welcome to the second annual talk of the town event i'm natalie leno chair of the vision twenty one implementation committee and i'm doug john a member of the committee for the vicar's we refer to it we in two thousand and seventeen in response to our residents feedback from the vix survey and titled working vision for belmont's future one of the things people said in the survey is they wanted more opportunities to build community so what better way than to introduce ourselves to each other tonight we are again please to present notable belmont residents each will talk about a topic of personal and or professional interest we truly appreciate all of their time and generosity in sharing themselves with us tonight before we begin we'd like to thank the town for its generous support of the event our co sponsor belmont public schools and the faculties of the chanter a middle school and belmont high school for their collaboration we'd also like to thank our partner belmont bucks last but not least we'd like to think of a very special thank you to carol trader the lead organizer of this event and former member of the vision committee despite no longer being on the committee carrol eagerly raised her hand to take the lead on organizing the event again this year she took the lead on every facet of the of it from speaker selection to marketing to coordinating all of the logistics and she spent countless hours and done an amazing job so a very big thank you to you carol from all of us on the committee now for some housekeeping please look around and find the exit which is closest to you want to do that please join me and and none of you have this advanced machine as i have ok please make sure they're silenced we hate to activate the vic security force to come and get your device from you  so the other next thing is local media outlets are covering this event and the belmont media center is taping it absolutely no other photography or recording is allowed on the back of your program you'll find a feedback form tonight's program was designed in large part based on the feedback we received last year please fill out the form and bring it to the back of the auditorium on your way out and now it is my pleasure to introduce jane clayson johnson who will tell you as well tell us more about this evening's format jane and her husband mark have lived in belmont for over fifteen years they have two children and their oldest daughter will be entering belmont high next year jane is an award winning journalist widely known for her work hosting the nationally syndicated radio program on point  many may remember jane from her work at c b s news hosting the morning show with bryant gumbel before that jane traveled the world as a correspondent for a b c news she has interviewed presidents and hollywood celebrities and covered news around the world from kosovo to indonesia and across the u s her bestselling book i am a mother was published in two thousand and seven and chronicles her decision to leave network news and to have a family jane is publishing her next book about depression next year please welcome our friend and our host jane  thank you so much it's nice to be back for a second season of talk of the town thanks to doug and natalie and carole and all the people behind the scenes who made this night possible i will remind us that it's the first day of spring the spring equinox arrived at twelve eighteen today just in time for another nor'easter so what a blockbuster march it has been but we're nice and warm here tonight and forward to a really nice event this is belmont's version of ted talks we have a great town and it's wonderful to be able to hear from some of our talented and accomplished residents so we have modeled this event on the ted talk format we're not going to be taking audience questions during the evening but our presenters will be here after if you'd like to speak with them we have a wonderful line up tonight one programming note  we're sorry that preston williams could not be with us tonight he sends his regrets many of us know dr williams of course from his esteemed career the harvard divinity school he is incredible  we have arranged for dr williams to tape the session that he would have given tonight and that will be broadcast at a later date by the belmont media center so we're grateful that he would do that and we look forward to that and we will miss him tonight so let us begin our first presenter is deborah cash deborah cash is the executive director of boston dance alliance her roles in the boston cultural community have spanned journalism education consulting and advocacy for the rights of creative professionals honored by the origination cultural arts center as its two thousand and seventeen champion of the arts deborah regularly presents audience in gage lectures for the world music crash arts and is a scholar in residence at the bates dance festival tonight she will be speaking about the usable past of jewish poetry and literature including selections from her work in progress the bumblebees divonne winner of the rothschild award from the  institute she has lived among the multilingual neighbors on marble or street in belmont for almost thirty years we're really delighted to have deborah here tonight please welcome her simultaneous cultures different worlds of language of identity and many of you here already know the melting pot was never a particularly accurate metaphor the stew of american identity may have affirmed out of many one but most of us cling to aspects of our inheritance is this is true whether we're indigenous nip c british colonists i mean ian refugees or survivors of the irish famine this is true whether we came in chains from africa or whether we reach the atlantic shore with relief as we fled for our lives some of these traces are visible to others and others are not but for those of us who are here in north america in the united states in massachusetts and yes in this lovely community of homes that is belmont we make both conscious and unconscious choices of what to retain what we discard and most important for this discussion the see what aspects of the legacies into which we were born we choose to affirm sociologists have a term for this the search for a usable past it's a term coined in one thousand nine hundred fifteen by van wyck brooks jewish american composer philip glass as some of you will know was talking about that when he wrote in his memoir the past is reinvented and becomes the future but the lineage is  is jews from russian villages fleeing pogroms and poverty philadelphia greengrocers sweat shop garment workers shoe wholesalers and a pediatrician working in downtown detroit i don't read or speak yiddish my hebrew is good enough to pray to understand the chanting of the torah and to find a bus stop in downtown tel aviv i need a dictionary to work through simple texts but there's no question i live in two worlds i routinely look up at the night sky and assessing the moon determine when the next holiday is going to start if you didn't know it's passover