Victor Cha

Dr. Victor Cha is the president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also a distinguished university professor and professor of government at Georgetown University. He currently serves on 10 editorial boards of academic journals and is the coeditor of the Contemporary Asia book series at Columbia University Press. He is on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute. He is also a foreign affairs contributor for MSNBC and NBC News. He was appointed by the Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the secretary of defense (2021-2025). Prior to that, he served on the National Security Council (NSC) and was responsible for Japan, Korea, Australia/New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations (2004-2007). Dr. Cha was the U.S. deputy head of delegation at the Six-Party Talks and received two outstanding service commendations during his tenure at the NSC. He is the author of eight books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford, 1999), The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Ecco, 2012), Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton, 2018), Korea: A New History of South and North (Yale, 2023), and The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea (Columbia University Press, 2024). Dr. Cha received a B.A. Honors from Oxford University, and a B.A., MIA and Ph.D. from Columbia University.