[Peace-discuss] USA takes orders from Israel

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The subject line is clearly false as it stands, but there is a "sophisticated"
version of it in Mearsheimer & Walt's "Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"
(2007), which is in fact worth reading.  Here Noam Chomsky gives what seems to
me to be an acute analysis.  --CGE]


	The Israel Lobby?
	March 28, 2006
	By Noam Chomsky

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 disentangle.  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


Ron Szoke wrote:
> Olmert says called Bush to force change in U.N. vote
> 
> Tue Jan 13, 2009 1:52pm GMT ...