ten days stop and shop has had passover foods out for over a month i want to take you on a brief journey of what it means to me to claim an identity as a jewish american english speaking second wave feminist poet living in the first decades of the twenty first century before i read you one of the two poems i want to share this evening let me give you a little orientation the holiday of sarah is one that very few american jews outside the orthodox community still observe it comes near the end of the autumn holiday cycle that opens with russia and etc which means the assembly or gathering of the eighth day bridges the holiday of soup code where people eat in rustic shelters outdoors and the holiday of s during which we read about the death of moses then we start our annual cycle of toe reading again by chanting the story of creation death and life are very close at this holiday remembering the past and opening into a new cycle brushing up against each other my father ralph died on me at sarah in two thousand and five and on that same night in october so did the great civil rights activist rosa parks the poem i wrote could only have been written by someone who lived in my particular two worlds would only have needed to be written n which when he is my father die blessed be you in the city and blessed be you in the field blessed be you delivering vegetables leading a horse rented by the hour before your family could afford a car and blessed be you with index card in your shirt pocket to help you remember your obligations blessed be you washing your hands with soap and blessed be you getting your nails polished so when you handled newborn babies your hands would be as clean as their consciences blessed be you in the barbershop quartet and blessed be you with paul robeson in seventy six the sky was red blessed be you lying on the grass forgetting your father urinating in the yard and blessed be you remembering your mother cat of nine tails in her hand and bankroll for the grocery in her bra blessed be you never knowing your sister anger you cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall blessed be you getting free of your body to my father dies in a parent's story heart could not hold that much was clear the pump rusted laboring your sweat clammy hospital starch against the bruise continence tectonic motion faultlines of your veins  smiles twisting the water out of terry cloth laid the compress on your head against your thinning unbrushed hair not the milkweed of your mother's but brittle is blasted glass you asked for ginger ale or water and sucked it through the plastic straw bend to the middle and you do remember you once told me you were taking me out for soda you spelled it s o d a phonemes i sounded it out and i knew you will never drink the rest of that can of canada dry and neither will i you were so hot so bothered while the nurses rummaged in the supply closet for a fan i found a sheet of cardboard and fanned your face you leaned into it like a dog out a window humming now you're supposed to say peel me a great buy i said and you answered peel me a grape slave it was the last joke you ever made because of course i was i am your slave because i am your daughter you had been poison you said and made me promise to notify the authorities you even remembered the book and the name of the author pointing to this rare diagnosis your eyes leached of that blue gray i see every day in the mirror you told me it would be too late to morrow you confessed vid doing that there had already been a trial that you had been found guilty that you would be executed in the morning my father died in apparent story where angels were arrayed to be behind a wooden benches salvaged from angels wearing hospital whites laced in the back like johnny's fitting him for the shroud that he'd wear beneath a polyester keep from someone's bar mitzvah and the tallied whose french's fringes i used to braid during services angels from the north from canada perhaps coming through the windsor tunnel in order to gamble with his life until the hour of judgment oh honey i said flower blooming in my throat you are not guilty you made mistakes you are just mortal if the angel comes tell him you want the midwife who pulled you out from the tunnel between heaven and heaven part three my father goes to heaven with rosa parks they have just gotten free both of them and their lights are shining like twin beacons on an airplane wing blinking like groused sleepers it's just after midnight and my father has died and so it seems has rosa parks both of them tired of being tired and eager for their freedom below there in cannes desson spirits buses roll in dark streets lit by sodium lamps passengers staring  windows or reading paperbacks until they sleep in this detroit neighborhood still segregated despite the work of rosa parks and my father he does not have a body so he does not have to wear the crisp white shirt and tie signaling he ought not be beaten on the streets of hattiesburg dr judy like the northern boys killed with that black one and buried hurriedly in a trench under the day my father would raise his hat to mrs parks if he was wearing one but she puts out her palm worn as a leather purse and urges him toward the drinking gourd never stand in a door with the bloody your back never drive alone at night these are the rules to keep you safe from vigilantes in the clan but my father is going to heaven with rosa parks and this little light of mine is shining ralph cash september ninth one thousand nine hundred twenty seven october twenty fifth two thousand and five when and where else have we lived our juxtapositions and been challenge to retain our identities for the past few years i've been working on a book that responds to the poetry of what came to be called the golden jew the golden age of spain or the cover events it lasted from about seven eleven with the muslim conquest of iberia until the mid twelfth century when the berbers invaded one scholar explains quote from the seventh through the thirteenth centuries islam dome was the center of the western world and eat europe the periphery correspondingly the jews of the muslim world where the world's leaders in wealth culture and intellectual achievement they were also ninety percent of the world's jews this makes me not just a russian jew but a spanish one as well there are scholarly arguments about whether in fact jews muslims and christians live together in harmony there is however no question that jews were able to practice their religion and assert their identities far more openly and more creatively than they were able to do in christian europe at that same time great jewish poets began to write in the verse forms of arabic poetry they sometimes wrote in arabic written in hebrew characters but more often wrote in classical hebrew some of these poems especially those by the great to how they ve became part of the jewish liturgy and songs that i have known since i was a little girl and those poems and the way those poets adapted freely from arabic verse forms and rhythms