RSS Feed MenuSteven M. Walt, one of the authors of The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The thrust of his book –that the Israeli Lobby is pernicious and all powerful — is nonsense and he and his co-author do terrible harm to American foreign policy whenever they are heeded on that subject. But one of the great joys of the current Arab rising is to see a self-styled realist proved so wrong so often on things he wrote recently.
As Wikipedia notes, Jonathan Chait of The New Republic calls him an “ultra-Nixonian realist.” Now the tricky one had a lot of faults, personal anti-Semitism among them, but he was always pro-Zionist. Not so Walt. Realists of his kind are always promoting some evil policy that we are told we are too stupid to understand is in American’s best interest. This is called “realism.” In the Reagan administration — opposed to détente, moral equivalence, and “convergence” — they had a saying: “Realism doesn’t work.”
Walt’s recent writings for Foreign Policy magazine bear this out. This first hilarious entry from January 2010 mentions Libya giving up its WMD programs without once noting that it was the invasion of Iraq which scared Qaddafi into so doing (there is a bridge in Brooklyn for sale to the first person who believes with Walt that “multilateral sanctions” did it). The telltale moral equivalence is there, undermining the fact of Libyan involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and offering praise for governments that kissed up to Qaddafi.
Then in January of this very year, a month ago, Walt explained why the upheavals in Tunisia would not spread to say Egypt, or other Arab nations. Oops! But when they spread to Egypt the so-called realist was suddenly not for the American backed strongman (as is the way with Nixonians) but positively happy about democracy. Why? Because it would hurt Israel when the Egyptian mob tore up the peace accords! What joy to be a realist. Support anti-Israeli strongmen like Qaddafi and predict they will rule a 100 years but when pro-American strongmen begin to fall look for the silver lining of more war on the Jews.
In fact, if a correct theory has predictive power when tested, Walt is the foreign policy equivalent of a Lamarckian. George W. Bush predicted that Arab strongmen rode the tiger and proposed freedom to get them off of it. A realist sees them as the best bet and is indifferent to regime type.
Stephen M. Walt has been consistently wrong on predicting outcomes in his chosen field. He calls this realism but his ideas never meet the test of reality. The freedom agenda, including support for other free peoples, like the Israelis, does.
Elvis Elvisberg // Feb 22, 2011 at 1:53 am
The thrust of his book –that the Israeli Lobby is pernicious and all powerful
You are a liar.
The thrust of his book is that the Israel lobby, like the NRA or the Cuba lobby, gets its way the bulk of the time, in a way that contradicts other US policy goals.
Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong, but don’t lie about his argument.
This first hilarious entry from January 2010 mentions Libya giving up its WMD programs without once noting that it was the invasion of Iraq which scared Qaddafi into so doing
That’s probably not true. Libya was reorienting its policy away from confrontation with the West for years prior to 9/11. See: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57032/ray-takeyh/the-rogue-who-came-in-from-the-cold
Your entire argument, such as it is, in this post is that Walt didn’t think that Egyptian protesters would be able to chase Mubarak. Mubarak had run that country for 30 years. Walt’s predictions were far from unreasonable. You don’t even attempt to substantiate your jibe that Walt is “consistently wrong.”
You should have been content with making the “you’re wrong, nanny nanny boo boo” point, and refrained from adding a series of transparent lies and exaggerations about his work writ large.
baw1064 // Feb 22, 2011 at 2:03 am
So, which regime changes does Vecchione see coming? Syria? Jordan? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Morocco? Yemen? Any I neglected to mention? Please state why or why not. Go on, take the reality test!
ottovbvs // Feb 22, 2011 at 8:58 am
Wow…had to fit the spittle deflectors for this one. How exactly is Walt’s desire for realism in the practice of US foreign policy proved wrong by the uprisings in Egypt, Libya etc. Walt may have expressed scepticism about protesters ability to overthrow Mubarak, quite a few people did including many neoconservatives like Veccione. In fact many neocons wanted the US to act to prevent Mubarak from being overthrown. This hysterical little outburst with it’s lies (Bush dropped his middle east democracy agenda like a hot potato when Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood started winning elections) and unsophisticated version of Walt’s work is clearly an attack on him because of his criticism of Israeli penetration of the US govt. A singularly inept and silly attack by a partisan without much sense.
