Ralph Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is also senior editor of the Forum’s quarterly electronic journal, Comparative Connections. Cossa is a board member of the Council on U.S.-Korean Security Studies and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, as well as a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the ASEAN Regional Forum Experts and Eminent Persons Group, and he is a founding member of the Steering Committee of the multinational Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP).

He is a political/military affairs and national security specialist with more than 30 years of experience in formulating, articulating, and implementing U.S. security policy in the Asia-Pacific and Near East–South Asia regions. He writes a regular column for the Japan Times and Korea Times and is a frequent contributor to the International Herald Tribune and other regional newspapers and periodicals.

Cossa served in the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1993, achieving the rank of colonel and last serving as special assistant to the commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Command. He previously served as deputy director for strategic studies at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies and earlier as a national security affairs fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Cossa holds a B.A. in international relations from Syracuse University, an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University, and an M.S. in strategic studies from the Defense Intelligence College.