inspired me i even decided to adhere to the rules for poetry suggested by judah how easy in his sprawling treatise the book of a good poet has to fill seven conditions avoiding strange expressions knowing metrics conceiving valuable themes being easily understandable making no grammatical mistakes smoothing and perfecting the poetry choosing from fifty verses only thirty and rejecting the rest or from seventy vers too was living in two worlds he was a visitor to the king of granada and a noted military leader as well as a poet in the battle of today he wrote an autobiographical poem about a battle that took place on august fourth ten thirty eight it is full of vivid descriptions of the battlefield and these images translated by t carmi include the earth's foundations overthrown like a mora reels to and fro every face turned red or black like the bottom of a pot it was a day of darkness and thick fog a single battle a single hateful incident can tear the fabric of a peaceful tie among jews muslims christians and others in addition to the horror of violence it is that loss of the ability to get along that challenges our confidence in our own society we lived through that too recently in this poem i matched the rhythms of the hebrew and adapted some of her leg aids imagery from the battlefield with a scene most of us sitting in this auditorium will recognize april fifteenth two thousand and thirteen the boat waiting at the finish line with water and towels and laurels for the twenty three thousand who ran out confident in the morning and were flushed like wild birds from the field heads swivelled to the east as if to prayer faces blackened like the bottom of burnt skillets as the forum rocked on its pillars blown to litter the injured prostrate on asphalt carpets d far from the ocean's mouth bereft in a place whose name is water i conceal of the young hyena whose blood flows sticky like his brothers with a pen of iron he marks my belly in the curve of my hall we are one body you hurt one you hurt us all i don't like killing innocent people i was his shroud to filter light the unsprung trap to hold him the cradle to bring him to his grave the pit where his crimes would follow but the chopper with its whirring rotors could read his alphabet of heat hardwick smudging my gleaming lantern sheltered each of us in place my challenge to all of us whatever our legacy where every we find ourselves is to reflect in honor the porousness and the complexity of our identities so that we may build ourselves here and now a golden age thank you so much it was amazing just beautiful thank you so much the imagery of your poetry is exquisite when you just tell us a little bit about the process of of writing that well been translated by lots of people over the last two hundred years some of these poems were found in a guineas a place that people had buried holy books in egypt in cairo and had not been known of until the last hundred years or so but i was so impressed with their complexity but also the openness to other traditions that these poems represented these were people who were like us cosmopolitan they were people who lived listening to other people's songs and were interested in how they might fit into that with their own special twist on things it was of course a tradition that was mostly for men it was a tradition that was for people who were more educated though jews historically have been n and a number of people even as raw and i made a little bit of a kind of a palette the way a painter would make a pallet on a piece of paper or a board where they would have a little bo in a little bread and a little yellow and then you know kind of say well what do i want to use today and that pallet was the form so there's a palette of an alphabetical across tick where every one every line starts with the next letter of the alphabet or we'll start with the name of someone there was a certain rhythm patterns like the one you just heard there would be things that had to do with certain what's called a balanced him stitch something where a line is an equal number of beats on kind of one half of a sentence in another half of the sentence and then i just let myself go and i said what world are my living in so i have this poem about that you just heard about the marathon bomber but i also have one about a three d ultrasound i have one abouts daylight savings time you know the things that are my modern experience that in some ways are things that we take for granted but putting it w they sometimes say new wine in old bottles gave it both a way for me to co exist with this legacy and also carry it forward so it's really hard work it's some  hardest writing i've ever done but it's enormously satisfying thank you so much deborah it's just wonderful our next presenter is miriam lucilla me miriam is an eighth grader and chen are in middle school she is an arab i'm a muslim living in belmont and considers herself a creative painter and thinker miriam has two brothers and she tells me she has zero interest in joining the medical field like her parents miriam says she appreciates nothing more than an open mind and open heart and ideas that build bridges she is here tonight to discuss misconceptions that some might have about islam and about islamophobia miriam we're anxious to hear from you on this important topic thank you for being here come on up training me now if you google some a phobia you will get through so many wonderful videos like yours and essays discussing this topic from many different perspectives and often times these arabic language with nearly twelve and a half million words and they can really go down to discuss a lot of the roots and misconceptions about stem but what i can also add to that is that when defending islam you're defending all muslims or the entire islamic history you are simply saying that muslims like any other human being they are not perfect we are not angels and of course any nation has a history that's very glorious  many aspects but you know sometimes they have some crimes were the mistakes and that's natural but some people are trying to take that message and spread the opposite the trying to spread almost the opposite message or misinterpreting that now with that being said i would like to direct a quick question to my audience please raise your hand if you've ever been or come to know or personally been attacked or chased by a dog if you've ever been attacked or chase or been by a dog wow so it seems around a third or maybe a half of you have had a really unpleasant experience with a dog so you wouldn't say the call for a day where you punish all dogs and murder all dogs that would be so cruel and unbelievably inhumane right well according to the daily mirror scary emails and mail sent in the letter have called for a punishing muslim day next month in april where people get prizes for hurting murdering pouring acid on muslims and burning down or bombing a mosque said isn't it this is what the fear and hate amongst people drives us to do this is what we have come to this is where our