We are fortunate to have three great panelists. Barrett Teesian, in a few short years, has become the poster child for new leadership in greater Portland, Maine, and far, far beyond. His vision for community outreach and what Portland Community Squash has accomplished has become a national role model. Susan Thornton speaks fluent Mandarin and Russian and was a senior diplomat at the US State Department. Last year, Roberta Jacobson, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, described Susan Thornton to me as the smartest person she had worked with in her own 30-year career at the State Department. And finally, our guest of honor, Fiona Hill. Quoting the New York Times: as she was in academia and at the White House, Miss Hill is a trenchant analyst of a troubled world. She has been appointed by the current British government to co-author, with the former secretary general of NATO and a retired British Army general, a strategic review of defense policy for an era in which Russia is menacing Europe and the US is retreating from it. Please join me in welcoming our panel. Thank you so much.
I want to congratulate the Freeport Speech Board on a tremendous season. It's a real privilege to be with you tonight. My name is Barrett Teesian, and we'll get to Portland Community Squash later, but I wanted to start — Susan and Fiona have really had parallel careers, even spending time in the Soviet Union at the same time, and now both with their affiliations to the Brookings Institution. So I'd love to take a backseat for the first half of this talk and have them speak a little bit to their careers and the state of the world today. But in true Fiona fashion, it's always about the solution. A lot of times we spend the last five minutes talking about solutions. We're going to take the bulk of the hour talking about solutions tonight and make sure we leave half an hour for questions at the end. But before we launch into your conversation, I'd love Fiona maybe just to give us an introduction and some of the topics that we're going to hit on today.
We've also come to a situation where, very sad to say, there seems to be incredible disregard for human life. You know, we're 80 years since the end of World War II. We're seeing the breakdown of the UN and other larger systems. We promised ourselves we'd never engage in the mass slaughter of humanity again, and we are doing all of this again. And tonight we'll discuss how do we get there and how we can get out of this. Also, of course, what's the future of the United States' relationships around the world — that's pretty critical. Susan, being one of our most distinguished foreign service representatives, I think what we're really seeing here is the breakdown of the larger global system, and the question is what do we really put in place. And what we'd like to talk to all of you tonight and discuss with you is how we start both at the top and also at the bottom. And here in Maine and in the United States as well, we're asking the same kind of questions. And that's why we're so delighted to be here at Freeport, for a community organization that's trying to make a difference, and also to be here with Barrett, with Portland Community Squash being just the exact idea of a community grassroots organization that's trying to make a difference. So I think tonight we'll try to put all of those things together and talk about how, in the international system as well as the domestic system, we can figure out ways of creating something new. Maybe not building back but building forward, and trying to, you know, basically lean into all of the — let's just say — the players who are usually thought of as peripheral or marginal but actually can make a big difference. So that's where we wanted to start.
Yeah. I mean, I would just say, picking up on the theme of the UN: you know, there are certainly many countries around the world — I think most — that, as you said, want the UN to continue, multilateral organizations to continue, because for these smaller countries that is the place where they have a voice, where they have a community to come together. They don't have a lot of power in the international system, but they also do want the United States to continue to play an important role there. And I think one of the things that we're getting wrong is that there is a happy medium between the US doing everything and paying, you know, all the dues, and the US really pulling out of treaties and organizations and things as we're seeing now. I mean, it's possible for the US to have a more kind of tailored or trimmed-down or burden-sharing role in the UN system, if you want, in the multilateral system, without abandoning all these institutions that we've built up over the last 75 years.
And if I could ask, what was it like during your careers when these institutions, as you put it, might have been intact back in the 1980s?
The United Nations was where you thought everything was going to happen, where you would have all of the peacekeeping and the interventions, and everybody was always talking about, 'Call up the United Nations.' And sadly, we heard at the most recent UN assembly, 'Why bother with the United Nations?' But there was that idea that that would be the locus of peacemaking and then obviously keeping the peace. And so that's where I went off — I went to the Soviet Union. And while I was there, Gorbachev and Reagan had the Moscow summit of 1988, which was that whole feeling that we're on a different trajectory. The missile crisis was stopped by the conclusion of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces, the INF treaty. I can see that many of you will remember this, and others will be looking it up on Google, but basically there was this idea that we were in a new era.
