Dr. Victor D. Cha, Vice President for Asia and Korea Chair, Center for Strategic & International Studies

Professor Victor D. Cha is Vice Dean and D.S. Song-KF Professor of Government in the School of Foreign Service and Department of Government at Georgetown University. He is also Senior Vice President for Asia and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He was appointed in 2021 by Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the Secretary of Defense. He formerly served on the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007 where he was responsible primarily for Japan, the Korean peninsula, Australia/New Zealand and Pacific Island nation affairs. Dr. Cha was also the Deputy Head of Delegation for the United States at the Six Party Talks in Beijing, and received two Outstanding Service commendations during his tenure at the NSC.

He is the author of five books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press) (winner of the 2000 Ohira Book Prize), and The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Harper Collins Ecco, 2012) which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012.” His most recent book is Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2018). His next book is, Korea: A Modern History (contracted with Yale University Press).

Dr. Cha is a two-time Fulbright Scholar, former Olin Fellow at Harvard, and former Hoover, CISAC, and Koret Fellow at Stanford. He currently serves on ten editorial boards of academic journals and is co-editor of the Contemporary Asia Book Series at Columbia University Press. In 2022, he was elected to serve on the Board for the National Endowment for Democracy, and he remains a Senior Fellow in Human Freedom (non-resident) at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. He is also a News Contributor for MSNBC and NBC News. Dr. Cha received his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University, MIA from Columbia, B.A. Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, and A.B. in Economics from Columbia.

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