fear and driven hate has come us to do this is not who we are also thought to be learned emotional responses because no one is born with hate or fear those who burn their tongue on hearts who pulled low on food like ice cream meaning that those who had a very bad first experience with an object or situation would be very much now i'm not sure what the you know feeding channels for islamophobia would be in this case but i think it can definitely names and prevalent factors including magnifying misinterpretations of muslims and considering a true model of us and media also tries to usually institute hidden messages saying that you know this person did this thing and then mentioning either the research in a city and trying to discretely say that this group of people is violent when to our fear and this idea of having a phobia is there a cure to phobias yes according to science almost all phobia's can be cured and treated in two ways either by desensitization which is gradual exposure to the object or situation that you are afraid of or cognitive behavioral therapy you which is identifying your fear understanding and learning how to deal with it and in our case it is very simple do not put your heart and do not put your heart and brain in the hands of those who will contaminate it with fear when you're being fed information that will make you feel negative about another soul or person ask yourself how should you feel about the person is conveying the message can you law and the day of judgment should say well remain silent by that one day a funeral passed by him and it was said to him he stood up it was said to him it's a jew and he said w soul remember that you're dealing with souls whether you believe in their creation by god or not they mean everything to their family and friends now in my fourteen years of life i have studied and witnessed so many massacres genocides and manslaughters in human history and it seems to me that we didn't not only learn from our mistakes but we didn't learn from watching others  as well as not only being you know fourteen years old a young muslim woman i am a student as well and i've met so many teachers and educators throughout my years being in school and no matter how excellent good or bad they were i would never and have never tried to link how good or bad they were with who what they believe in the race sex color or anything because what you believe and what your ethnic make up it does not have anything to do with who you are as a person who you are as an educator anything to do with your profession and i would love to be remembered this speech as a young s the same muslim woman who dedicated her time to building the oldest educational institution in the world youth in the university of paudeen in fed's morocco built in eight hundred fifty nine a d she was here to teach us how to educate and may i remind you she is fourteen yeah thank you for for for that wonderful presentation i'm just curious if you have ever experienced people again with assumptions of muslims and what happens in the media but a lot of interesting questions usually stemming out of assumptions people asking me different you know like are you violent like why for for example we have read so people ask me why do you kill all sheep and i'm just like we don't like really just i mean you guys have thanksgiving right you be turkey mean and yeah it's led some people to making pretty rude and pretty you know a something but i mean in general when they're asking questions i feel like i definitely am tired of answering them and having to repeat myself but i'm glad that they're there asking me in that they're learning and they have a true source and someone who has accurate information so that they're not being misled and not being fed lies so i guess i would follow up to say when you see muslims perverting your faith through violence or other acts twisting aspects of your faith what are your thoughts about that i think it's terrible because they're putting out this image that were not good people when you know i mean they say that there's a quote that i heard that i think is terrible it's that not all muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslim that's not true terrorism does not have a religion terrorism is terrorism there's no religion race or group of people of that share something that terror that makes up terrorism terrorism i i i just want miriam's miriam's families here tonight would you stand up and sit and say hello yeah her mom and her dad and our brother and our aunt we're so glad you're among us in belmont and you've raised an amazing girl so thank you very much we have another amazing young woman on tap now barbara joseph we are all fans of barbara joseph we are barbara is a public speaker she's a self proclaimed marketing guru and entrepreneur and she's also a senior at belmont high school barbara was born in miami  but lived in haiti during her early childhood after barbara spent four years in the haitian private schooling system she and her family moved back to the states to search for a better life they decided to settle here in belmont during barbour's years at belmont high school she has taken leadership positions in various clubs such as future business leaders of america student council black in belmont leaders of tomorrow and the belmont religious youth council barbara i going to talk to us to tonight about her passion which is marketing and its impact on our subconscious barber joseph come on up good evening everyone how are we i like to be interactive so i need some feedback we're good ok there you go there we go i would like to start off by thanking the vision twenty one implementation committee for hosting the event trigger for her guidance and mrs render ms bosch for their words of comfort throughout this process before i begin in a few seconds i'll be seeing a statement what i want you to do is to think freely think rest assure unless we have some psychics in this room your thoughts will be your own i'll begin saying a statement three to one the human race your mental processes after my statement is the quickest tell to who you are one half of the room began thinking about how false my statement was your inability to see the amount of progress we've made is a result of your releasing pessimistic d n a the other half of the room agreed with my statement and saw the world for its own let me listen i'm out of opportunities congratulations you have winning optimistic  you're my pessimistic d n a carriers don't be alarmed i too was a carrier is well into latin last night that is my initial talk had income and compass the relationship between marketing and its negative impact on our perception of others and truth be told i noticed my one flaw at falling victim to the stereotypical every black girl activist bracket noticing only the negative and not the positive neglecting my haitian background which embrac people from each side of the spectrum i had to sit there and reprogram my mind to only view things as an opportunity to grow canet and to learn disregarding