I missed most of the Mearshimer & Walt debate; I was momentarily interested in non-virtual life. But since it seems to have gotten second wind this week with Judt and Cole publishing, I'd like to add my two cents.
IMHO, the real thing that's wrong with both the Mearsheimer-Walt article and all the high profile replies to it (including Chomsky and Massad) is that they all accept the Iron Dichotomy: EITHER Israel policy is in US interests, OR it must be the Jews/lobby manipulating us.
This Iron Dichtomy seems to be just as much a part of left conventional wisdom as it is of mainstream common wisdom. The left has very cynical view of US interests of course. But the majority of us seem just as positive that our support for Israel serves those interests as the neocons are, and for exactly the same logical reason: if the choice is between accepting that it serves our interests or believing in a Jewish conspiracy, we'll take the first.
The problem is that both parts of the Iron Dichotomy are wrong. Our Israel policy is not in our interests (or Israel's, or the world's). And it has not been foist upon us by a conspiracy of the Lobby or the Jews.
How is that possible? That's an excellent question. And it is exactly the question we should be starting with. The answers are complicated and subtle. And they're not at all finished or settled, obviously. How could they be, when almost no one even gets to the starting point?
But IMHO, this is the only rational starting point. And the longer we avoid it, the longer we'll keep going around in sterile circles. It's the either/or that has to be overthrown. Because until then, nobody's really taking any critique seriously. The two false positions both keep from falling over because they prop each other up. On both sides, people are accepting potfulls of weak arguments which get almost all their force from the Ta-Dah! conviction that the other side is clearly wrong, and therefore their side must be logically entailed; the specific reasons are just adornments that can be changed at will. And in this way, the whole process of finding the true complicated answers is being foreclosed.
So, in the interest of providing a better starting point, I thought I'd post a link to the article Mearshimer and Walt should have written:
http://infothecary.org/mpollak/lieven.html
[With a very indebted tip of the hat to Jordan Hayes for hosting it and making it look so great!]
The above is a link to a couple of sections from Anatol Lieven's (relatively) recent book, _America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism_. I don't agree with everything in it, nor would I expect most people on this list to. Lieven calls himself a classic conservative in the mold of George Kennan. He is also a proud ex-cold warrior, and a realist in every sense of the term. In other words, very much like Mearshimer. And here he writes the article Mearshimer & Walt should have but didn't.
Lieven tries to explain clearly why the way the US supports Israel damages the strategic interests of both. (Mearshimer & Walt could have done this -- it is their field, after all -- but they seem to have assumed it was obvious to the public because it was so established in their field -- an almost comical case of academic myopia.) And then he tries to tackle the second question of how this could possibly happen: how the US could possibly institutionalize policies over the medium term that violate its strategic interests.
Where are the answers to be found if not in foisting and duping? In national identity and culture, in intellectual and political history, and in the inertial weight of institutionalized policy.
There are many ways to make this argument. Lieven's is simply his take. It centers on nationalism, a complex topic about which he knows much, and which is clearly a good place to start if you want to explain how countries, like people, can act irrationally over the long haul about things central to their wellbeing.
As should be clear from my postings over the last 10 years on this subject, I think there are several points at which Lieven's argument could be substantially improved. But I firmly agree that this is the only rational starting point: a firm grasp of why the current policy does not serve US strategic interests, no matter how cynically you define them; and an equally strong conviction that it wasn't created out of nothing by crafty foreigners; leading to an attempt to explain the complex reasons why and how this irrational policy evolved and got and retains such strong support.
And I think Lieven deserves enormous credit in being almost alone among public intellectuals of any political persuasion in getting this starting point right.
In addition, he's put enormous care into his tone and rhetoric, which is almost as important as logic when you're talking about irrationality. The result is that I think it's almost impossible for any serious reader to accuse him based on this text of either anti-semitism or naivete -- the two stock objections which seem to keep any argument along these lines from ever being taken seriously.
And lastly, he's a very intelligent guy who writes clearly and tartly.
So enjoy. Or hate! It's still a million times better starting point than M&W, IMHO. Criticism of this argument will actually get us somewhere.
And if Doug, who's had Lieven on his program many times (and all of them have been good), wanted to ask him back so he could grill him critically on this topic (on which at the moment they seem provisionally to disagree), I personally think that would make great radio. I'm sure Lieven would love to have a forum to defend his position that US policy on Israel is not in US strategic interests.
[One caveat: when I say this is a recent book, I mean 3 years ago. So several relevant developments, like the Gaza pullout and the Hamas election, have not been incorporated. I don't think any developments have changed the substance of his argument. But if Lieven had written it today I'm sure he would have changed the occasional nuance; there is a sentence or two that might sound dated.]
Michael