Chuck Downs

Chuck Downs

Author, Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy

(AEI Press, 1999)

Chuck Downs, whose career in national security issues spans many decades, is the author of Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy. The book explains how North Korea succeeds even though it brings very little to the negotiating table. A Korean (Hangul) version was published within months of the book’s English publication in 1999. He is also co-editor, with Ambassador James R. Lilley, of Crisis in the Taiwan Straits (NDU Press, 1997).

Mr. Downs retired from Federal service in 2000, from the position of Senior Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to the House Policy Committee of the U. S. House of Representatives.

Since that time, he has worked as an independent consultant on foreign policy matters, serving for three years as the Executive Director of the U. S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, an organization he helped found in 2001. He was on the Board of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea from 2001-2011, as Treasurer from 2006-2008.

Mr. Downs served the majority of his career in the Pentagon, primarily as Deputy Director for Regional Affairs and Congressional Relations in the Pentagon’s East Asia office. In this capacity, he was responsible for drafting the East Asia strategy reports and was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (1996) and Defense Civilian Service Medal (1993).

In the 1980s, as Assistant Director of the Office of Foreign Military Rights Affairs, he was responsible for coordinating negotiations with the United Kingdom regarding military use of Diego Garcia, Status of Forces agreements, and U.S. military arrangements in Singapore and Australia.

From 1979-1984, as Chief of Policy Analysis in the Department of the Interior’s Territorial and International Affairs office, his duties included representing Interior in the Micronesian status negotiations, particularly the negotiations for arrangements governing U.S. use of Kwajalein Missile Range in the mid-Pacific. From 1973-1975, Mr. Downs studied the issues surrounding the termination of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, contributing to a book and a New York Times article on these negotiations.

Mr. Downs graduated with a B.A. with honors in political science from Williams College in 1972. He was selected to attend the Federal Government’s highest level professional training program, the Senior Seminar of the Department of State, 1989-1990.