Professor Jennifer Lind

Jennifer Lind is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and a Faculty Associate at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master’s in International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has also authored scholarly articles in International Security and International Studies Quarterly, and writes for wider audiences within the Atlantic and Foreign Affairs. She has been quoted and interviewed by PBS Newshour, National Public Radio, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Professor Lind is a Fellow in the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future (a network for leading U.S.-based Japan specialists, run by the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership). She is a member of bilateral dialogues about the US-Japan alliance sponsored by the Japan Center for Economic Research and the Japan Institute of International Affairs, and by the Sasakawa Foundation. Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense, and previously lived and worked in Japan.

Book Manuscript,  “The Path to Great Power”

This book evaluates the process, trajectory, and challenges that a country must pass through to become a great power. Part I looks at economic trajectories. How long have fast-growing countries been able to maintain high growth rates, and how do growth rates decline as GDP per capita rises? Does increasing wealth trigger economic changes that undermine the rising power’s competitive advantage? What factors allow some rising powers to sustain high growth rates for longer than others? Part II assesses how quickly and effectively rising powers develop military power. How long does it take for rising powers to develop first-rate military capabilities, which can rival the leading state in the rising power’s neighborhood? How long to develop global power projection capabilities? Have changes in technology made it easier or harder for rising powers to catch up militarily

Research topics: Nationalism, international reconciliation, US foreign policy, US-China relations, US alliances in Asia

Publications

Book

• Sorry States:  Apologies in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). Cornell Studies in Security Affairs.
   

Book Chapters

•  “A Model for the World: US-Japan Reconciliation,” in Why Japan Matters (New York: Praeger, forthcoming 2017, in Japanese and English editions).
• “The Art of the Bluff: the US-Japan Alliance under the Trump Administration,” in Robert Jervis, et al., eds., Trump in the World (NY: Columbia University Press, forthcoming). Previously part of the H-Diplo/ISSF Policy Series: America and the World - 2017 and Beyond,” April 24, 2017.
• “Keep, Toss, or Fix? Assessing US Alliances in East Asia,” in Jeremy Suri and Benjamin Valentino, eds. A Sustainable National Security Strategy for the United States (Oxford University Press, 2016).
• “The Creation and Challenge of the Murayama Consensus,” in The Decline of Postwar Moderate Conservatism in Japan (Tokyo: Kadokawa-Shinsho, 2015). Forthcoming in English-language edition.
• “Geography and the Security Dilemma in East Asia,” in Rosemary Foot, Saadia Pekkanen, and John Ravenhill, eds., The Oxford University Handbook of the International Relations of East Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
•  “The Haunt of History in Japan’s Foreign Relations,” in Alisa Gauder, ed., Handbook of Japanese Politics (London: Routledge, 2011).

Journal Articles

• “The Collapse of North Korea: Military Missions and Requirements,” International Security Vol. 36, No. 2 (Fall 2011): 84-119. Co-authored with Bruce Bennett.
• “Democratization and Stability in East Asia,” International Studies Quarterly 55: 1-28 (Summer 2011).
•  “Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea,” International Security, Vol. 35, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 44-76. Co-authored with Daniel Byman.
• “Apologies in International Politics,” Security Studies Vol. 18, no. 3 (2009): 517-556.
•  “Pacifism or Passing the Buck?  Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy,” International Security Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2004). 

Commentary

•  “Will Trump’s Hardball Tactics Work on China and North Korea?” CNN Opinion, August 7, 2017.
•  “Asia’s Other Revisionist Power: Why U.S. Grand Strategy Unnerves China,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 96, no. 2 (March/April 2017).
• “Is Playing Tough in China’s Interest?” Roundtable organizer and contributor, Room for Debate, New York Times, August 23, 2016.
• “It Took Years of Diplomacy for Abe and Obama to Stand Together at Pearl Harbor,” Quartz.com, December 27, 2016.
• “As Obama Goes to Hiroshima, 3 Principles for a Successful Visit,” MonkeyCage Blog, Washington Post, May 26, 2016.
• “Japan’s Security Evolution,” CATO Institute Policy Paper, February 2016.
• “Making Up Isn’t Hard to Do,” Foreign Affairs, March 5, 2015.
• “Japan’s Security Evolution—Not Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2015.
• “The Sources of the Sino-American Spiral,” National Interest, September 18, 2013 (with Daryl G. Press).