Thursday, October 18 at 2:00 pm
Speaking in Maine next takes us to the University of Southern Maine in Portland and the World Affairs Council of Maine (in collaboration with Camden Conference and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations) for a town hall discussion about China by former independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler who discusses China’s status as a rising global force.
Cutler will present, “Slipping the Noose: How the U.S and China Could Evade the Thucydides Trap." Harvard Professor Graham Allison has identified the most important challenge of our time: how to avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power like China threatens to displace a ruling power like the United States. Drawing on lessons from history and observations from more than a decade of living and working in China, Eliot Cutler will help the audience try to calibrate the lens through which we view this challenge. We’ll explore the particular challenges of dealing with economic and political realignment and mitigating the adverse consequences of change in a world of remarkable interdependence.
Eliot Cutler is a lawyer, public servant, and businessman. As a lawyer and strategist for governments, business corporations and citizen groups, Eliot Cutler helped clients grapple with legal and public policy problems during a career in three law firms and two countries that spanned more than 35 years. From 2006 to 2009, Cutler lived in Beijing, where he opened the first office in Mainland China for Akin Gump, was the partner in charge of the firm's Asia practice and represented Chinese clients in making investments outside China.
As a public servant, Cutler worked in Washington, D.C. from 1968 to 1973 for U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, where he helped craft the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Superfund, the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws. From 1977 to 1980 Cutler served in the White House under President Jimmy Carter as Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Later in his career Cutler was an independent candidate for governor in his home state of Maine and was the founding CEO of the Maine Center for Graduate Professional Studies in the University of Maine System.
Today Cutler is a member of the board of directors and senior advisor to the Chairman and to the CEO at Thornburg Investment Management, an asset management firm and family of mutual funds that Cutler helped to create in 1983 and that is now one of the 50 largest asset managers in the United States. Cutler is leading the the development of Thornburg's asset management business in Asia. He also is chairman of MaineAsia LLC, a company developing Asian markets for Maine food products, and he is a principal investor in ArchSolar, a company developing more efficient greenhouse technologies for sustainable year-round agriculture in Maine and other northern latitudes.
Cutler is chairman of MaineAsia LLC, a company developing Asian markets for Maine food products, and is a principal investor in ArchSolar, a company developing more efficient solar electric technologies for sustainable year-round agriculture in Maine and other northern latitudes. As a senior advisor to the Chairman and to the CEO of Thornburg, a mutual fund Cutler helped to create in 1983, he focuses on the development of Thornburg's asset management portfolio in Asia.
Eliot Cutler is a graduate of Deerfield Academy (1964), Harvard College (1968, cum laude) and the law school of Georgetown University (1974). He and his wife Melanie Stewart Cutler, M.D. live in the Portland, Maine area and have two adult children.
Source: www.wacmaine.org
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