Michael Lind

Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer. Lind is an ASU Future of War Fellow at New America in Washington, D.C., which he co-founded, a contributing editor of Politico and The National Interest and a columnist for Salon. Lind was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School and has taught at Johns Hopkins and Virginia Tech. He has also been an editor or staff writer at The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and The New Republic. Lind has published a number of books on U.S. history, political economy, foreign policy, and politics as well as fiction, poetry and children’s literature.

Lind was born in Austin, Texas, a fifth-generation native of the state. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with honors in English and History (Plan II). In 1985 he received a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from Yale University and, in 1988, a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Texas Law School. Lind moved to Washington, where after working as Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs in 1990–91 he became Executive Editor of The National Interest from 1991–94. From 1994–98 he lived in Manhattan and worked for Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic and The New Yorker. In 1998 he became Washington Editor of Harper’s Magazine and moved to Washington, where in the same year he, Sherle Schwenninger and Walter Russell Mead co-founded the New America Foundation with Ted Halstead, with whom Lind co-authored The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.

Lind has examined and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism associated with Alexander Hamilton in a series of books, including The Next American Nation (1995), Hamilton’s Republic (1997), What Lincoln Believed (2004) and Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012). Lind has also written two books on U.S. foreign policy, The American Way of Strategy (2006) and Vietnam: The Necessary War (1999). A former neoconservative in the tradition of New Deal liberalism, Lind criticized the American Right in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (1996) and Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2004). Lind has also published a novel, Powertown (1996), a narrative poem, The Alamo (1997), and a children’s book, Bluebonnet Girl (2004).

In May 2015, Lind argued for the adoption of "enlightened nationalism", also called "liberal nationalism" in which the United States "would combine its security strategy of offshore balancing with intelligent economic nationalism." Regarding NATO and other U.S. allies, a liberal nationalist foreign policy, Lind continued, "would shift much of the burden of the defense of its allies and protectorates to those countries themselves." Lind argued for "an immigration policy in the national interest would shift the emphasis from family reunification to skills . . . [and] enable long-term population growth . . . compatible with the economic integration and cultural assimilation of newcomers to the United States."