Signals of Remorse and Perceptions of Threat

Abstract

ior in the future. In Sorry States, Jennifer Lind uses this basic facet of social life as a springboard for a penetrating assessment of the influence of apologies on threat perceptions in international politics. Lind focuses in particular on how a former aggressor state's signals of contrition can mitigate - or aggravate - the distrust of past victims. The book thus speaks to a number of important areas of inquiry in international relations and political science: from the problems of signaling (Jervis 1970), threat assessment (Walt 1987), and mistrust (Kydd 2005), to the politics of apologies and postwar reconciliation (O'Neill 1999; Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003/04; Weiner 2005; Barkan and Karn 2006; Nobles 2008), the rehabilitation of defeated aggressors (Jackson 2006), and national memory and remembrance (Tilly 2008). In doing so, Lind grapples with tricky problems of qualitative causal analysis. In trying to gauge the independent impact of largely symbolic gestures that are intermingled with other key drivers of threat perception, Lind must deal with both over-determination and neither-necessary-nor-sufficient causation. Thus, while sleuthing-out the influence of apologies (or their absence), Lind tracks the concomitant or divergent impacts of such threat- or trust-enhancing factors as military capabilities, regime type, and international organization ties. When it comes to judging the relative importance of these things, there is much to argue about, and Sorry States puts the key considerations transparently out on the table. Lind indicates when and how other major factors join with apologetic remembrance to support reconciliation, and also pinpoints the contexts in which the distrust-arousing affects of unapologetic politics are nullified by other drivers of strategic cooperation. On these points, and others, the book's conclusions are both largely convincing and reflective of the inelegant political reality. Lind's study introduces a streamlined descriptive framework, based on clear and intuitive concepts. The general behavior at issue is national ' 'remembrance, which can be more or less apologetic or unapologetic. Contrition is most pronounced when the apologizer takes responsibility for the offense, expresses real remorse, and offers direct amends. Unapologetic remembrance can take a variety of forms: spin that deflects and minimizes without actually denying; a schizophrenic mix of apologies and exculpatory claims; compensation schemes that eschew the reparations label and skirt admissions of guilt; and, of course, flat-out denial and jingoistic mythologizing.