The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum welcomes the return of Harvard's Graham Allison and The Brookings Institution's Fiona Hill for a program, "Reconsidering the Trilateral Cooperation Study: Relationships Between Japan, Russia and the US." A discussion of their research, presented in a Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum in 1995, considers where Russia-Japan, Russia-US and US-Japan relationships stand, on the eve of the Presidential election. The free program, at Wentworth By the Sea Hotel on November 2nd at 6 pm celebrates the 110th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize for orchestrating the Portsmouth Peace Treaty.
Graham Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. As "Founding Dean" of the modern Kennedy School, under his leadership from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew twenty-fold to become a major professional school of public policy and government. Dr. Allison served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans under President Clinton, where he coordinated DOD strategy and policy towards Russia, Ukraine, and the other states of the former Soviet Union. He was awarded the Department of Defense's highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, twice: first by Secretary Cap Weinberger and second by Secretary Bill Perry. He served as a member of the Defense Policy Board for Secretaries Weinberger, Carlucci, Cheney, Aspin, Perry and Cohen. Dr. Allison's first book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), was released in an updated and revised second edition (1999) and ranks among the all-time bestsellers with more than 450,000 copies in print. His latest book (2013), Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World (2013, co-authored with Robert Blackwill), is ranked as a bestseller in the US and abroad. His previous book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, is now in its third printing and was selected by the New York Times as one of the "100 most notable books of 2004."
Fiona Hill is director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. She is a frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, and has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. She has co-authored two books with Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford Gaddy: The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold (2003) and Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (2013, revised and updated, 2015). Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, including associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, director of the Project on Ethnic Conflict in the Former Soviet Union, and coordinator of the Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations. Hill holds a master’s in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University where she was a Frank Knox Fellow. She also holds a master’s in Russian and modern history from St. Andrews University in Scotland, and has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Hill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the board of trustees of The Eurasia Foundation.
The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum was founded in 1994 to explore diplomatic themes “in the spirit of The Portsmouth Peace Treaty.” Since then, the Forum has hosted senior diplomats including Ambassadors Dennis Ross and Samantha Power.
“When we commemorated the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize for orchestrating the Treaty peace conference, the director of the Nobel Peace Prize Institute in Oslo sent us congratulations for being the first to ever celebrate the anniversary of a Prize,” said Charles B. Doleac, Forum chairman and senior partner at Boynton, Waldron, Doleac, Woodman & Scott PA. “The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum makes connections between the history that happened In Portsmouth in 1905 to end the Russo-Japanese War, and the idea that citizen diplomacy is both possible and critical to the 21st century global community.”
During the 110th Treaty anniversary last September the Consul General of Japan in Boston and the Consul General of the Russian Federation joined the commemoration of the shared Russian, Japanese and American Treaty history – the first time in 110 years that Russian and Japanese diplomats had stood in the same room where they celebrated the peace in 1905.
The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum supports ongoing research, the website PortsmouthPeaceTreaty.org, an exhibit in the John Paul Jones House Museum, a lecture series and the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Living Memorial cherry trees around the state. To learn more, visit www.PortsmouthPeaceTreaty.com or contact Charles Doleac, cdoleac@nhlawfirm.com, 603-436-4010.
Media contact: Stephanie Seacord, sseacord@lemd.com, 603-772-1835
