Jennifer Lind, MPIA '96, Op-Ed on U.S.-Japan Relations
Learning to Share the Stage
02/05/2012
Jennifer Lind,
The New York Times
Fifty years ago Monday, in a Waseda University auditorium in Tokyo, someone pulled the plug on Robert Kennedy's microphone. The attorney general had come to Japan to repair the U.S.-Japan alliance in the wake of a major crisis two years before. That crisis, and Kennedy's trip to Japan, hold important lessons for today's problems in the alliance, and indeed for U.S. alliance relationships all over the world.
The 1960 security treaty crisis nearly killed the U.S.-Japan alliance. The Japanese were dismayed by what they saw as American support for rightist politicians, frightened by the risk of entanglement in nuclear crises, and fuming over U.S. control of Okinawa. The prime minister could only renew the treaty by ramming it through Parliament after forcibly removing the opposition from the building. Waves of protests rocked Tokyo; a shocked Washington canceled a scheduled presidential visit out of concern for the president's safety.
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Jennifer Lind is an assistant professor in the department of government, Dartmouth College and an alumna of IR/PS (1996). Her research centers on security issues and foreign policies of East Asia. Her book, Sorry States: Apologies and International Politics, was published by Cornell University Press (2008). Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense, and has lived and worked in Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
