CHINA Town Hall featuring Condoleezza Rice (webcast) and Eliot Cutler

Presented in collaboration with the Camden Conference and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, our CHINA Town Hall program will begin at 6:00pm with a webcast featuring former secretary of state and national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice. Questions for Secretary Rice may be submitted ahead of time by emailing info@wacmaine.org.

Following Secretary Rice's webcast, Eliot Cutler will join us to 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.

This event is free and open to the public. For those able, we kindly request a suggested donation of $15 to support the programming of the World Affairs Council of Maine.

Condoleezza Rice is currently the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, and professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

From January 2005 to 2009, Secretary Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first African American woman to hold the post. She also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

From 1989 through March 1991, Secretary Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff as director and senior director of Soviet and East European Affairs, and as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Since 2009, she has served as a founding partner at RiceHadleyGates, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The firm works with senior executives of major companies to implement strategic plans and expand in emerging markets.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and currently residing in Stanford, California, Secretary Rice earned her B.A. in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her M.A. from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded thirteen honorary doctorates.

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.

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.