Fozz // Feb 22, 2011 at 9:51 am
I was going to comment, but those who posted before me have done a good enough job at tearing this blog entry apart. I have nothing else to add, good work people.
Nanotek // Feb 22, 2011 at 10:16 am
“But one of the great joys of the current Arab rising is to see a self-styled realist proved so wrong so often on things he wrote recently.”
I feel the same joy when considering your past predictions
The Merchant of Venice Beach // Feb 22, 2011 at 10:39 am
Otto, not true, the neo Cons did not want to support Mubarak, the paleo cons and the other Conservatives did. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and all that lot are certainly not neo-Cons.
I don’t really want to get in between an internet pissing match between Walt and Guardiano. I saw more than enough of that between TNR and Walt and I think the focus on how it affects Israel for good or bad is out of place at this moment. Libyan people are dying by great numbers trying to rid themselves of an insane and murderous clown, I could give a rats ass about Walt. I only care about what the US government will do to support them. Now would be the perfect time to send a cruise missile right into his tent, the media is completely blocked out in the country so we have perfect deniability.
Gadhafi is an enemy of the US, he blew an American jetliner out of the sky, the only reason not to have gotten rid of him in the past was to appease the Oil Sheiks, but now they are far too pre-occupied with saving their own skins than worrying about him. Up to now every President has gotten it wrong and come on, blowing up a jetliner is causus belli enough.
So come on Obama, don’t let Gadhafi win. Declare a no fly zone in the whole country (which would prevent mercenaries from coming in) and supply the rebels with arms. In a few days Gadhafi will do a Mussolini from a streetpost.
ottovbvs // Feb 22, 2011 at 5:39 pm
“Otto, not true, the neo Cons did not want to support Mubarak, the paleo cons and the other Conservatives did. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and all that lot are certainly not neo-Cons.”
I’m afraid I can’t tell the difference, substantively they are interchangeable. Although I agree Ghaddaffi is a scumbag.
talkradiosucks.com // Feb 22, 2011 at 10:43 am
It’s getting to the point where I don’t even read Vecchione’s articles any more. He simply has no credibility.
I really wonder on what basis Frum decides to allow bloggers to pontificate on this site.
The Merchant of Venice Beach // Feb 22, 2011 at 10:50 am
And for those who have a genuine interest in reading about Walt and Mearshimer instead of just mindlessly defending them then read a thorough criticism of them here:
http://www.tnr.com/article/the-usual-suspect
Here is a small excerpt: (Mearsheimer and Walt like to explain the pro-Israel attitudes of American politicians in gross tribal terms. Howard Dean’s “unabashed” pro-Israel stance, for example, is explicable when you grasp that “Dean’s wife is Jewish and his children were raised Jewish as well.”)
Mearsheimer and Walt stretch their Iran argument to the snapping point. They contend that Israeli politicians and their supporters in America exaggerate the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran, because Iranian radicals have not actually called for the elimination of Israel. They assert that “Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to ‘vanish from the page of time’ (or to be ‘erased from the pages of history’) is often mistranslated as a call for Israel’s physical destruction (i.e. to ‘wipe Israel off the map’).” Often mistranslated? I wonder how good their own Farsi is. But Al Jazeera—no known Jewish control there—reported in 2005 that at the “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad declared that “Israel must be wiped off the map.” Ahmadinejad’s own website described the speech this way: “He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away.” The official Iranian broadcast service reported that “Iran’s President … on Wednesday called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map.’” Surely there are clearer ways to express a desire for coexistence.