misleading prejudice filled advertisements aim to set a precedent on how women should act what men should view women as forming negative depictions of people of color to train immigrants as terrorists and so on and so forth i began writing down positive track contributions of marking to the society here a few the modern young black girls who are now fully embracing their natural hair do to black paint this female cast sterling brown as a positive representation of black men in the show this is  us becoming the first ever american woman to wear her job while on duty and to go over two hundred forty thousand shares on social media platforms we are creating our own marketing campaigns and with that we're changing the world and one of my classes today led by mr flamm we discussed a quote that stated i pull the trigger you fall into a heap every heap is a new trigger this theory suggests that we do in or is a result of another being's actions in turn affects what we do next and what they do next this is an action reaction sequence we must unite as one and come to terms that although there is a shift in the political atmosphere of our nation you must acknowledge that everyone each of one of us although we have a negative force there's an equal and opposite force alongside it one hundred years ago who would have imagined a teeny black young woman giving a talk on inclusive eighty one hundred years ago who would have imagined my white english teacher guiding me to dive deeper into my identity one hundred years ago who would have imagined my best friend majoring in economics is going to move to new york as a black young woman when i'm trying to get out here is that there's a change being made in all you have to do is get on board universities are filled a millennial is carrying the last names such as we as a unit need to stand together black white asian latino male female gender run airy and all the above and to do that we have to first reprogram ourselves start fresh with a smile and begin with conversation in hopes of gaining a different perspective trust the process we can all become optimistic d n a carries thank you so i feel like our future is in good hands these kids are amazing young people so who's inspired you barbara tell us i know your parents have an incredible story and have made such sacrifices to be in this country and to raise you so well tell me who you look up to and and who you hope to emulate you i somewhat have a list of course you mention my parents a huge shout out to my teachers and the head of the english department mrs bosch mrs render throughout this year have been girl eat examples to me and even spared me so much oh man well he is second in the world for his marketing company and he not only focuses on pushing a positive image of all individuals in our mass media but he does it with a kind heart and complete optimism so that is stopped barbara our last speaker is a very distinguished scholar graham allison is leading analyst of u s national security and defense policy with special interest in nuclear weapons terrorism and decision making graham allison is the founding dean of the harvard kennedy school of government he is the douglas dillon professor of government and was the director of harvard's belfer center for science and international perry cohen and carter as assistant secretary of defense in the first clinton administration dr allison received the defense medal for distinguished public service for quote reshaping relations cause extend to reduce the former soviet union's nuclear arsenal he currently serves as the on the advisory boards of the secretary of state secretary of defense and the director of the c you're busy he is the author of multiple bestselling titles including his most recent book destined for war can america and china escape through cities trap which was published in may two thousand and seventeen dr allison will speak to us about the themes from that book tonight graham allison lives in belmont with his wife liz who's been active in town affairs for many years i know graham allison to be not only a brilliant mind but a really lovely person and we're really grateful that he would be here with us tonight dr al thank you for such a kind introduction and it's a great honor for me to be here i've had the good fortune to live in belmont for about four decades my wife and i and we have ourselves very fortunate to live in such a great community mean for it to be because i believe the topic is one that in good use of the vital interest of all americans and actually will in gauge the vital interest of younger americans even more that interested people in my generation so what i'm going to do tonight is three things first i'm going to introduce you to a great thinker or for some of you reiter you second i'm going to present a big idea and third i'm going to pose a most consequential question so the great thinker hundred presentations of it in various and sundry places and i've noticed that this is a mouthful for most americans and that most americans prefer mano syllabic so one two three together his name is two city one two three two city one more time the new city so if nothing else that i for my part comments you will have met and know how to pronounce the name of a great thinker his name is through cities through city he's lived about twenty five hundred years ago in classical greece and he is the founder and father of history so he wrote the first ever history book it's actually in title the history of the peloponnesian war so he wrote about the conflict in classical greece that basically collapsed th of civilization and his book you can go and download for free on the net and read the first hundred pages and if every other page doesn't knock your socks off check your  a serious thinker and you can learn a lot from them the big idea is a term i coined which is called two cities trap two cities trap is the dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power through seventy's wrote about the rise of athens and he says the fear that this instilled in sparta in classical greece but you can think about the rise of germany one hundred a few years ago and the impact of that on britain and world war one or you can think about the rise of china in the past generation and the us today so two cities wrote famously this probably the most commonly most often quoted one liner in western international relations studies that it was the rise of china story the rise of athens and the fear that this instilled in sparta that made the war inevitable don't take the inevitable to seriously two cities meant by that to exaggerate with a little hyperbole he meant very likely not one hundred percent but likely so when a rising power threatens to displace ruling power this sets up a dangerous dynamic in this book i look at the last five hundred years of history i find sixteen cases one six of a rising power threatening to displace a ruling power like germany and britain twelve of the cases in war four of the cases in the not more so even just on the record to say that war