Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations

Ambassador Anne Hall

April 8, 2024

Topic: The Baltics: Lessons in Courage

Anne Hall served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Lithuania from September 2016 until July 2019. Prior to that position she served as the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.

Ms. Hall was a career member of the senior Foreign Service and has broad experience in Europe. From August 2013 to July 2014 she served as Director of the Office of Central European Affairs in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. In that capacity she was responsible for managing relations with Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lichtenstein, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. From 2010 to 2013 she served as Deputy Chief of Mission and an extended period as Charge d’Affairs at the American Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania. From 2006 to 2009 Ms. Hall was Principal Officer and Consul General of the American Consulate General in Krakow, Poland.

Ms. Hall also served as the Senior Cyprus Country Officer in the Office of Southern European Affairs from 2003 to 2005, participating in negotiations in support of a Cyprus settlement. From 2001 to 2003 Ms. Hall served as the Country Officer for Norway and Denmark in the Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs, during the lead-up to the Baltic states’ 2004 entry into NATO and the European Union.

Ms. Hall’s other Washington assignments include Special Assistant to the Secretary of State (1994-1995), the Executive Secretariat (1993-1994), and Special Assistant to the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs. She also served overseas in China (1997-2000), Brazil (1989-1990) and Colombia (1988-1989).

She is the recipient of several Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards.  In July 2009 she became the first American Consul General to be awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.  She speaks Lithuanian, Polish, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese.  She graduated from the University of Maine and received master’s degrees from the University of Texas.

Ambassador Jake Walles

March 11, 2024

Topic: Conflict in the Middle East: Implications for U.S. interests

Jake Walles is a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Israeli-Palestinian issues, Tunisia, and counterterrorism. He was a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State for more than 35 years, serving as the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia from 2012 to 2015 and as consul general and chief of mission in Jerusalem from 2005 to 2009.  Walles also served as the Director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1998 to 2001 and as Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem from 1996-1998.

Other assignments included: Deputy Chief of Mission in Athens, First Secretary for Economic Affairs in Tel Aviv, Vice Consul in Amsterdam, and Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs in Washington. Walles also served as senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism from 2015 until his retirement in 2017.

During his long career at the State Department, Walles was actively involved in Middle East peace negotiations beginning with the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference in 1991 and continuing through the Obama administration. He was the recipient of the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award in 2016 for his contributions to U.S. national security policy. He also was the recipient of Presidential Meritorious Rank Awards in 2007 and 2012, and the Department’s Superior Honor Award in 2001 and 1994 for his work in promoting peace in the Middle East.

Heather Cox Richardson

Saturday, February 10, 6PM at the Camden Opera House

Topic: Democracy Awakening

Please note: this event is open only to Forum members and guests.

Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College. She has written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books whose subjects stretch from the European settlement of the North American continent to the history of the Republican Party through the Trump administration. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. She is the cohost of the Vox Media podcast, Now & Then.

In her compelling new book, DEMOCRACY AWAKENING: Notes on the State of America [Viking-2024], Richardson explains how a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals, leading us down a dangerous path to authoritarianism. By weaponizing language and promoting a false history, they have created a disaffected population and then promised to recreate an imagined past where those people could feel important again. Richardson argues that taking our country back starts by remembering the elements of the nation’s true history that marginalized Americans have always upheld – their dedication has sustained our democracy in the past and can be a roadmap for our future. 

Ambassador Ronald Lehman

January 8, 2024

Topic: Technology and the End of the Cold War -- and the End of the End of the Cold War

The Honorable Ronald F. Lehman II is the Counselor to the Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).   For many years, he was the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at LLNL.

Ambassador Lehman has been the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy in the Department of Defense, Ambassador and Chief Negotiator on Strategic Offensive Arms (START I), and Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He has also served on the National Security Council staff as a Senior Director, in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary, on the Senior Professional Staff of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, and served in Vietnam as a commissioned officer in the United States Army. In the past he has served as the Chair of the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee (TRAC), on the Presidential Advisory Board on Proliferation Policy, on the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board, as chair of the NATO High Level Group, on the governing board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and as a U.S. representative to a number of United Nations disarmament and review conferences.

Ambassador Lehman co-chaired (with David Franz) the National Academy of Sciences’ study on the future of Cooperative Threat Reduction and formerly co-chaired (with Ash Carter) the Policy Advisory Group on nonproliferation for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was on the Defense Science Board Task Forces on Globalization and Security, on Tritium, on Global Strike, and on Defense against Biological Weapons. He is served on the National Research Council Committee on U.S. Air Force Strategic Deterrence Military Capabilities in the 21st Century and served on the National Research Council’s Committee on Science, Technology, and Health Aspects of the Foreign Policy Agenda of the United States and on its Committee on Alternative Technologies to Replace Anti-Personnel Landmines. He was detailed to the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration as counterterrorism coordinator after the September 11, 2001, attacks. For the Department of Energy he was the U.S.-Snezhinsk Working Group Co-Chair for the Joint Russian-American Steering Committee on the Nuclear Cities Initiative. He served on the advisory panel for USSTRATCOM’s Global Innovation and Strategy Center. He was on the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on the U.S. Nuclear Posture. He was a Public Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.

He received his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University (1975) and his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College (1968).