John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that U.S. foreign policy has been overly influenced by strong pro- Israel groups, producing a strategy that is detrimental to the resolution of difficulties in the Middle East and to the interests of the United States. The authors' article in the London Review of Books on the negative effects of "the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby" provoked an unprecedented response from the international community. That article forms the basis of this book, which has been deepened to include ...
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John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that U.S. foreign policy has been overly influenced by strong pro- Israel groups, producing a strategy that is detrimental to the resolution of difficulties in the Middle East and to the interests of the United States. The authors' article in the London Review of Books on the negative effects of "the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby" provoked an unprecedented response from the international community. That article forms the basis of this book, which has been deepened to include recent events.
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Many knee-jerk reactions to this book tried to smear it as anti-Semitic, simply because it questions whether American and Israeli interests in foreign affairs must necessarily always coincide. The authors take great pains to explain in detail why this charge is spurious, and they succeed, in my view. They make a credible case for why the most activist elements in the Israel lobby have, even if unintentionally, advocated for policies like the Iraq War which have actually made both the US and Israel less safe, and why more clear-eyed and dispassionate analysis is needed in order to make for a more ethically consistent US-Israel relationship.
The one point where I think the authors are dismissive without sufficiently supporting their case is in their relatively unexamined assertion that religious beliefs about the end times are no basis for the making and conducting of foreign policy. They simply state this as a given and then move on, but multiple chapters' worth of analysis in their text actually depend upon its being true. While untruths are certainly not a basis for any policy of any kind whatsoever, they do not provide any specific reasons why someone should not believe biblical prophecies, or not inform their worldview by biblical values. That, of course, would necessitate the exploration of hypotheses which would fall well outside the normal bounds of empirical social science methodologies, but their assertion cannot be taken as given simply because they say so, and because this is what is driving the political commitments the wisdom of which they question, this question cannot be so simply swept aside.
Apart from this one critique, though, the authors are not only not guilty of anti-Semitic or other anti-religious bias. They are extremely careful, reflective, even-handed, and knowledgeable in their treatment of what is one of the thorniest subjects imaginable. A more balanced and deeply-informed set of views on the topic would be hard to come by in any quarter.
