For many years, scholars of international relations operated under the assumption that countries are fundamentally alike. Against the notion that the very different ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union informed their policies and led them into conflict, for example, scholars who considered themselves realists argued that each of these countries sought power and security. In pursuit of the same goals, they could be expected to behave like any other great powers, carving out spheres of influence and balancing against the power of their principal adversary. The inevitable result, they argued, was the Cold War and its protracted conventional and nuclear arms races.

Even during the Cold War, however, it was increasingly hard to ignore differences among countries. At best, setting aside the many contrasts between the US and the USSR, the preceding account of symmetry and homogeneity completely ignores the vast differences among all the other countries that comprise the international system.

I am interested not merely in the extent of these differences, but particularly in the way we form impressions of these differences and the way these impressions or images of countries affect policy, both domestic and foreign.

My forthcoming book, Seeing Japan, explores the contribution of emotion—another understudied phenomenon in international relations—to the ways Japan is seen, particularly in China and South Korea. Images of Japan vary widely, even among its former adversaries. In the cases of China and South Korea, moreover, there is more variability in attitudes toward Japan than is usually appreciated.

My research project investigating Differences among Countries asks related questions about countries in general. What accounts for the ways we perceive national differences? And what are the principal differences we perceive?