between the u and china is inevitable would be wrong but to say that under these circumstances the risk of war are much greater than you would otherwise imagine would be correct so that's two cities trap and finally the consequential question is basically the subtitle of this book and it asks can america and china a scape to cities trap and my answer in the book is a very professorial no and yes so no if we settle for business as usual for diplomacy as usual for states craft as usual which is what we've actually seen for the last twenty five years under both republicans and democrats then we should expect history as usual and history as usual in this case would be a catastrophic coverage but on the other hand yes as something yana taught us and i noted in the book only those who refused to study history are condemned to repeat it so the objective of this book is not to be gloomy but to be fatalistic not to be pessimistic but to remind us that in a few city and dynamic there's a lot of danger and therefore studying how people have made mistakes in the past and how they've also been successful and applying those lessons a crucial in this case so that's the big picture let me go quickly through a few slides just to make the point under three questions question one what has been the geo political event of the last twenty five years the biggest geopolitical of it the last forty five years w what will be the greatest geo strategic challenge for the us in the next twenty five years and then third to get a closer to the current front page could in the year twenty eighteen events on the korean peninsula drag the u s and china into a war so let me give you short versions here immediately entered the policy debate here at the last summit between braying the president china and obama they're both talking about two cities trap and then there's a city to escape it and here's the first to singapore and then the beijing to talk to people about two cities trip where i was there just the week before christmas so this topic and the question of recognizing the dangerous dynamic and asking what do we have to do to escape to save the strap is a life topic so to the three questions first event of the last twenty five years geopolitically the rise of china the rise  china never before is a country risen so far so fast on so many different dimensions in the first chapter of my book i have a good summary in twenty pages that's meant to give you a jolt and i the former czech president who says things have happened so fast we haven't yet had time to be astonished i would say look at the rise of china and you should be astonished just to illustrate this i quit being the and in one thousand nine hundred ninety the project began in earnest and twenty two i was said to be a two year project in twenty fourteen they said it wasn't finished take another year twenty fifteen they said not finish we'll take another year you with in twenty fifty it has twice as many lanes of traffic actually as the harvard bridge in twenty fifteen the chinese decided they want to reiterate it how long did it take for them to complete the project  of course they work at night yes the traffic is flowing forty three hours later and it works fine so the send you on bridge in my course at harvard i give students a quiz so i'm leaving you an early version of it it has forty three indicators in which they have to fill in the blank when will china become number one so they fill in twenty twenty twenty thirty not in my lifetime so manufacturer largest middle class most billionaires fastest supercomputers largest national economy and then i show them a second slide which is said already so all these things have already happened you won't read about it in the new york times or even the boston globe but china today has the largest national economy in the world measured by the single best yardstick for comparing national economies namely purchasing power parity and again you can read about th basically china has already become number one in many many different domains and is rivaling the us in others and that's all happened in the past twenty five years and we mostly have not had taken time astonished so the second question what will be the biggest geo strategic challenge for the u s in the next twenty five years this is a cartoon from the book that i did for testimony to the senate armed services committee back in twenty fourteen which is why twenty fourteen is the pivot point they were holding a hearing on the obama administration's major initiative towards asia which some of you will remember and what was the name of it i remember what they obama administration initiative for asia was called was called the pivot or sometimes called the rebalancing so in two thousand and four china is about twenty percent our size in twenty fourteen the big takeaway from the i m f world bank meeting was china is now number  bigger than the american economy in twenty fourteen and twenty twenty four on the current trend lines it will be half again larger oh wait a minute we all know that america is number one i'm a very red blooded american indeed as my wife would say a red necked american so i come i come from north carolina and she says if you took the cosmetics off my chest it would say usa means number one that's what i believe that's how things should be that's how they have been for all of our lives but we're going to have to become a custom or to try to become accustomed to living with a country that will be as big and strong as we are a serious rival in many domains so what will that mean that means who is the number one trading partner of every country in asia today singapore so what does that mean that means china will be in our face and then our space if you haven't seen china competitively yet i would say either you haven't been looking or just wait so the impact of the rise of china and the u s on american sense of our place in the world one the international order that the u s constructed after world war two and it's underwritten for the last seven decades which not coincidentally have been seven decades without great power war which is itself a historical anomaly the committee meets today to consider the nomination of general james mattis to be the secretary of defense of the united states i thank both senator nunn and santa con for being here he's probably the only one here at this table who can hear the words through cities trap and not have to go to wikipedia of course secretary cohen has insulted every member of this committee by suggesting that we don't readily understand that we're going to have to manage that competition between us and china there is another piece of wisdom from manticore that says fear honor and interest always seem to be the root causes of why our nation chooses to go to  rise of china on the us is has to do with her identity with her role in the world and with the international order and in general when that happens watch out so north korea fortunately we're in a hiatus right now with the prospect of a meeting between south korean prime