Mariya Grinberg

Mariya Grinberg

Associate Professor of Political Science

NE49-3139

Biography

Mariya Grinberg is an associate professor of Political Science at MIT. Her primary research examines why states trade with their enemies, investigating the product level and temporal variation in wartime commercial policies of states vis-a-vis enemy belligerents. Her broader research interests center on the question of how time and uncertainty shape the strategic decisions of states, focusing on order formation, military planning, and questions of state sovereignty. Professor Grinberg earned her PhD in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2019, and served as a Postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, as well as the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. She holds an MA from the University of Chicago's Committee on International Relations, and a BA from the University of Southern California. She was a pre-doctoral fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School in 2018-9, and the Smith Richardson pre-doctoral fellow with the International Security Studies Program at Yale University in 2017-8.

Website

CV

Teaching

  • 17.S951
    Political Economy of Security

Selected Publications

Mariya Grinberg, "Sanctions Won't End Russia's War in Ukraine," National Interest, December 24, 2022. 

Mariya Grinberg, "Wartime Commercial Policy and Trade between Enemies," International Security Vol. 46, No. 4 (Summer 2021)

For a complete list of publications

Books

  • Trade in War Economic Cooperation across Enemy Lines by Mariya Grinberg Book Cover

    Trade in War: Economic Cooperation Across Enemy Lines

    Mariya Grinberg | Cornell Press (2025)

    August 29, 2025

    Trade in War is an urgent, insightful study of a puzzling wartime phenomenon: states doing business with their enemies.  

    Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Yet as history shows, states rarely choose either war or trade. In fact, they frequently engage in both at the same time.  

    To explain why states trade with their enemies, Mariya Grinberg examines the wartime commercial policies of major powers during the Crimean War, the two World Wars, and several post-1989 wars. She shows that in the face of two competing imperatives—preventing an enemy from increasing its military capabilities, and maintaining its own long-term security through economic exchange—states at war tailor wartime commercial policies around a product's characteristics and war expectations. If a product's conversion time into military capabilities exceeds the war's expected length, then trade in the product can occur, since the product will not have time to affect battlefield outcomes. If a state cannot afford to jeopardize the revenue provided by the traded product, trade in it can also occur.  

    Grinberg's findings reveal that economic cooperation can thrive even in the most hostile of times—and that interstate conflict might not be as easily deterred by high levels of economic interdependence as is commonly believed. Trade in War compels us to recognize that economic ties between states may be insufficient to stave off war.
     

    Book information: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501782442/trade-in-war/#bookTabs=1

Media

Quoted in "Would a U.S.-China War Mean the End of U.S.-China Trade?" Robert Farley. National Interest, January 30, 2024.

Quoted in "Western sanctions fail to benefit Ukraine," Sohail Choudhury, Weekly Blitz, December 29, 2022.

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