It is mystifying that Mearsheimer and Walt would so easily destroy their own credibility by stating as fact lies that are so easily refuted. Perhaps it is because they have become dedicated enemies of complexity. When did it become legitimate in American political science to explain complicated phenomena by single causes? Not even the blizzard of footnotes at the end of their book can disguise the fact that it is an exercise in simplification.”
I know I should not wade into this, but people really are not well versed in these guys idiocies, there are a huge number of them. And I am not saying this in the defense of the Jewish lobby, I think the settlements in the West Bank are both illegal and harmful to Israel’s own long term self interest itself.
ottovbvs // Feb 22, 2011 at 5:54 pm
Why is everyone who thinks that Walt and Mearsheimer have a reasonable thesis MINDLESS? I don’t consider myself particularly mindless. I’ve worked in the ME in the oil business at a seniorish level, have a couple of friends who live in Israel, have some familiarity with the region’s history and politics (actually quite a lot), so why am I mindless? Their basic position that pro Israeli lobby groups in the US exercise an unreasonable degree of influence over US foreign policy and often causes it to act in ways that are at variance with our own interests seems well nigh unassailable to anyone who is not an intense idealogue as you all too obviously are. I don’t for a moment claim that there aren’t other players, there always are, but suggest the Israeli lobby isn’t a major political power in the US and immensely influential in determinng our priorities in the region appears to me to be somewhat self delusory.
The Merchant of Venice Beach // Feb 22, 2011 at 10:56 am
Wow TRS, great rebuttal there. I really enjoyed how you took Guardiano apart piece by piece citing respected authorities detailing the many ways that Guardiano was wrong….oh wait….I guess you feel it is not necessary to do so, simply coming here and laying a huge dump on the dining room table counts as “rebuttal” in your camp.
Here is Jeffrey Weintraub detailing Noam Chomsky:
Chomsky and Massad on Mearsheimer & Walt
Interestingly enough, Noam Chomsky (see also here) also finds M&W’s argument about “The Israel Lobby” pretty weak. Like Joseph Massad, another hostile critic of Israel, Chomsky thinks their analysis is insufficiently anti-American.
Chomsky begins with some agit-prop build-up about the “courageous stand” of Mearsheimer & Walt, the “hysterical reaction” against them, the repressive power of the Israel Lobby, his own courageous stands in favor of mass murder in the former Yugoslavia, und so weiter. Then, when he gets around to M&W’s actual argument, he concludes that it doesn’t hold water.
But recognizing that M-W took a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion. I’ve reviewed elsewhere what the record (historical and documentary) seems to me to show about the main sources of US ME policy, in books and articles for the past 40 years, and can’t try to repeat here. M-W make as good a case as one can, I suppose, for the power of the Lobby, but I don’t think it provides any reason to modify what has always seemed to me a more plausible interpretation. Notice incidentally that what is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy: in particular, (A) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (B) the Lobby.
The M-W thesis is that (B) overwhelmingly predominates. To evaluate the thesis, we have to distinguish between two quite different matters, which they tend to conflate: (1) the alleged failures of US ME policy; (2) the role of The Lobby in bringing about these consequences. Insofar as the stands of the Lobby conform to (A), the two factors are very difficult to disentagle. And there is plenty of conformity.
Let’s look at (1), and ask the obvious question: for whom has policy been a failure for the past 60 years? The energy corporations? Hardly. They have made “profits beyond the dreams of avarice” (quoting John Blair, who directed the most important government inquiries into the industry, in the ’70s), and still do, and the ME is their leading cash cow. Has it been a failure for US grand strategy based on control of what the State Department described 60 years ago as the “stupendous source of strategic power” of ME oil and the immense wealth from this unparalleled “material prize”? Hardly. The US has substantially maintained control — and the significant reverses, such as the overthrow of the Shah, were not the result of the initiatives of the Lobby. And as noted, the energy corporations prospered. [....]