minister moon and kim jong un in april a meeting between donald trump and kim jong un in may so this is a hiatus but it started as trump came to office noticing that north korea already had nuclear weapons already had short range missiles already had major medium range missiles was on the verge of having long range missiles that could strike san francisco with a nuclear he often says to the people who work for him i don't know what obama did i don't know what bush did i don't know what clinton did but i'm telling you this is not going to happen if i'm president and if i have to attack north korea to prevent you can solve this problem or you can play a big role in helping to solve the problem but if you don't solve the problem i'm going to solve the problem and you're not alright the way i do it this is it mary largo he served him chocolate cake for the opening dinner for dessert excused himself with to the room next door and announced that we had just launched fifty nine cruise missiles to punish assad syria for using chemical weapons and to help  power the biggest source of danger comes from third party actions or accidents that would otherwise be in consequential or easily managed but which then one of the other the principal competitors feels obliged to respond to and that sets off a set of actions and reactions that ins somewhere nobody wanted to go if you were a good egg a good case study of that dynamic think about how world war one occurred and i have a good chapter on one nine hundred forty i don't think you can study that too much the assassination archduke who didn't really matter led to a reaction by the serbs which led to a reaction by the germans which then led to a reaction by the russians which they let a reaction by the french which led the reaction by the british and at the end of this they were in a war in which they all were destroyed so nobody wanted that were the fact you don't want to war the war was catastrophic if given a chance for a do over nobody would have made the decisions they did but they didn't happen so to conclude we've done three things first a great thinker two cities and i hope you will actually pick him up and read him secondly through city strap this is in ri kissinger said i think the best lin's available for looking through the news and noise of the day as you see what's happening in the relations between us and china to see the underlying dynamic and they see the danger and third and finally as i said the purpose here is not to be pessimistic not to be fatalistic but notice that in cases of extreme danger you require extreme imagination require extreme adaptability and i think what we're going to need now in the whole there tional security world and not just the establishment i think people beyond us world are going to start thinking of some ideas outside the box ideas that will be relevant for this case i think i could listen to you all day and all night it was just terrific thank you so much so knowing that i was going to be with you tonight in talking with you about two cities trap this headline today caught my attention in the washington post be rational not emotional china tells trump as trade war looms so be rational not emotional so we have a president who can be impulsive he's known to direct u s policy on the fly we've witnessed the name calling in the threats against the north korean leader last week he fired the secretary of state via twitter historically how would you say two cities trap is impacted by the personality and the style of the leaders of the time and what does that mean th in the context of this leader at this time a great question and i can't do justice to it says ruby a great seminar but basically this book is not about donald trump and was completed before he became with the last parts were after he had won but it wasn't written with trump and mine but i say in the forward of the book that if central casting were looking for lead actors for the rising power  pretty good choice and if you watched his speech at the nineteenth party congress this is a country that's rising and very very self confident who actually reminds one a little bit of teddy roosevelt when the americans were rising at the beginning of the twentieth century in similar respects similarly i don't think central casting could find better lead actor for ruling power then donald trump trump in that sense is an expression of this ruling power syndrome and as you watch the blaming of china for everything the discomfort about the the shifting correlation of forces the attempt to try to cope with it there are a lot of echoes of two cities and similarly probably best of all for two cities purpose if he was making a bigger movie if you wanted to have an external provocat so we speak more about the chinese leader because the communist party has cleared the way for xi jinping to have a long tenure right to be in power indefinitely a long runway  for for for power and i'm just curious how he compares to previous leaders and in this moment you know sort of what that means well it's a it's a great question again and i'm a late comer to china study so i'm not a china specialist i i've been looking at it for say the last dozen years but i'm an average trying to understand and i think if you ask of all the leaders on the international stage today who's the most impressive it's in my view who the most ambitious who the most accomplished so far and who would i bet is most likely to leave or leave in history so this is i have a pretty good profile of him in the book where i've studied him pretty carefully because one of my mentors for the book was lee kuan yew who is the founder and builder of singapore and she's in pain called lee kuan yew his mentor so he learnt a lot from them so they spent hundreds of hours talking and he had a pretty good in a pretty good read for the man and he says about it he has iron in his soul so he has the most ambitious program for china i mean it's breathtaking and he laid it out like it was a business plan so dominate artificial intelligence by twenty thirty years gather so they pick the areas go twenty thirty this is going to happen twenty thirty five this is going to happen twenty forty nine which is the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the of the people's republic of china they're supposed to be the sole global superpower so that's his ambition to that end he has a party driven bezos they think they running the whole thing now we in the western tradition suspect that such autocratic authoritarian regimes may be did work in singapore for a long time and it did singapore is a spectacular success but for one point four billion people and with all those complexity so i would not be in the age of cell phones when you points out and i i say in the book the operating system that they are trying to manage in a day when everybody can look at their smartphones and see what's going on in the world you know how's it going to work ok which answers i don't know but for thirty years they've maintained when average more than three times