Aspen comes to India promising FDI: fresh, dynamic ideas

In this new world mantra articulated this morning by Walter Isaacson, former chairman and managing director of Time magazine and CNN for 25 years and now president of Aspen, ‘‘finding a common ground is so important, it is crucial to locate a leadership which is not defined by the passion of extremism, which doesn’t believe in uncompromising positions. In the ’90s in the US, we lost touch with those values in the media, in business and politics.’’

As Isaacson spoke, an audience littered with names like Strobe Talbott (former deputy secretary of state to Bill Clinton), Brent Scowcroft (former national security adviser to George Bush Sr) and Sandy Berger (former national security adviser to Clinton), listened. On the Indian side, a thinning-out had already taken place because of the capital confusion between the interim budget and the vote-on-account.

Then Scowcroft sought to place the fractured polity in America in the context of 9/11. ‘‘After 9/11,’’ he said, ‘‘we tried to destroy those who gave us grievous harm, but we could have tried to do so without causing resentment…We should have tried to convey to people that we are allies in a common cause, but were not embracing those regimes.’’

Isaacson then rolled the comment ball to Talbott. In the advancement of our interests after 9/11, Talbott said, it was important that US tried to induce changes in different regimes in different ways, whether in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, ‘‘politely but effectively.’’

Talbott pointed out that it was ‘‘extraordinary’’ that the US had excluded the ‘‘great Middle East from our general impulse to democracy,’’ that the extremes that were created in these societies as a result bred resentment that was directed at the US.

‘‘No longer are we preaching that democracy is good for them,’’ he said, that in fact the US argument was only advanced in order to make those societies less susceptible to becoming cradles of terrorism. Along with a sense of urgency, the post-9/11 environment had also bred a sense of self-righteousness. ‘‘We need to democratise the Middle East,’’ he added, ‘‘because by doing that we will protect New York.’’

The thoughtfulness of the morning could hardly be divorced from the present. Isaacson, who is said to have written the definitive biography of Benjamin Franklin (‘‘he was involved in setting up every church in Philadelphia …even if the grand mufti from Constantinople came to him, he would say that we should offer him a pulpit’’), pointed out, only half in jest, that Henry Kissinger once told him that the reason standards were so abysmal in academia and politics so vicious was because ‘‘stakes were so low.’’

Fact was, Isaacson added, George Bush had squandered the opportunity after 9/11 to keep America together, to take secular issues out of partisan politics. Moreover, the US needed allies, even if Winston Churchill once famously said that ‘‘allies, sometimes, develop an opinion of their own.’’

Perhaps, he added, in the 21st century, India, ‘‘with the importance it gave to tolerance, its feel for pluralism, its understanding of the dangers of tribalism and its values for the virtues of humility,’’ would turn out to be the US’s most important ally.