August 29, 2007
Early Responses the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
First in The Forward:
These folks have a case. Major Jewish organizations, including centrist as well as hard-line groups, regularly use their clout to narrow the scope of acceptable public debate on Israel. They cast their net wide, indiscriminately targeting independent-minded allies of Israel along with its sworn enemies. Many pro-Israel dissenters have walked away feeling deeply bruised and disillusioned.
Lately, however, some of Israel’s critics have started learning a few tricks themselves — and rather than enriching the conversation, they are choosing to further muddy it. There are substantial numbers of true moderates in this country who believe deeply in the need for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. They struggle to make their voices heard in a hostile political and communal environment, and they naturally look for spokesmen who can capture the public’s attention and help unite and mobilize the peace camp — including, most recently, scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. We are sympathetic to this quest for leadership, but after firsthand experience of these scholars’ definition of “opening the debate,” we feel compelled to speak up: They’re the wrong guys.
Second, David Remnick in The New Yorker:
Mearsheimer and Walt are “realists.” In their view, diplomatic decisions should be made on the basis of national interest. They argue that in the post-Cold War era, in the absence of a superpower struggle in the Middle East, the United States no longer has any need for an indulgent patronage of the state of Israel. Three billion dollars in annual foreign aid, the easy sale of advanced weaponry, thirty-four vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israel since 1982—such support, Mearsheimer and Walt maintain, is not in the national interest. “There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence,” they write, but they deny that Israel is of critical strategic value to the United States. The disappearance of Israel, in their view, would jeopardize neither America’s geopolitical interests nor its core values. Such is their “realism.”
There will be more, to be sure.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 01:04 PM | Permalink
Comments
The New Yorker piece says it well; so long as lobby groups are legal, there will be lobby groups. Ralph Nader, with a Lebanese background, noted that the Israeli/Jeish lobby is hardly the most powerful one in Washington. That those two blokes got their work published is a good indication that what they believe is an all-pervasive and oppressive group hardly exercises the power they suggest that it has.
Posted by: fred lapides | Aug 29, 2007 3:05:27 PM
That those two blokes got their work published is a good indication that what they believe is an all-pervasive and oppressive group hardly exercises the power they suggest that it has.
Come on now, the authors were claiming that the Israel lobby has too much influence on politicians, not that the Elders of Zion are controlling all media and preventing any criticisms of Israel or the Israeli lobby from being aired.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Aug 29, 2007 9:14:31 PM
If there were any oil in the Middle East, and if the farm trucks in Idaho ran on gas instead of cow dung, as they always have done, it might have been worthwhile for the US to support various Middle Eastern regimes, on all sides of the local poker game, in order to ensure supplies. But, since there is NO oil in the Middle East, the US is only supporting Jewish states like Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Kuwait because those crafty lobyists in Washington are hoodwinking the Administration. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Posted by: aguy109 | Aug 30, 2007 2:08:23 AM
aguy109: You are wrong. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have a lot of oil. Israel and Pakistan do not, however, and Egypt has an insignificant amount, comprising only 7% of it's economy.
In general, those countries that do have oil also have populations, and usually governments, that are extremely anti-Israel. So if oil were the sole motivating factor in foreign relations (and I do not believe that it is) support for Israel would be opposed to national interests.
I know that this is an emotional issue, but sarcasm doesn't usually contribute much to a debate, especially when your assumptions are misplaced.
Posted by: Cambridge_Kid | Aug 30, 2007 10:01:43 AM
Israel is just a US Army Base, surrounded by client states that sometimes get out of goose step with the US party line. It helps when invisible friends declare that that section of the Mediterranean to be divinely created for a specific minority.
No one said late stage capitalism would be fun.
Posted by: Dave | Aug 30, 2007 12:10:57 PM
Cambridge Kid, sarcasm is a time honored rhetorical ploy that is meant to highlight the absurdity of an argument(re Mark Anthony: "...Brutus is an honorable man.."), and I hold that to downplay the importance of oil, as M&W do, is absurd. Oil is not, as you say, the only motivating factor, but the US has long been able to play to both the Arab and Israeli side on a 'divide and rule' principle. Thus it has sold arms to the Saudis at a massive profit that has more than offset the cost of subsidizing arms sales to Israel and Egypt. Soon after Soviet influence over Egypt faded in the early 1970's the US forged close ties with Egypt and held exercises of the "Rapid Deployment Force" which could potentially be sent into Saudi to seize the oilfields if the Soviets were to play the role assigned to them in CIA war games. {Israel was also viewed as playing the role of forward base) A similar scenario became reality when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991. The US-led coalition of Arab and other countries that ensued, along with other facts such as the massive investments in the US by Arab oil producers, proves that US support of Israel never damaged US interests in the region to any significant extent. If the US had supported only the Arab side(s), it would have had far less leverage on them.
Thus a major pillar of M&W 's argument: that US support of Israel is an altruistic matter, all about "helping the one democracy in the region" etc is, I contend, evidently false. This is not an emotional argument on my part, nor has it much to do with my being Israeli. Noam Chomsky, who is a critic of Israel, said exactly the same thing in response to M&W.
Another factor that makes US relations with Israel convenient and low cost is that US forces have never had to be based in Israel for more than a month or 2 (in 1991, a few dozen Patriot missile operators). The US electorate, who have never made any substantial shift against government support for Israel, tend to value that. Dave, previous commentator, contemptuously calls Israel "just a US Army Base". That description better matches such countries as Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, UK, Italy and so on, where US troops have had to do the guarding, fighting and dying.
Posted by: aguy109 | Aug 30, 2007 6:08:43 PM
aguy--
No need to post troops---
We just supply the arms, money, political cover and veto at the UN, rabid ideologues on the Christian Right and Zionist Right to keep the funds in order from the State--
Who needs troops?
Plus, our other client states in the region are dependent also.
I am a member of a Jewish Community center, and interact with Israelis on a daily basis (my wife is Jewish)--
I do have some primary insight from people on the ground.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Aug 30, 2007 11:19:59 PM
What's Hot in Tikkun Sept-Oct '07
The Israel Lobby
In this Issue Tikkun Editor Michael Lerner responds to the recent publication of The Israel Lobby by John Walt and Stephen Mearsheimer by giving an in-depth analysis of one of the most important issues in U.S. politics today: The power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to control the relationship between the United States and Israel.
He comes to one conclusion: AIPAC is bad for the Jews, bad for the U.S., and bad for the world?and he tells why.
This is not only a Jewish issue?Lerner presents ideas for how the Network of Spiritual Progressives can become the interfaith alternative to the Israel Lobby and shows that it can only do so with the help of non-Jews as well as Jews.
Walt and Mearsheimer will be speaking at a series of Tikkun forums. The first will be held September 19th in Berkeley, California at 2345 Channing Way at 7:00 p.m. (reservations through Cody's bookstore).
Posted by: Tikkun | Aug 31, 2007 1:01:48 PM
Tikkun-
Well stated, and many Jews I know have come to the same conclusion.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 1, 2007 3:33:22 PM
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