Another problem that M-W do not address is the role of the energy corporations. They are hardly marginal in US political life — transparently in the Bush administration, but in fact always. How can they be so impotent in the face of the Lobby? As ME scholar Stephen Zunes has rightly pointed out, “there are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races.”
Do the energy corporations fail to understand their interests, or are they part of the Lobby too? By now, what’s the distinction between (1) and (2), apart from the margins?
Also to be explained, again, is why US ME policy is so similar to its policies elsewhere — to which, incidentally, Israel has made important contributions, e.g., in helping the executive branch to evade congressional barriers to carrying out massive terror in Central America, to evade embargoes against South Africa and Rhodesia, and much else. All of which again makes it even more difficult to separate (2) from (1) — the latter, pretty much uniform, in essentials, throughout the world.
I won’t run through the other arguments, but I don’t feel that they have much force, on examination.
The thesis M-W propose does however have plenty of appeal. The reason, I think, is that it leaves the US government untouched on its high pinnacle of nobility, “Wilsonian idealism,” etc., merely in the grip of an all-powerful force that it canot escape. It’s rather like attributing the crimes of the past 60 years to “exaggerated Cold War illusions,” etc. Convenient, but not too convincing. In either case.
Cheers,
Jeff Weintraub
The Merchant of Venice Beach // Feb 22, 2011 at 11:04 am
And here is Christopher Hitchens on W&M: http://www.slate.com/id/2138741/
Walt and Mearshimer have been thoroughly debunked and discredited using reality based discourse (ie. their own words against them). Insulting Guardiano in no way mitigates this basic fact.
ottovbvs // Feb 22, 2011 at 9:32 pm
I read Hitchens’ piece since he’s a clever guy, it’s quite old and he was at the height of his neocon phase in 2006 when the Iraq war which he’d heavily backed was turning into a debacle, but even then his initial conclusion was:
“Everybody knows that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish organizations exert a vast influence over Middle East policy, especially on Capitol Hill.”
How exactly does this debunk W & M’s basic thesis? As far as I can see all Hitchen’s is saying is that it’s maybe not quite as powerful as it appears, there are other powerful lobbies in Washington, fifty years ago the US was more even handed, the US supports some other unsavory regimes, I disagree with some their arguments and btw they are vapid.
talkradiosucks.com // Feb 22, 2011 at 11:50 am
“Wow TRS, great rebuttal there. I really enjoyed how you took Guardiano apart piece by piece citing respected authorities detailing the many ways that Guardiano was wrong….oh wait….I guess you feel it is not necessary to do so, simply coming here and laying a huge dump on the dining room table counts as “rebuttal” in your camp.”
I don’t consider articles like this worth the time it takes to craft a detailed rebuttal.
Oh, and nice attention to detail there, lol.
The Merchant of Venice Beach // Feb 22, 2011 at 12:29 pm
TRS: I don’t consider articles like this worth the time it takes to craft a detailed rebuttal.
Then why say anything? Look, I don’t agree with everything Guardiano said here either. For one Gadhafi giving up nukes as a direct result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq is pure supposition. His one son, the one who was on TV, has been pushing for modernization and access to Western goods. For a time he was successful (I am not saying he is also not a rat bastard, just that he wants to be a dictator of a successful country, not a miserable one) until elements of the old guard (including one of his brothers) pushed back. That is likely part of it, and need for oil engineering technology was getting acute…so to state that it was Bush is far too simplistic. Who knows with someone like Gadhafi anyhow? And, of course, Bush talked a good game but when Iraq went south in a big way it all became just talk. There is also no way in hell Bush can possibly take any credit for what has happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, etc. Unless you want to credit him with the global downturn which made bad situations worse in the economies in the middle east. The spark in Tunisia was some poor peasant cart vendor who simply could not take the repression anymore and set himself on fire. But really who could have predicted what has happened?
