An ideas festival at a precarious moment…

I arrived this evening at the Aspen Ideas Festival. To do so, I drove the four hours through the mountains from Denver to Aspen. I came into this valley via Independence Pass which is over 12,500 feet in altitude. It was above the snow line. I was woozy from lack of oxygen. My blackberry reception was terrible. I was barely hanging on as I navigated the switchbacks through the pass. It was at this moment I realized that if I had been in the Donner Party, I would have been the appetizer.

Somehow I made it to the conference center and to the dinner for speakers at a beautiful local home. The hostess made remarks about some of the sessions that had taken place already. One she cited was Andrew Sullivan’s talk on why he blogs. I’m sorry I missed that. First, because I would like to know why anyone blogs. But secondly because it inspired a great line from our hostess, Linda Resnick: "Andrew Sullivan is a self-made man who loves his creator."

Aspen is emerging as the American Davos… absent the stultifying earnestness of the Alpine gabfest. While sometimes you look around a room (or a big tent) and it seems like all the people speaking are people you know from Washington continuing a conversation they were having hours before in the breakfast restaurant at the Hay Adams Hotel, the crowd is smart, unafraid to ask tough questions and the overall air really does seem to involve the search for ideas. And there is a certain lightness about it, humor and congeniality, that is special. All credit for this goes to Walter Isaacson, the jefe of Aspen who seems miraculously to be as good a leader of the Aspen Institute as he is a writer…which is saying quite a lot.

David Brooks… who I saw trapped on the other side of the buffet line at last night’s dinner… had a column today in the Times discussing one panel here during which Niall Ferguson argued the U.S. and China were on the verge of a divorce and implying China was harboring imperial aspirations. James Fallows, who has been living in China the past few years, argued this was silly, and that the U.S. and China had many convergent interests that would keep the relationship central in years to come. Ferguson is clearly a very smart guy who is often very insightful. But to go from his Chimerica idea to a divorce in just a few months suggests a fragility to his underlying thinking that is telling. Here is the truth: China will be important, harbors no imperial ambitions and will act in its self-interest sometimes collaborating with the U.S., sometimes seeking to contain the U.S. or contain China’s exposure to the U.S. The big meltdown that everyone talks about in which China drops a bomb on the dollar as a reserve currency won’t happen. But China will reduce its dollar exposure and will seek to diversify its holdings.

I attended a session this morning with Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg in which he gave a virtuoso performance, actually speaking with substance and thoughtfulness despite the constraint of being a senior government official. The topic was the Middle East and within the Middle East, the core question on the minds of those in the audience had to do with Iranian nukes. Steinberg was candid that the Russians have been slow to step up and be very helpful with reining in the Iranians but said he saw hope in China’s tougher stand on North Korea. I have long felt that only through successful US-China collaboration can sufficient pressure be put on the Iranians to arrive at a sustainable solution (a verifiable civilian nuclear program open to regular and adequate inspections).

That said, the subtext of today’s conversation and subsequent discussions I participated in with other participants was that goal seemed very difficult to achieve. Steinberg was quite forceful about the fact that the U.S. did not feel deterrence was an effective means of handling a nuclear Iran…in contradistinction to a point made earlier in the conference by former Secretary of State James Baker. Steinberg said it might work to keep Iran from attacking us but it was less likely to work regarding regional threats Iran might pose. (In other words, it didn’t seem likely to work vis a vis Israel.)

Which brings us again to the likelihood of military action against Iran. A Senator with whom I spoke recently said that the estimates he was getting said that to neutralize the Iranian program for even a matter of years would require at least 60 days of massive bombing. In other words, a surgical strike of the type the Israelis have made famous in Iraq and Syria is not an option. Not that is, unless it delivers a payload that makes key facilities uninhabitable…such as a radiological weapon. This could be delivered by air or by commandos coming from the sea. It would be challenging from a military perspective…but those challenges would pale in comparison to those associated with selling the world on the acceptability of irradiating a chunk of Iran. Were the Israelis to do this, the likely political fallout would likely be as toxic as the nuclear kind.

Still, if the Israelis felt that a nuclear Iran was an existential threat, they would have to consider it. In fact, of course, they are seriously considering all options available to them. (Perhaps, said one regional expert with whom I spoke, the answer is an "accident" at one of Iran’s nuclear facilities that results in it being uninhabitable but which cannot be traced to the efforts of outsiders to help make the accident possible.)

It’s all speculation. Fraught speculation at that. But as Steinberg and as others repeatedly stated throughout this event, the clock is ticking. There are only months before this issue reaches a point of criticality (three, six, twelve, eighteen…somewhere in there).

Makes for an interesting moment in history doesn’t it? I can make a compelling case that within 12 months Iraq is descending it deepening unrest, Iran is at a point where military confrontation may be inevitable, the war in Afghanistan is much hotter than in the past few years, Pakistan is deteriorating (Steinberg said he didn’t feel a failed state was likely…but indicated the government had lost control of key regions…kind of like Colombia only much much more dangerous.), unemployment is at 10.5 percent, a second stimulus is needed, the health care bill was weak or fails in the Senate, the climate bill was weak or fails in the Senate and there is effectively no accord in Copenhagen.

I can also make an equally compelling case that a weak democracy in Iran gradually becomes more functional, democratic stirrings from Lebanon to Iran have hard-liners worried and forced to backtrack, reformers are gaining in the region, the offensive in Afghanistan starts to work, Pakistan remains stable, unemployment starts to fall, and the U.S. makes real progress on health care, climate and energy security.

We are on the razor’s edge at the moment. And central to every one of these issues is the President of the United States and his team. It is a loaded a moment for a U.S. leader as any in recent memory. If he tips the balance toward the more positive scenario, he can get a midterm election result that will allow him to deepen and institutionalize his reforms. If we go the other way, the Republican gains next November will paralyze Obama and turn him so thoroughly into Jimmy Carter that he will have to move to Plains and start growing peanuts.