Faculty + Scholars

Richard

Samuels

Ford International Professor of Political Science
Faculty Director, MIT-Japan
Former Director, Center for International Studies (2003-2023)

samuels@mit.edu

E40-475

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 J Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and a former director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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 in 2007. 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 Foundation. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, International Security, Political Science Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, The National Interest, Journal of Japanese Studies, and Daedalus. From 2014-2019, he was Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, and his latest book, Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community, was named one of the “Best of Books 2019” by the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal, Foreign Affairs.

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

“The Debate to Use Atomic Bombs Against Japan,” (Book Review of Unconditional by Marc Gallicchio) The New York Times, 3 August 2020.

“Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community,” The Ambassador's Brief, 26 January 2020.

“Japan’s whack-a-mole foreign policy,” The Boston Globe, 30 September 2019.

and Eric Heginbotham. “An agenda for Japanese military reform,” East Asia Forum Quarterly, July-September 2018.

and Eric Heginbotham. “A New Military Strategy for Japan,” Foreign Affairs (web), 16 July 2018.

and Mayumi Fukushima. “Japan's National Security Council: filling the whole of government?,” International Affairs, Volume 94, Issue 4, 1 July 2018, Pages 773–790.

and Corey Wallace. “Japan's pivot in Asia,” International Affairs, Volume 94, Issue 4, 1 July 2018, Pages 703-710.

and Eric Heginbotham. “Active Denial: Redesigning Japan's Response to China's Military Challenge.” International Security, Vol. 42, No. 04, pp. 128–169 (Spring 2018).

and Eric Heginbotham. “With friends like these: Japan-ROK cooperation and US policy,” The ASAN Forum, 1 March 2018.

and Mike M. Mochizuki. “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.

and James Schoff. “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, pp.233-264. (pdf)

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

Books