Yeah. And I think that's the one thing that I will take away from this arc of your careers going to Russia in that period, and now 40, 50 years on, thinking: how did we get back to a point where we seem to be in this standoff again with Russia as a successor state to the Soviet Union? What happened to all of that promise? And some of it is a story about failures of diplomacy. Some of it's a story about failures of imagination. But I think a lot of it is a story about complacency, and of just thinking that a trajectory, once you got onto it, it could not be stopped or something would not divert it. And I think for Susan — and I know that your career was in the trenches in those far-flung areas of the former Soviet Union — I think it was probably quite obvious to see where things might have gone awry. We couldn't anticipate as we moved on that things might change or might go back to how they had been.
Yeah. Well, I remember, and actually I got that same degree in Soviet studies in the spring of '91, which became a degree in history by the winter of '91. So we are very much Soviet Union specialists — at least we can read Soviet literature, or Russian literature, which is great, of course. But I remember the optimism of that time, and people also, even in my line of work in the State Department, kind of just automatically assuming that everything was going to be going on the up escalator.
There must have been a narrative, an American narrative, during your time representing this country that you believed in.
Well, for me, I mean, America was the gold standard. I mean, I came here for the opportunity of a first-rate education and then decided to become an American — so American very much by choice, and really glad to be here. But you know what, I worry about that gold standard being anything but at this particular moment. And that goes for the diplomatic service, and that's already been alluded to by Susan. Everybody looked up to the United States for its institutions, for its soft power. It wasn't just the soft power of American culture — blue jeans and chewing gum, which was the big rage, by the way, in the Soviet Union when we were both there. And unfortunately, coming from the UK, I didn't actually have a pair of blue jeans, so I felt really already kind of at a bit of a disadvantage. But it was that idea that America was a country of promise, of democracy, of actually showing an example to the rest of the world, especially after the devastation of World War II, where the United States had been so altruistic and generous and had really been also the guarantor of stability and democracy in Europe and elsewhere — that this was the place to be, this was the place to look up to. And the foreign service was absolutely the gold standard. Working for the United States government, no matter who was in power, the idea was that you were really serving a state that made a difference, and it absolutely was making a difference.
Yeah. And I guess for me, maybe this is the way that we segue to the other part of the conversation. You're such a genius, Barrett. You know, for me it was really — I mean, the US always had ideas. It's leadership. Leadership is the thing that makes the big difference. It wasn't because the US was the richest country in the world; it wasn't because we had the biggest military. It was that we were always there trying to figure out how to solve problems and come up with ideas on how to go forward. And I think that was what really drew me to the foreign service. I wanted, of course, to serve my country and support all those ideals, but it's also when you serve overseas — all my posts were high hardship posts, because I actually liked that, and it was fascinating. And you don't go to these places for vacation normally; you can always go to Paris for vacation, but you can't go to Turkmenistan for vacation. But you see these people, and everyone in the State Department has to do a visa-issuing tour — usually it's your first tour. I was in Kazakhstan. You see these people come in, and they're so excited to go to the US, and they're not wealthy, and they're not famous, and they're not maybe even highly educated, but it's that idea of going to the US and seeing Disney World or just seeing what it's like to be in such a dynamic and open society — especially since a lot of the places I worked were quite closed societies. And the idea that you can go to the US and you can start your life over. You don't have any past pedigree that you have to carry with you.
And how did you find what your next chapter was going to be? And what impact are you trying to have on the world right now?
Well, look, I think, you know, like Susan — and Susan, you will speak for herself on this as well — when you've been in these kinds of positions and you've seen what the potential, the capacity of the United States is, and you see that we're in a time of trouble, and you've worked with some amazing people, you kind of know that you still need to do something, and you have to find a way of working with those other great people to try to find some solutions for the problems that we're in. And one of the things that's always been extremely important for me — my home was the Brookings Institution, where Susan also has an affiliation. It's Brookings Institution, and it's not a university or a college, but it does have a role in trying to educate the public or impart information, and also in terms of public policy. And Brookings is a great platform for highlighting issues, working with other colleagues to try to come up with ideas of ways that we can move forward on a range of things — the kind of things that you're trying to do here in Portland, in Freeport, in Maine.
