Victor D. Cha

Victor Cha is 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.

From 2021 to 2025, he was appointed by the Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the secretary of defense. From 2004 to 2007, he served on the National Security Council (NSC), where he was responsible for Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations. 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 nine books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States–Korea–Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press, 1999), which won the 2000 Ohira Book Prize, and The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Ecco, 2012), selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012.”

Dr. Cha is a two-time Fulbright scholar and a former Olin fellow at Harvard University, as well as a former Hoover, CISAC, and Koret fellow at Stanford University. He serves on the editorial boards of ten academic journals and is coeditor of the Contemporary Asia book series at Columbia University Press. He serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the Korea Society and is a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute. Dr. Cha received his PhD, MIA, and BA from Columbia University and a BA with honors from Oxford University.