Douglas H. Paal

Douglas H. Paal

Douglas H. Paal has held senior appointments in the U.S. Government and the corporate world. He was the unofficial U.S. representative to Taipei as director of the American Institute of Taiwan from 2002 to 2006, and worked on the National Security Council (NSC) staffs of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush between 1986 and 1993 as director of Asian Affairs, senior director, and special assistant to the President.

Prior to his service in the White House, Douglas worked on the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff and held diplomatic appointments in Singapore and Beijing. He also worked as a senior analyst and deputy national intelligence officer for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. After leaving government, he joined JPMorgan Chase International as its Vice-Chairman from 2006 to 2008.

A Vietnam war veteran (he served as a naval officer during the war), he studied Japanese in Tokyo after graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chinese Studies and Asian History from Brown University and a PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University.

He has written and spoken extensively on U.S. policy in Asia and Asian affairs, his articles and interviews being published and broadcast by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the South China Morning Post, The National Interest, Korea Times, the Washington Times, the Far Eastern Economic Review, RIA Novosti, World Politics Review, C-SPAN, the BBC, PBS and CCTV. He has also published numerous commentaries and policy papers through the Washington DC-based think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he directed its Asia Programme and is now a Distinguished Fellow. He sits on the board of trustees of the Asia Foundation, a non-profit international development organization.