But I also — I'm somebody who benefited immensely from education. My father was a coal miner. He left school at 14. He didn't have a formal education; he had no qualifications whatsoever apart from things he learned on the job. And he always wanted to, as he put it, better himself and to learn things. And he always tried to sign himself up for lectures and all kinds of opportunities if people were there doing outreach to the miners. And he and my mother, who trained to be a nurse, always said: if you get an education, it's basically a privilege, and you've got to do something with it. And education has been what opened the door for me. First going to university in the UK at St. Andrews — I mean, I had all my education paid for. I got a grant from the Durham Miners Association of $100 — it was £100 actually at the time — to study Russian. They actually gave it to me in an envelope. And I asked the man who'd given me the money, because I wanted this for a language course, probably about the same time you were trying to study Russian. I said, 'Well, what do I do to show you that I've used this money?' He said, 'Well, just come back and tell us you can speak Russian, pet.' So I've been spending my whole life trying to prove I speak Russian to the Durham miners. And I took that on very seriously. And I thought, so now, with the role — I'm the chancellor of Durham University in the UK, back in my home region. I'm also on the Harvard Board of Overseers, which is the advisory board, and I'm trying to figure out, just as everybody else here is, how I can give back in some way. And education is really the key. And this is what's happening here in Freeport — all these discussions that you've been doing, this is part of education, of outreach. What you're doing at Portland Community Squash is education. All the investments that people here are making in all the local colleges here in Maine — my daughter's a freshman at Colby College, I'm just blown away by what Colby is doing. And I think that this is where we start. This is the strength of America, in education. Harvard was first set up before the country had appeared. The public land-grant universities were set up in the middle of the Civil War to pull the country forward. We've always found a solution in education, and that's kind of what I'd like to be more involved in in the next phase.
Yeah. I guess for me, I'm also affiliated with the Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center — that's where I went after I left the State Department. And I totally couldn't agree with you more. My husband's a teacher. We are very big believers in public education, especially — I went to public schools in Massachusetts. And I think education — the thing that gives me hope in my darkest days these days, when half my colleagues at the State Department have just gotten fired, is having students come and talk to them and have class with them. I mean, it's so inspiring to see the energy and the sort of dynamic future vision that some of our young people have.
Well, this is where I kick into gear a little bit.
So how does the van-driving, squash-coaching guy come to become good friends with Fiona Hill? And why is Fiona Hill in Maine? It's because, both of you having seen institutions at every level of our federal government and the global stage, you're here in Maine for a reason, and you're working back in Durham for a reason. Because the solutions right now, it's easier to heal your local institutions and to heal the cultural ailments of division that have been eroding at our bigger institutions. For me it's always been ground up. And I'll tell you a little story. I think James and Becca Everetts are here tonight, but Jimmy and I used to get breakfast together in Portland and talk about building a community center using a couple squash courts. And at the time I was working with kids in the basement of the YMCA, and I had a day job crunching numbers. And we did it. A group of people came together and we built a community center. The reason we've gotten some recognition is that we went out around the country looking for the best models in terms of how to build a community center, and it took us all over the country, and we got to Brookings. We had conversations all the way up to the White House, and someone said, 'Go build it.' So we worked with the Brookings Institution, Laureus Sport for Good in New York, the Sport for Development Journal in Chicago. We built a peer-reviewed, data-driven, lean, mean fighting machine that's put 700 kids on a path to college. We just passed a thousand members. We represent every corner of the city of Portland, and we're creating the social bridging and the social capital it takes to get things done. But Jimmy and I were aspirational. You know, what's next? What's the next rung of the ladder? And I even played with some national foundations, and I worked with the Afterschool Alliance in DC, and I went up the ladder a little bit to check it out. But here you are. I'm still driving the van, and you came to hang out with me.
I don't need to go up there. And honestly, the solutions lie in celebrating our community builders.
And the more leadership we have, the more community builders. I didn't even know that was a term coming out of Bowdoin, but it's a role I found myself in, and I will go to bat and champion and work with anyone that's driving the van. But our local institutions need business acumen. They need volunteers like the people in this room giving time, treasure, and talent. Anyone can be a flash in the pan and run a great program for a couple years. Can you build a gymnastics studio or a community theater or a ceramics studio that's going to last for 50 to 100 years? If you're going to do that, you have to build the business engine behind it. And so I think the calling to this room — and I'm curious to hear the projects — and Susan has a project going with soil and farming as well. But these — we need to strengthen these local institutions.
