August 27, 2007
PITY THE POOR REALISTS...:
The Lobby (David Remnick, September 3, 2007, The New Yorker)
Last year, two distinguished political scientists, John J. Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard, published a thirty-four-thousand-word article online entitled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a shorter version of which appeared in The London Review of Books. Israel, they wrote, has become a “strategic liability” for the United States but retains its strong support because of a wealthy, well-organized, and bewitching lobby that has a “stranglehold” on Congress and American élites. Moreover, Israel and its lobby bear outsized responsibility for persuading the Bush Administration to invade Iraq and, perhaps one day soon, to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran. Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish a book-length version of Mearsheimer and Walt’s arguments on September 4th.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.
...forever stuck trying to make the amoral or even immoral case to the Puritan Nation.
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 27, 2007 7:35 AM
For Realists they take a very unrealistic view regarding the effect of selling out an ally has on other allies. When the going gets tough we toss you to the wolves isn't exactly a good selling point to friends and potential friends.
Posted by: Mikey![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://brothersjuddblog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 27, 2007 9:37 AM
Well, they are correct that Israel isn't of critical strategic value to the United States. But then again, it never really was.
Posted by: Brandon at August 27, 2007 10:56 AMYes, yes, we know, support of Israel is so obviously contrary to US interests that the only possible explanation is a conspiracy of rich Jewish media controllers and American Likudniks. But how do Mearsheimer and Walt explain that Israel's best friends in American politics are the Republicans, who don't receive Jewish votes or contributions? Why don't the Republicans simply adopt Jimmy Carter's position on Israel (or, if that's too extreme, Fatah's position) and punish a reliable Democratic constituency?
Posted by: Ibid at August 27, 2007 1:01 PMRich Republicans hate Israel.
Posted by: oj at August 27, 2007 2:36 PMThat just makes it more puzzling.
Posted by: Ibid at August 27, 2007 3:00 PMThese guys need to be more realistic: what does "Palestine" offer the US? Nichts.
Ahhh, but hating Israel - that's good for a lot of academic gratification. And it allows one to be just a bit conspiratorial (regarding AIPAC) without going over the edge into truther madness.
Would Walt and Mearshiemer allow themselves to be photographed with Haniyeh, Mashaal, or Nasrallah? Methinks yes. After all, they want to follow Chomsky, don't they?
Posted by: ratbert at August 27, 2007 4:43 PMDo you mean I have to set out the hyper-realist view of our relationship with Israel yet again?
Well, here goes: The Middle East is a region of the greatest geopolitical importance. It possesses a stategic resource, oil, and it dominates numerous maritime and land passage choke points.
For a long time, Great Britain played the role of Weltmachthaber in the Great Game. Times changed and by the end of World War Two, that country was incapable of sustaining its burden, so the scepter passed to the United States.
Now we do not play geopolitics well, as our present difficulty confirms, so a pretext was necessary, then as now, to cement our commitment to hegemony. Without Israel, we would long ago have tired of the Great Game, and it is Israel which yet makes surrender unthinkable.
Just watch what happens with Israel as the future unfolds. Neither the so-called "moralists" nor the so-called "realists" are going to chew that Israel arm off to get out of the trap the the true realists have set.
It is well that the article agrees with Y.O.S. in putting the word "realist" in quotation marks. To say that throwing Israel to the wolves is an act of so-called "realism" is only true if surrendering the Middle East to chaos and terror is "realism." Rather our interest lies in continued domination and control of the region, and Israel is our anchor.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 27, 2007 5:43 PMLess puzzling, except to conspiracy theorists. The most obvious explanation is always right. There's a reason Eric & Julia are never photographed together.
Posted by: oj at August 27, 2007 5:45 PMI'm sure any avoidance of mentioning the Saudi lobby (CAIR, ISNA, a dozen or more endowed Near East studies chairs; Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya; Wahhabi charities like IIRO, WAMY, WML et al was
just an oversight.
I'm missing something. The question is why, if US support for Israel can only be explained by Jews suborning the democratic process, the party that is more friendly to Israel is the party that Jews don't support.
Your answer is that it's because rich Republicans hate Israel. How is that not puzzling (not that they hate Israel, I understand that; but why the Republican Party favors a nation hated by its rich donors)?
Posted by: Ibid at August 27, 2007 9:39 PMNo, the answer is that the premise of the question is wrong. The base of the Party is religious. They don't have to be suborned.
Posted by: oj at August 27, 2007 11:24 PMStates have interests, not allies. Look at our behavior and infer our true conception of our interests.
Our intrests are to dominate the Middle East and to disestablish the spiritual jailhouse, forever. Our alliance with Israel serves these interests.
Let not the analysis remain fixated on mere words, watch what we do, not what we say. Waht we are seeing is not a debate between "moralists" and "realists," ohly a debate between realists and the domestic political opponents of the current practicioners of realism.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 28, 2007 4:13 AMOur interests aren't the interests of states.
Basing the states of the Middle East on Abrahamism is the interest we share.
Posted by: oj at August 28, 2007 9:36 AMWalt and Mearsheimer are Senator Bilbos with advanced degrees and embossed business cards (unless Harvard and the Univ. of Chicago confiscated them).
Posted by: jim hamlen at August 29, 2007 2:01 AM