When it comes to international affairs, Harvard academics are often
associated with a single phrase. For Joseph S. Nye, Jr., it’s “soft
power,” for Samuel P. Huntington it’s “the clash of civilizations,” and
for Francis Fukuyama, now at Johns Hopkins, it’s “the end of history.”
Perhaps,
then, it is not surprising that the Kennedy School’s Stephen M. Walt
and the University of Chicago’s John J. Mearsheimer have become
synonymous with one phrase—“The Israel Lobby”—a phrase that has come to
symbolize their allegation that U.S. foreign policy reflects Israeli
interests more than it does American ones.
Though it is much
to soon to say if Walt and Mearsheimer’s contributions will equal those
of Nye, Huntington, or Fukuyama, the duo’s paper certainly rivals any
of the previous essays in terms of the controversy it has generated.
The
authors have been rebutting their critics since early May. First they
did so back in the pages of the London Review, and this month, they did
battle in Foreign Policy magazine, which devoted its cover to the
Israel lobby debate.
Though the tone of the debate was
vitriolic immediately after the essay first appeared, the discussion
has taken on a new tone. And only now—after the critics have spoken,
Walt and Mearsheimer have responded, and the essay has been the subject
of lengthy commentaries in various publications—is it possible to gain
a rough sense of the essays’s influence.
The spotlight has
finally shifted away from the men and onto their argument, prompting
academic inquiries into the substance of their claims rather than
squabbling over footnotes and sourcing.
Precisely because they
are no longer the focus of the debate, their profiles have risen and
they have come to be identified as the authorities on the subject of
the Israel lobby.
ROUND ONE
Walt and
Mearsheimer's central thesis is that a pro-Israel slant pervades
American foreign policy toward the Middle East, and that it is the
result of a powerful pro-Israel lobby comprised of a “loose coalition
of individuals and organizations.”
In their 83-page study, the
professors argue that the lobby exercises its power through its control
of editorial pages and magazines, think-tanks, political contributions,
and through its powerful lobby groups—most notably the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Through these levers, they
argue, the lobby successfully played a leading role in the invasion of
Iraq, and is now agitating for an similar attack on Iran.
The response to the essay was both swift and strong.
In
interviews shortly after the essay was published, Frankfurter Professor
of Law Alan M. Dershowitz repeatedly called the authors “liars” and
“bigots,” adding later, in a published rebuttal, that Belfer Professor
of International Affairs Walt and Mearsheimer’s essay was “filled with
distortions.”
In that paper, Dershowitz focused his criticisms
on discrediting the sourcing and scholarship of the paper rather than
addressing its core thesis.
Dershowitz predicted in an
interview that the essay would be a “career-ending move,” adding that
in one particular case where a quotation was allegedly taken out of
context, the authors had “probably drawn the quotation from neo-Nazi
sources.” And if they “had mangled the quotation themselves,” he said,
they had “committed a fireable offense.”
Other critics were more restrained.
Longtime
New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz, an erstwhile lecturer on
Social Studies, wrote in his magazine that the essay is “academic
paraphernalia,” and that the authors know “little about reality.”
Kennedy
School Professor of Public Service David Gergen deemed the essay
“unfair” in a piece in U.S. News, writing: “Over the course of four
tours in the White House, I never once saw a decision [that] tilt[ed]
U.S. foreign policy in favor of Israel at the expense of America’s
interest.”
YOUR PORTAL TO CONTROVERSY
But
as time has passed since the initial publication, the vitriol of the
original criticisms has faded, replaced with a more nuanced and
collegial discussion. This was evidenced by the debate in Foreign
Policy magazine, where three scholars assembled to criticize Walt and
Mearsheimer, and one rose to defend them.
The three who criticized them did so to varying degrees.
Aaron Friedberg, a Princeton professor and former aide to Vice
President Dick Cheney, attacked the pair harshly, using much the same
tone of language as the early critics.
But David Ross, former
President Clinton’s chief negotiator at the 2000 Camp David
negotiations, seemed more concerned with discussing the limits of the
lobby’s power—questioning Walt and Mearsheimer’s linkage of the lobby’s
power to Iraq and Iran.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Israeli foreign
minister during the time of the Camp David talks, took a more
historical approach. Recounting years of the region’s history and
America’s involvement in it, Ben-Ami directly rebutted Walt and
Mearsheimer’s central thesis. He argued that U.S. support for Israel
was strategic and historical, and not attributable to the power of the
pro-Israel lobby.
Both Ross and Ben-Ami seemed more concerned
with refuting Walt and Mearsheimer’s claims about the Israel lobby’s
power than discrediting them by punching individual holes in their
arguments. In his rebuttal, by contrast, Dershowitz had selected
individual quotations that Walt and Mearsheimer had used and attempted
to show how they had taken them out of context.
What’s more,
the debate in Foreign Policy featured a very prominent former U.S.
government official taking sides with Walt and Mearsheimer. Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the national security advisor under former President
Carter, agreed that domestic pro-Israel lobbies are powerful, and that
their influence was felt acutely at peace negotiations between Israel
and Arab nations that were brokered by the U.S.
Away from the
pages of Foreign Policy, Walt and Mearsheimer also received unexpected
support in their criticism of the Israel lobby.
First, renowned press observer Michael Massing ’74 wrote an extensive
essay in The New York Review of Books on the subject. After thumping
Walt and Mearsheimer for not examining AIPAC in detail, he launched
into a 5,000-word, in-depth examination of the committee’s structure
and power.
And just this past month, the Washington Post wrote
a similar story, again devoting over 5,000 words to another detailed
examination of AIPAC.
THE FOUR MONTH VERDICT
As
the authors have amended and updated their original paper, the scholars
who continue to debate them—like Ben-Ami and Ross—have devoted their
energies to addressing Walt and Mearsheimer’s central claims rather
than discrediting the report by attacking its footnotes and sourcing.
Like
the story in the New York Review, the piece in the Post did begin and
end with a discussion of Walt and Mearsheimer. But it’s hard to miss
the fact that the bulk of the story was not devoted to them or
to their paper, but to their subject: the lobby itself.
And given
that the stated purpose of the paper was to begin a discussion of the
Israel’s lobby power, Walt and Mearsheimer must almost certainly regard such press accounts as a victory to their credit.
—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.
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