Richard Samuels | MIT Center for International Studies

Faculty + Scholars

Richard

Samuels

Ford International Professor of Political Science
Director, Center for International Studies

samuels@mit.edu

E40-455

617-253-2449

CV
@dicksamuelsmit

Expertise:

Asia (Japanese politics and leadership, Asian security, political economy, comparative politics), Japan (security, politics, public policy, political leadership, defense/aerospace, international education), Italy (political leadership and economic history), civil-military relations

Extended Details

Biography

Richard Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies. He has been head of the MIT Political Science Department, vice-chair of the committee on Japan of the National Research Council, and chair of the Japan-US Friendship Commission. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was awarded an imperial decoration, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Prime Minister. His study of the political and policy consequences of the 2011 Tohoku catastrophe, 3:11: Disaster and Change in Japan, was published by Cornell University Press in 2013. Samuels' Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia, was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book in international affairs. Machiavelli's Children won the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and the Jervis-Schroeder Prize from the International History and Politics section of American Political Science Association. Earlier books were awarded prizes from the Association for Asian Studies, the Association of American University Press, and the Ohira Memorial Prize. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Security, Political Science Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, National Interest, Journal of Japanese Studies, and Daedalus. In 2014 he was appointed Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, where he directs a research group on East Asian Security during the summer.

Research

Japan’s Intelligence and Security: Examination of recent changes in the Japanese intelligence community and their relevance to national security strategy.

Secrecy, Privacy, and International Relations: Project considers how norms about secrecy, privacy, surveillance, and transparency are generated and observed or transgressed—and how they affect international relations. It also considers how the new information ecology affects behaviors of states in the international system.

Japan and the United States in East Asia: With the rise of China and the end of the Cold War, the great power quadrilateral in East Asia has shifted. While the Japan-US alliance continues to anchor regional stability, the domestic politics that support it in both countries are also shifting. This project explores how security policy choices are constrained and enabled by changing security policy discourses in Washington and Tokyo.

Publications

Japan’s Intelligence Community. Manuscript in progress for Cornell University Press.

“Japan’s Energy Security: Strategic Discourse and Domestic Politics,” chapter in Mike M. Mochizuki and Deepa Ollapally (eds.), Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia. London: Routledge, 2017.

“How to Get China to Use Its Leverage against North Korea,” The National Interest, September 18, 2016.

3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013: 274 pp. Japanese translation: Eiji Shuppan, 2016.

“Poor Substitute: No Japanese Submarines Down Under,” Foreign Affairs (web), 3 May 2016. With Eric Heginbotham.

“Japan’s 3.11 Master Narrative Still Under Construction”, East Asian Forum, Australian National University, March 2016.

“Abe’s history report fails Japan-ROK relations,” East Asian Forum, Australian National University, August 2015.

“Something for Everyone in Abe's WWII Statement,” East Asian Forum, Australian National University, August 2015.

“Who Decides Japan's Past, and Future,”The National Interest, May 2015.

“Hugging and Hedging: Japanese Grand Strategy in the 21 Century” Chapter 5 in Henry Nau and Deepa Olapally, eds., Worldviews of Aspiring Powers. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp.146-180.

“Japan’s Nuclear Hedge: Beyond ‘Allergy’ and ‘Breakout’” chapter in Ashley Tellis, ed. Strategic Asia 2013-2014: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age. Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013. With James Schoff. (pdf)

3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan, Cornell University Press, 2013.

“Tokyo's Transformation: How Japan is Changing and What it Means for the United States," Foreign Affairs, September/October 2011, pp.138-148.

“Kidnapping Politics in East Asia” Journal of East Asian Studies, Volume 10, No.3. November 2010.

“Prosperity's Children: Generational Change and Japan's Future Leadership,” Asia Policy, Number 6. July 2008, pp.15-51. With J. Patrick Boyd.

“‘New Fighting Power!’: Japan's Growing Maritime Capabilities and East Asian Security” International Security Vol. 32, No. 3 Winter 2007/2008, pp. 84-112.

“Japan's Goldilocks Strategy” chapter in A.T.J. Lennon and A. Kozlowski, eds. Global Powers in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia, Cornell University Press, 2007.

Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan, Cornell University Press, 2005.

“Rich Nation, Strong Army”: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan, Cornell University Press, 1996.

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