a Chinese agent for having worked in China as an English teacher in 1989. To prove their patriotism to the domestic public, cosmopolitan leaders have an incentive to act more aggressively in the foreign policy arena.

In terms of policy implications, governments and charitable organizations have established numerous programs of international educational, diplomatic, and cultural exchanges to enhance international cooperation and understanding—initiatives like the Peace Corps, the Fulbright Program, and the Rhodes Scholarship. Many of these programs have the explicit goal of promoting international peace by cultivating cosmopolitan elites. I hope this study can shed light on the more complex nature of how cross-border contact influences elite behaviors and how these cosmopolitan experiences might have unexpected consequences on individual identity and the political incentives of participants later in their careers.

In your latest article, “Misinterpret Iran’s signals of restraint at your peril” for The Hill, you suggest that Iran’s restrained retaliatory strikes are part of a strategy to manage escalation and avoid a full-scale regional conflict. Given the complex domestic and international pressures Iran faces, what do you think are the key factors influencing its leadership’s decision to continue with this strategy, despite the risk of appearing militarily weak?

Initially, after the latest Israeli counter-retaliation against Iran, it seemed that Iranian restraint had been reciprocated by Israel. Israel launched limited strikes against military targets rather than nuclear sites or oil infrastructure, as they had previously threatened. Israel also reportedly provided warnings to Iran, reciprocating Iran's earlier gestures. Iran appeared to downplay the Israeli strike, giving reason for cautious optimism that escalation management was working.

However, the situation has evolved as more information has been revealed. First, satellite imagery and acknowledgments from Israeli officials suggest that Israel did attack at least one piece of Iranian oil infrastructure—the Abadan Oil Refinery in Khuzestan. News that the Israeli strike resulted in five Iranian casualties appears to have evoked public desire in Iran for revenge. A further complicating factor is the multilateral nature of the current conflict. Given that Israeli restraint is likely due, at least in part, to U.S. pressure, such restraint may not reveal Israel's underlying intentions as it would if Israel had made such a decision independently. Moreover, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's recent speech suggests that Iran is considering retaliating not just against direct Israeli strikes but also against Israeli actions on the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts, making escalation management more difficult.

We can observe whether Iran will abandon its strategy of restraint in the coming days based on the timing and scale of its retaliation. An early, large-scale response would likely indicate a policy shift, whereas a delayed, limited strike would suggest the continuation of the existing policy. It's worth noting, however, that escalation management does not necessarily mean Iran intends to de-escalate. As the wider war shows no sign of ending, Iran has an interest in maintaining military pressure on Israel and keeping the Israelis fighting on multiple fronts.

In terms of success, which accomplishments are you most proud of?

A recent accomplishment I'm particularly proud of is the development of the Cosmopolitan Leader Dataset. From the summer of 2021 to 2023, I spearheaded a project to collect data on the pre-office foreign sojourn experiences of over 2,600 leaders spanning from 1870 to 2015. Collaborating with a stellar group of undergraduate research assistants from the University of Wisconsin and the University of California systems was one of the most rewarding experiences. Together, we read the biographies and life stories of these extraordinary individuals, quantifying a wealth of historical data. This endeavor provided insights into the transnational networks of global elites and offered a measure of great powers' soft power—specifically, their ability to attract foreign elites to work and live within their borders since the late 19th century. I hope this dataset will serve as a valuable resource for future researchers.

What is something that people would be surprised to learn about you?

When I’m not working, I’m writing a novel exploring misinformation and mental health. It follows a character who wrestles with mental illness and an obsessive fixation on conspiracy theories, navigating the blurred lines between personal struggle, media validation, and gaslighting. The story draws inspiration from Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics and serves as a reflection on the American politics I’ve witnessed over the past decade.