William Grimes

From contest to convergence in East Asia: why do regional challengers end up resembling incumbent institutions? Recent decades have seen the creation of a variety of new regional multilateral institutions by states that are dissatisfied with the rules and norms of incumbent global institutions, a phenomenon ...

If you can’t access the article through your individual or institutional subscription to The Pacific Review, try this link, which should work for the first 50 downloads: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FIRCR...

The paper analyzes the creation and development of three major challenges to existing international regimes in East Asia: Chiang Mai Initiative Internationalization, New Development Bank, and East Asia Summit.

We ask the question why so many new international organizations that are created as a challenge to incumbent ones end up resembling the organizations they sought to challenge, and why members stick with them.

From contest to convergence in East Asia: why do regional challengers end up resembling incumbent institutions? Recent decades have seen the creation of a variety of new regional multilateral institutions by states that are dissatisfied with the rules and norms of incumbent global institutions, a phenomenon ...

Check out my new article with @lee_yaechan92! From contest to convergence in East Asia: why do regional challengers end up resembling incumbent institutions? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The practical equivalent of drinking bleach to cure COVID.

Today’s action against Harvard is beyond shocking, beyond stupid, beyond illegal, and beyond irresponsible. It is breathtaking to see the government trying to destroy America’s most dominant global industry for such petty and clearly dishonest reasons.

🧵 Today's revocation of Harvard's ability to enroll international is awful for many reasons, chief among them the human cost as @jeremywallace.bsky.social notes. It's also an attack on the US economy. But maybe less obvious: it is terrible national security policy. It makes Americans less safe. 1/

Student visas are being revoked without notice or explanation in the middle of the semester. Students don’t find out that they’re out of status from ICE, so universities need to comb SEVIS every day. You can’t have due process without notice or explanation. The cruelty and uncertainty are the point.

Applications for the Fellowships for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan program are open! This program is a joint activity of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC) and #NEHgov. Learn more: ow.ly/xrfN50VcFXX

Conclusion: While we can come up with rational explanations of what just happened, there is little reason to believe that it is beneficial for the US, let alone its alliance system. And the humiliation of a hero and betrayal of his country is shameful as well as counterproductive.

But that temptation should be strongest when allies are growing relative to you in econ, tech, and military, while the external threat is not. Today it’s the opposite - external threat growing and US econ and tech outstripping its allies. This is the time for nurturing alliances, not kicking them.

Possibility 3: As Gilpin argued years ago, hegemons are always tempted to use bilateral power rather than provide public goods, shifting from benevolent to malevolent hegemons. He saw it as partly to reduce growth of allies who were potential rivals (Japan, Germany). (Continued in next post)

Possibility 2: The “realists” in the admin have misread the lessons of the Melian Dialogue. They got as far as “strong do what they will, weak suffer what they must.” But the real lesson is that by nakedly abusing Melos, Athens lost its allies, contributing to LR defeat. We are in dangerous waters.

Possibility number 1: The administration saw Zelensky as an unwilling to compromise in a peace process so they set him up in a place where his personal pride and domestic standing would lead him to push back. If so, next step is basically to force his resignation and find someone more pliant.

I’m teaching intro to IR this semester, so I feel an obligation figure out a rationale for what just happened at the White House. Why rational? Because even if Trump himself is not rational or is compromised, he managed to get almost 100% support from GOP and they can’t all be irrational/compromised

Please repost: I've had a couple of inquiries about this search, and I'd like to be clear that we have several areas of need, so the ad's text refers to keywords "Asia/Global History/Technology/Politics/Society." This could include media and technology studies, transnational history, etc. 1/3

Flogging will continue until morale improves.

YouTube video by MBCNEWS 이 시각 공조본 관저 진입 상황..'尹 체포' 집행 준비 - [끝까지LIVE] 2025년 01월 15일

(LIVE) Vehicles from the Public Prosecutor's Office have arrived to execute second arrest warrant for President Yoon. Police have set up barricades and begun deploying riot police from an hour ago. Riot police consist of 51 units and 3,000 members. - MBC News www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikU-...

Classic “where you sit determines where you stand”

In contrast, Japanese polls always have high levels of no opinion/not sure even when the respondents definitely are familiar with the subject. I tell my students it’s the one place where they can plead culture and I won’t make them justify it.

On the bright side, “arrogant” skews very strongly male.

HIRING: We are hiring THREE new roles at Korea Risk Group.

If you're interested in geopolitics and the Korean peninsula, this is the perfect time to get involved in our mission.

Let's go through the roles one-by-one.

Will Japan's Relations With Korea Survive Yoon's Failed Coup? | World | The ORIENTAL ECONOMIST The shocking attempted coup by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol caught Koreans and the world by surprise. Even though the country was embroiled in a bitter political divide between progressives a…

My look at Korea-Japan relations after the Yoon coup, for Toyo Keizai Online (English version).

toyokeizai.net/articles/-/8...

This is fascinating. One question: do you know why no one leaked the fact that Yoon was seriously considering martial law? It seems like that could have prevented the whole incident. Even if they thought he was convinced not to do it, at least some should have their faith in Yoon’s judgment shaken.

RIP to Takeshi Inoguchi, a superb scholar and fantastic human being. He was my faculty mentor at Tokyo University in 1992-93 and I saw him occasionally in Tokyo and Cambridge in the years since. And of course I continued to read his work. I will always remember his kindness and sense of humor.

Great overview thread on current state of play. I’m still just gobsmacked.

RISK ANALYSIS: President Yoon Suk-yeol's martial law declaration marks a watershed moment for 🇰🇷 democracy, raising risks of political turmoil + violent unrest.

A quick thread on key risk factors and what may happen next... based on my latest at NK Pro:

shorturl.at/PuCJx

Let’s hope the vote sticks. It’s unbelievable that Yoon is doing this with no political backing. And who knows which way the army goes. (I don’t expect violence, just questioning whether Yoon will be able to maintain command.) No matter what happens, it will have terrible long term consequences.

Posting info about the UCSD China Data Lab Dataverse. We have several data sets, which can be downloaded after seeking our permission chinadatalab.ucsd.edu/china-data-l...