the growth rate of ours so in the period since the great financial crisis of two thousand and eight in our best year we grew less than one third the rate of their worst year so they've been managing so far well how long will this go on nobody knows but i would say that this is an extremely impressive i mean the people that work directly for him a couple of them i know one of whom actually was a student at the kennedy school the person who's who's the on his right hand man for the economy now is a is going to work out he said well i don't know he says you know we have a demographic problem we make it all before we get rich we have an environmental problem we're sometimes you can't even breathe the air we got so he goes through the list of problems i say well that sounds discouraging he says no we're over crime more problems there yesterday so there's a there's a confidence and can do style about it and actually to their credit i was in beijing two years ago in the summer and you could even see the sky it was so small you and i thought maybe it was night when i got off the airplane you know because you're confused what time it is and it was in the daytime but you can see the sky in december completely blew sunny every day so they've simply closed down all coal burning in the beijing area and just said that's it and that they make a decision they do it so we're going to see i do not betting against us actually i think warren buffett  line nobody ever made money in the long run selling the u s short oh i believe they have but i would say in the recent period not just trump but in the pretty trump parade of which actually trump is more symptom than cause of the dysfunctionality of american government today and ash rightly in the book that basically we have enough stuff to do here at home that we have to get right first if we're going to hope to be seriously competitive with china internationally last question because i know we have to wrap up here but you have expanded our minds and and medicine really think about something very important i heard you say in an interview dr allison that you said you hope that that two cities trap is a part of every educated person's mental library so leave us with our with our final thought about this is that it is trap thank you so as i say for every educated person and that certainly is belmont that you know community you should be embarrassed of to say the least is not part of your mental library it's like  not knowing about thomas jefferson or about the founding fathers this is a person who has brilliant ideas about lots and lots of topics the issue of lucidity strap and knows it would be catastrophic and nobody in washington wants a war with china so does that mean that we're secure and the answer is not at all the risk is that third party actions like kim jong who simply wants to conduct another set of i c b m tests so that he has the capability to strike the u s with nuclear weapons well if you ask americans in general would you like for them to have that capability given that  course not the question is what risk would you run to prevent that happening so i would say unless the u s and china can find ways to jointly talk about the risks that you see in this inherent in this situation not just from north korea taiwan is another case the potential for collisions in the south china sea or the east china sea another case so the unfortunately in the book i have a chapter actually called paths from here to war in which i'm none of them do you have to reach very far to get from where we are to somewhere that would be un so again thinking about war is not good for doesn't make is not a feel good thing but it's a necessary thing i believe if we were to be bold in our imagination about what we what we're prepared to think about doing and how agile we're prepared to be and maybe just to conclude this is not all that different one of the four cases of success in the book is the cold war now most of you can't remember what was the cold  about the cold war was a competition between the u s and the soviet union which was basically the defining event of my professional career so if you had asked john kennedy when he became president in  nuclear capability than the us so in this competition between two ultimately nuclear armed superpowers we developed a strategy that the us persisted with for fo decades the victory ultimately in one nine hundred ninety one but the strategy if you had presented the strategy to anybody in one nine hundred forty six forty seven forty eight they would have said you're out of your mind so people leap beyond the boundaries of the of the conventional wisdom or what the the received wisdom to imagination for example george marshall the secretary of state came to harvard in june of one nine hundred forty seven and said i have an idea the u s should tax ourselves one and a half percent of g d p a year for the next three or four years and sin that money to europe to help rebuild the europeans after the world war two including the germans who had just been killing us nobody said  we were exhausted the world was over people needed a build america first at home harry truman wanted to have health care for people so the idea of taxing ourselves to invest in europeans to build in order to provide for security was almost almost impossible to imagine but we did and five other things so i would say if we had a surge of a major nation as significant in this case as we had in that case then i would feel you know much better about it and the ideas that were part of the surge of imagination in the cold war did not simply come from the establishment number of people came with ideas that seemed crazy upon first hearing but ultimately turned out to be crucial for success good luck on your travels sir thank you for taking the time with us tonight and thank you all for for coming in as you can see wonderful to live in belmont right will see around i think natalie and doug will come back up and send us off thanks again thanks shane thank you everyone for coming and thank you especially to deborah mariam barbara and dr allison for their talks they were really inspirational again and please fill out the brief survey on the back of your programs we'd love to hear from you and leave it outside the audio to try him as you leave dr alison's latest book destined for war i'll say the whole title can american china escape the city's trap is available outside again we want to thank our co sponsor belmont public schools and our partner belmont books we also want to especially acknowledge jane clayson johnson and to say thank you for hosting talk of the town your help and again i want to add my thanks to natalie's to carol she has been a big force in making this happen these last two years for me hope we can continue it on belmont is an amazing town think of who you have is neighbors and it's pretty amazing so please feel free to mingle and meet the presenters and members of vision twenty one implementation committee or the vic and our speakers in the hallway and have a good evening