Victor D. Cha (, born 1960) is an American political scientist currently serving as president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is a former Director for

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

n Affairs at the White House

National Security Council A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...

(NSC) during the George W. Bush administration, with responsibility for

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and South Korea,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

.Victor Cha
– Whitehouse.gov He was

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

's top advisor on

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

n affairs.Officials Head to Korea for GI Remains
– The Ledger Independent He holds the D.S. Song-Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and previously served as Director of the Asian Studies program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

.Victor D. Cha
– Georgetown University

Early life and education

Cha's father came to U.S. from South Korea to study at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1954. Cha was born in the early 1960s in the United States. He received a BA in economics from

in 1983, an MA in philosophy, politics, and economics from Hertford College, Oxford, in 1986, an MIA from Columbia, and a PhD in political science from Columbia in 1994 with a dissertation titled ''Alignment despite antagonism: Japan and Korea as quasi-allies''.Victor Cha Returns to Georgetown from NSC – Georgetown University

Career

Cha is a former John M. Olin National Security Fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, two-time Fulbright Scholar, Hoover National Fellow, and Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) Fellow at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He held the D. S. Song-Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and Government in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and directed the American Alliances in Asia Project at

until 2004. Victor Cha official portrait

In December 2004, Cha joined the

as Director for Asian Affairs. At the NSC, he was responsible for South Korea,

, and the Pacific Island nations. He also served as the U.S. Deputy Head of Delegation for the Six Party Talks. Cha received two Outstanding Service commendations during his tenure at the White House. Cha returned to Georgetown in late 2007 after public service leave. Currently, he is the inaugural holder of the D.S. Song- Korea Foundation Chair in Asian studies and a joint appointment with the School of Foreign Service core faculty and the Department of Government and is the Director of the Asian Studies program. He is also a senior adviser at the CSIS on Asian affairs. It was reported in January 2018 that the Trump administration expected to withdraw his nomination for U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. Cha had reportedly in December 2017 privately expressed disagreement with the Trump administration's consideration to launch a limited strike at North Korea and to withdraw from the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement. Cha later praised the summit meetings between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un for peacefully resolving the 2017–2018 North Korea crisis, calling the 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit "the start of a diplomatic process that takes us away from the brink of war." In 2020, Cha, along with over 130 other former Republican national security officials, signed a statement asserting that Trump was unfit to serve another term. They wrote: "To that end, we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him." Cha is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.

Publications

Cha is the author of numerous articles, books, and other works on Asian security. He authored ''Alignment Despite Antagonism: The US-Korea-Japan Security Triangle'' (1999), which received the 2000 Ohira Book Prize. The book presented a new, alternative theory regarding Japan and South Korea's political alignment despite their historical animosity. Cha wrote this in response to previous research on the subject, which he felt focused too heavily on their respective historical antagonism. In 2005, Cha co-authored ''Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies'' with Professor David Kang of Dartmouth College and its Tuck School of Business. The co-authors presented their respective viewpoints on the best way to handle the Korean conflict, with Cha presenting a more "hawkish" approach and Kang presenting his more "dovish" arguments. Cha published ''Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia'' in 2009. In 2012 he published a timely book on North Korea in the wake of Kim Jong-Il's death, ''The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future.'' Cha published a book on East Asian security in 2016, ''Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia''. His most recent book presents and analyses modern Korean history and was co-authored with Ramon Pacheco Pardo, ''Korea: A New History of South & North''. He has published articles on international relations and East Asia in '' International Security'', ''

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and foreign policy of the United States, U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit organization, nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership or ...

'', '' Survival'', '' Political Science Quarterly'', '' International Studies Quarterly'', '' Orbis'', '' Armed Forces and Society'', '' Journal of Peace Research'', '' Security Dialogue'', '' Australian Journal of International Affairs'', '' Asian Survey'', '' Journal of East Asian Studies'', ''Asian Perspective'', the ''Japanese Journal of Political Science'' and '' The Washington Post''. Recent publications include "Winning Asia: An Untold American Foreign Policy Success" in the November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs; "Beijing's Olympic-Sized Catch 22" in the Summer 2008 issue of the Washington Quarterly; and "Powerplay Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia" in the Winter 2009/10 issue of International Security.

Books

* ''The Geneva Framework Agreement and Korea's future'', East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 1995 * ''Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle'', Stanford University Press, 2000 * ''Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies'', Columbia University Press, 2005 (with David C. Kang) * ''Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia'', Columbia University Press, 2008 * ''The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future'', Ecco/

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

, 2012 * ''Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia'', Princeton University Press, 2016 * ''Korea: A New History of South & North'',

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

, 2023 (with Ramon Pacheco Pardo)

Reports

* Breaking Bad: South Korea's Nuclear Option, '' CSIS'', April 29, 2024

Articles

* Eyes Wide Open: Strategic Elite Views of South Korea’s Nuclear Options, '' Washington Quarterly'', July 8, 2024 * America’s Asian Partners Are Not Worried Enough About Trump, ''

'', June 26, 2024 * America Needs to Reassure Japan and South Korea, ''

'', February 9, 2023 * How to Stop Chinese Coercion, ''

'', December 14, 2022
Complex Patchworks: U.S. Alliances as Part of Asia's Regional Architecture
(''Asia Policy'', January 2011)
Korea: A Peninsula in Crisis and Flux
in ''Strategic Asia 2004–05: Confronting Terrorism in the Pursuit of Power'' ( National Bureau of Asian Research, 2004)
South Korea: Anchored or Adrift?
in ''Strategic Asia 2003–04: Fragility and Crisis'' ( National Bureau of Asian Research, 2003)
Defensive Realism and Japan's Approach toward Korean Reunification
(''NBR Analysis'', 2003)

Personal life

Cha lives in

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

with his wife and two sons.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cha, Victor Living people Walsh School of Foreign Service faculty Columbia College (New York) alumni School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford American writers of Korean descent Scholars of North Korea United States National Security Council staffers United States presidential advisors George W. Bush administration personnel American politicians of Korean descent CSIS people Asian conservatism in the United States 1960 births American foreign policy writers American international relations scholars American political scientists