The Israel Lobby?
by Noam Chomsky
March 28, 2006
I've
received many requests to comment on the article by John Mearsheimer
and Stephen Walt (henceforth M-W), published in the London Review of Books,
which has been circulating extensively on the internet and has elicited a storm
of controversy. A few thoughts on the matter follow.
It was, as noted, published in the London Review of Books, which is far more
open to discussion on these issues than US journals -- a matter of relevance
(to which I'll return) to the alleged influence of what M-W call "the
Lobby." An article in the Jewish journal Forward quotes M as saying that
the article was commissioned by a US journal, but rejected, and that
"the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and co-author Stephen Walt
would never have been able to place their report in a American-based scientific
publication." But despite the fact that it appeared in England, the
M-W article aroused the anticipated hysterical reaction from the usual
supporters of state violence here, from the Wall St Journal to Alan Dershowitz, sometimes in ways that would instantly expose
the authors to ridicule if they were not lining up (as usual) with power.
M-W deserve credit for taking a position that is sure to elicit tantrums and
fanatical lies and denunciations, but it's worth noting that there is nothing
unusual about that. Take any topic that has risen to the level of Holy
Writ among "the herd of independent minds" (to borrow Harold
Rosenberg's famous description of intellectuals): for example, anything having
to do with the Balkan wars, which played a huge role in the extraordinary
campaigns of self-adulation that disfigured intellectual discourse towards the
end of the millennium, going well beyond even historical precedents, which are
ugly enough. Naturally, it is of extraordinary importance to the herd to
protect that self-image, much of it based on deceit and fabrication.
Therefore, any attempt even to bring up plain (undisputed, surely relevant)
facts is either ignored (M-W can't be ignored), or sets off most impressive
tantrums, slanders, fabrications and deceit, and the other standard
reactions. Very easy to demonstrate, and by no means limited to these
cases. Those without experience in critical analysis of conventional doctrine
can be very seriously misled by the particular case of the Middle East(ME).
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.
Furthermore, those extraordinary successes had to overcome plenty of barriers:
primarily, as elsewhere in the world, what internal documents call
"radical nationalism," meaning independent nationalism. As
elsewhere in the world, it's been convenient to phrase these concerns in terms
of "defense against the USSR," but
the pretext usually collapses quickly on inquiry, in the ME as elsewhere.
And in fact the claim was conceded to be false, officially, shortly after the
fall of the Berlin Wall, when Bush's National Security Strategy (1990) called
for maintaining the forces aimed at the ME, where the serious "threats to
our interests... could not be laid at the Kremlin's door" -- now lost as a
pretext for pursuing about the same policies as before. And the same was
true pretty much throughout the world.
That at once raises another question about the M-W thesis. What were
"the Lobbies" that led to pursuing very similar policies throughout
the world? Consider the year 1958, a very critical year in world
affairs. In 1958, the Eisenhower administration identified the three
leading challenges to the US
as the ME, North Africa, and Indonesia
-- all oil producers, all Islamic. North Africa
was taken care of by Algerian (formal) independence. Indonesia and the were taken care of by
Suharto's murderous slaughter (1965) and Israel's
destruction of Arab secular nationalism (Nasser,
1967). In the ME, that established the close US-Israeli alliance and
confirmed the judgment of US intelligence in 1958 that a "logical
corollary" of opposition to "radical nationalism" (meaning,
secular independent nationalism) is "support for Israel" as the one
reliable US base in the region (along with Turkey, which entered into close
relations with Israel in the same year). Suharto's coup aroused virtual
euphoria, and he remained "our kind of guy" (as the Clinton
administration called him) until he could no longer keep control in 1998,
through a hideous record that compares well with Saddam Hussein -- who was also
"our kind of guy" until he disobeyed orders in 1990. What was
the Indonesia Lobby? The Saddam Lobby? And the question generalizes
around the world. Unless these questions are faced, the issue (1) cannot
be seriously addressed.
When we do investigate (1), we find that US policies in the ME are quite
similar to those pursued elsewhere in the world, and have been a remarkable
success, in the face of many difficulties: 60 years is a long time for planning
success. It's true that Bush II has weakened the US position,
not only in the ME, but that's an entirely separate matter.
That leads to (2). As noted, the US-Israeli alliance was firmed up
precisely when Israel
performed a huge service to the US-Saudis-Energy corporations by smashing
secular Arab nationalism, which threatened to divert resources to domestic
needs. That's also when the Lobby takes off (apart from the Christian
evangelical component, by far the most numerous and arguably the most
influential part, but that's mostly the 90s). And it's also when the
intellectual-political class began their love affair with Israel,
previously of little interest to them. They are a very influential part
of the Lobby because of their role in media, scholarship, etc. From that
point on it's hard to distinguish "national interest" (in the usual
perverse sense of the phrase) from the effects of the Lobby. I've run
through the record of Israeli services to the US, to the present, elsewhere, and
won't review it again here.
M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals, but they recognize that the Lobby
includes most of the political-intellectual class -- at which point the thesis
loses much of its content. They also have a highly selective use of
evidence (and much of the evidence is assertion). Take, as one example,
arms sales to China,
which they bring up as undercutting US interests. But they fail to
mention that when the US
objected, Israel was
compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000,
and again in 2005, in
this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its way to humiliate Israel.
Without a peep from The Lobby, in either case, though it was a serious blow to Israel.
There's a lot more like that. Take the worst crime in Israel's history, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982
with the goal of destroying the secular nationalist PLO and ending its
embarrassing calls for political settlement, and imposing a client Maronite regime. The Reagan administration strongly
supported the invasion through its worst atrocities, but a few months later
(August), when the atrocities were becoming so severe that even NYT Beirut
correspondent Thomas Friedman was complaining about them, and they were
beginning to harm the US "national interest," Reagan ordered Israel
to call off the invasion, then entered to complete the removal of the PLO from
Lebanon, an outcome very welcome to both Israel and the US (and consistent with
general US opposition to independent nationalism). The outcome was not
entirely what the US-Israel wanted, but the relevant observation here is that
the Reaganites supported the aggression and
atrocities when that stand was conducive to the "national interest,"
and terminated them when it no longer was (then entering to finish the main
job). That's pretty normal.
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 cannot 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.
NC