The reason I did not focus on criticizing Guardiano though is that every other poster did and a lot of it simple ad hominem attacks.
baw1064 // Feb 22, 2011 at 1:02 pm
We’re mixing up Guardiano and Vecchione in this thread.
This is unfair to Guardiano. While IMO he is wildly optimistic about what level of military spending we can sustain, he has written a lot of stuff that is worth reading. Vecchione, on the other hand…
I learned nothing whatsoever from this column, other than that Vecchione doesn’t like Walt. For all his insistence on realism needing to pass a reality test, he makes no predictions of his own that may be proved or disproved by future events. No insights into the Middle East, no analysis of the backstory or the implications of the current unrest, no recommendations as to what US policy should be.
The Merchant of Venice Beach // Feb 22, 2011 at 1:30 pm
baw, hah. You are right, my big bad. But have you ever personally seen Guardiano and Vecchione together? How do we not know that Guardiano is not Vecchione’s super secret alter ego? Guardiano’s Whiplash to Vecchione’s Snidely?
baw1064 // Feb 22, 2011 at 1:41 pm
You got me there. Heck, I’ve never even seen either of them individually!
Primrose // Feb 23, 2011 at 1:49 pm
I’m not sure you can say that the opposite of Walt is Bush. This article claims,”"George W. Bush predicted that Arab strongmen rode the tiger and proposed freedom to get them off of it. A realist sees them as the best bet and is indifferent to regime type.”
Except Bush held hands with Saudi Arabia and other strongmen too, without any attempt to change matters. Nor could he focus on Afghanistan which was far more tyrannical than Iraq under Hussein. No apologist for Hussein, just that women didn’t get their heads cut off because they showed a little skin saving a life. Women could get educated. So by comparative awfulness, Afghanistan should have been the priority.
What this really shows is that we are utterly clueless about the Middle East because we don’t make any serious attempt to learn who they are.
Bush can’t claim he knows because he actually thought Iraq would go over well with the people. His administration was shocked that our interference might be seen as a humiliation; not that they understood how devastating the idea of being humiliated is in the Middle Eastern culture.
It is disappointing that the writer uses this to score points on someone else, instead of analyzing why our understanding is so faulty.
terrana01 // Mar 1, 2011 at 6:16 am
Well, I can see that you gentlemen, seem to agree that you’ve neatly “handled” Mr. Vecchio’s argument. Without boring me too much, with your detailed “debating” points. However, you seem to discredit the growing rumbling, usually by the left, about Israel’s undue influence in our government’s Mid-east policy. Rather than bore you all with anything that disrupts “the flow”, I will just say that you might describe me as a neo-con. I find it ludicrous to compare any realtionship we have with Israel, with the benefits of pandering to the Arabs and Persians. Seems like it has become very trendy to criticize Israel exclusively, on a global scale, as well as now in this country, by the the self-congratulatory Left. What this really amounts to, in my opinion, is nothing more than the usual cloaked anti-semitism. This little ploy is practiced so delicately by pseudo-intellectuals, who like to describe themselves as “realists”. In “reality” beneath their polished rhetoric, lie the convoluted thoughts of good old jew-haters. There have been more than enough of those in history. Walt and those who echo his mantra about Israel, so carefully give themselves “plausible deniability” about their true agenda. Hatred of Israel that defies any reasonable basis, is nothing new. The Europeans never got over it and seem to be sinking fast in their ability to conceal their antipathy toward “JEWS”. You guys make me laugh, you criticize the messenger, when what you really find distasteful, is his stance on Israel, (Those Jews, to you boys). Sorry to inject some “realism” into your neat little dispositive arguments. Sounds rather intellectually incestuous, to me.
terrana01 // Mar 1, 2011 at 6:21 am
Noticed this is an old page, just sorry you folks won’t be back here. Until the subject is broached again by anyone with the temerity to challenge your carefully crafted premises.