Asia 2019: The Experts Forecast

Join us for an annual Asia Society tradition as we look to Asia’s future with some of the world's leading experts on security and economic issues in Asia: Wendy Cutler, Vali Nasr, and John Park. They will offer their own forecasts and predictions for Asia in 2019, from the Korean peninsula to the South China Sea, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the U.S.-China trade disputes, elections in India and much more. Bring your own forecasts, and your questions. What’s in store for Asia in 2019?

Speakers

Wendy Cutler is Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) Vice President and Managing Director of the Washington D.C. Office. She joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Most recently, she served as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, working on a range of U.S. trade negotiations and initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region. In that capacity she was responsible for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, including the bilateral negotiations with Japan. Her other responsibilities with USTR included U.S.-China trade relations, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, and the U.S.-India Trade Policy Forum. She was the Chief U.S. Negotiator for the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.

Vali Nasr is Dean of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. From 2009 to 2011, he was Special Adviser to the President's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He is the author of several books, his most recent, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat deals with the implications of the Obama administration’s foreign policy on American strategic interests. His previous books, Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World and The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future examined the postwar sectarian violence in Iraq and the Arab Spring uprising, and contributed to U.S. policy formulated in response to those events.

John Park is Director of the Korea Working Group and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty affiliate with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and advises Northeast Asia policy-focused officials in the U.S. government. He was the 2012–2013 Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at MIT's Security Studies Program, and previously directed Northeast Asia Track 1.5 projects at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. He worked at Goldman Sachs, where he specialized in U.S. military privatization financing projects, was project leader of the North Korea Analysis Group at Harvard's Belfer Center, and worked in Goldman Sachs’ M&A Advisory Group in Hong Kong and The Boston Consulting Group's Financial Services Practice in Seoul. He is a member of Asia Society's Asia 21 Young Leaders Initiative.

Tom Nagorski (moderator) is Executive Vice President of Asia Society. He joined the Asia Society following a three-decade career in journalism-having served most recently as Managing Editor for International Coverage at ABC News.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the Nicholas and Sheila Platt Endowment for Public Policy and United.