Joshua Byun

Joshua Byun is an Assistant Professor of Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He specializes in questions related to American grand strategy. Byun is the author of The Adversary’s Veto: Rival Powers, Alliance Politics, and the Limits of Grand Strategy (Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2027). He is also co-author, with John J. Mearsheimer, of The Two-Leviathan Problem: Why Rival Hegemons Cannot Coexist (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2027).

Byun’s scholarship speaks to a wide range of issues that arise in debates surrounding grand strategy, including preventive war, the relationship between power politics and international norms, the performative uses of violence, and the making of political order. Some of his works have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, Texas National Security Review, and Contemporary Security Policy. Policy analysis and commentary based on these works can be found in forums like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Quarterly.

Byun holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in International Studies and Political Science, summa cum laude, from Korea University. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College. He has also held the Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Global Innovation Program Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, and the Hans J. Morgenthau Predoctoral Fellowship at the Notre Dame International Security Center. Before beginning his academic career, Byun served as the interpreter to South Korea’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.