Robert M. Cutler earned his doctorate at The University of Michigan after receiving two Bachelor’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After over a dozen years in leading universities in Canada, France, Russia, Switzerland and the United States, he expanded into policy analysis and consulting as an Energy Security and Geo-economics Specialist. He has over 20 years’ experience in international energy diplomacy: advising energy firms, governments, international institutions and NGOs; framing policy and research issues and leading teams to address them, and producing briefings and analytical bulletins. He has published scores of refereed academic articles, policy articles and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Energy Research Institute and a senior researcher at Carleton University’s Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is fluent in English, French and Russian. He can be reached at rmc@alum.mit.edu and tweets from @RobertMCutler .
Harald Malmgren, President of Malmgren Global LLC, is a recognized expert on world trade and investment flows having broad experience in both the public and private sectors. He began U.S. Government service under President Kennedy as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense, then under President Johnson became the first Assistant U.S. Trade Representative. He has been an Advisor to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, to the Secretary-General of the OECD, and to President Nixon. As Principal Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, with rank of Ambassador, he was chief U.S. trade negotiator under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Since leaving government in 1975, Malmgren has been Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Smithsonian Institution; and Co-founder, Cordel Hull Institute. He continues to advise on strategy to international corporations, investment banks, sovereign wealth funds and finance and prime ministers of a number of governments. He has continued throughout his career in academia and the public and private sectors to write on economics, markets and public policy.
This article focuses on defence and security issues on the one hand and, on the other hand, on the related questions of the economy, trade and energy. These are two of the four issue-areas that the U.S.–Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, established in 2009, identified as priority areas of the bilateral cooperation. The others are democracy and cultural exchanges.