Israel's Future in an Illiberal World

This essay by Robert Kagan on the current illiberal trajectory of the Israeli state is absolutely outstanding. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Most columns which talk about Israel in conjunction with the rise of global illiberal nationalism basically are exercises in what Marx would've called "bourgeois moralism" -- calling for Israel to resist it (or to stop actively participating in it) because it's wrong. Now, unlike Marx I think there is a perfectly valid place for moralistic appeals. But it certainly opens itself up to a response from a certain sort of fellow, who deems him or herself a hard-headed realist, who knows that such high-minded ethical appeals have no actual purchase in the dog-eat-dog, every-nation-for-itself world of realpolitik. Israel has to do what's best for Israel -- same as every other country. If that means shedding democracy, or liberalism, or egalitarianism, well, boo-hoo for them.

Kagan's contribution is useful because it is expressly addressed to that sort of fellow, and I endorse it not because I agree with this outlook but because I recognize it is an important one that many people -- rightly or not -- hold.

Kagan's essay explores what Israel's status would be -- not what it ought to be, not what it should be if states were fair and just and nice, but what it would be -- in an illiberal world where America and other major powers were motivated primarily by a sort of insular, anti-cosmopolitan nationalism. In this world, bonds between nations would, where they form at all, be based on material concerns and the conveniences of power -- the world Charles de Gaulle imagined when he said "nations don't have friends, only interests." And the answer is that while in the immediate term Israel might find friends in the budding illiberal powers currently popping up -- from Trump to Orban to Modi to Putin -- in the long-term such a world would almost certainly result in an Israel isolated, alone, and -- at best -- abandoned to its own fate.

Historically, Israel viewed its own security and standing as a new and relatively fragile state as being intricately connected to its status as a democratic state and society that would be a member in good-standing of the liberal political order. In a world where Israel's neighbors had more people, more territory, more wealth, and more oil, the main factor that could bind any major power to the Jewish state is a perception of shared values.

But the decline of the post-Cold War liberal order (liberal America and the EU) and the rise of illiberal alternatives (e.g., China and Russia, but also Trumpism in America and right-wing populism in Europe and globally) has given Israel a choice in didn't have before. Today, Israel doesn't have to be liberal in order to gain the support from other global powers. China doesn't care if Israel is democratic. Russia hardly minds if Israel is repressive. And within the traditional seats of international liberalism, one sees rot from the inside -- from Trump's rise to the chaos over Brexit. A right-wing populist like Netanyahu doesn't lack for ideological allies in the international system.

Yet, Kagan warns, Israel is delusional if it thinks that an "America first!" America, no longer concerned with trifling things like "democracy" or "shared liberal values", will be a reliable ally ever outward into the future. Why would it? Insular nationalism by its very nature doesn't lend itself to establishing these sort of enduring, values-based bonds. It is facile to assume that America will simultaneously retreat from seeking to promote a vision of liberal internationalism yet will remain committed to the security and flourishing of small nations halfway across the globe whose very presence seems to alienate much larger and objectively more important countries. If shared values matter, Israel can argue the fact that it's a pariah among some many states is a case of hypocrisy, illiberalism, or outright hate, and that it'd be just plain wrong for America to give into it. But that refrain -- whether fair or not as an ethical matter -- is simply irrelevant if America's foreign policy is "America first!" Only in a world where international ethics matter can Israel appeal to ethics as basis of a stable diplomatic relationship.

Kagan draws a parallel to right-wing Polish nationalists, who somehow think that a US that chooses to abandon NATO will nonetheless maintain a special security commitment to Poland. Those figures are out of their minds: if America ceases to care about the NATO alliance, it will in turn cease to care about Poland -- if not immediately, then shortly thereafter. More broadly: if America is in the game only for itself, playing real power politics, eventually Israel will find itself cut loose as soon as its in the transient American interest to abandon it.

What makes Israelis think if the United States were to cease supporting the liberal world order and began shedding the alliances it created after World War II, that the only ally it would not shed would be Israel? (Amusingly, many Poles these days also seem to believe that if the United States pulled out of NATO, it would still maintain the security relationship with Poland.) And how would Israel fare in the kind of world that would emerge if the United States stopped trying to uphold the liberal order? Such a world would once again be a multipolar struggle for power and advantage, pitting Russia, China, India, Japan, Iran, the stronger European powers and the United States against one another — all with large populations, significant territories and vast economies. What would be the fate of tiny nations such as Israel in such a world, no matter how well they might be armed and no matter how advanced their economies? In today’s world, Israel is strong and successful. It outshines its weaker and less-developed neighbors. But in the world of self-interested sovereign nation-states, a world with no liberal community, Israel is a mouse surrounded by elephants, all clamoring for a piece of the Middle East. Historically, from the Romans to the Ottomans to the British and French, the peoples of the Middle East have enjoyed only such autonomy as the ruling empires granted them. Otherwise, they were pawns and victims in a much larger game in which they were hopelessly outmatched.  

Could Israel, with its few millions of citizens, surrounded by enemies on all sides, and no longer living under the umbrella of the United States’ global hegemony, rely on the support of European nations ruled by right-wing nationalists? 

The answer is simply: no. It cannot rely on the enduring backing of foreign nation's committed to their own brand of domestic ultranationalism (it is frankly bizarre that anyone with a modicum of knowledge about Jewish history could believe otherwise), and a world where Israel has thrown its lot with that crowd is a world that will rapidly become exceptionally dangerous for Israel. Kagan concludes:

The price Israel paid for being born into the liberal world order was that it would have to suffer liberal criticisms and be held to liberal standards. This may have been difficult and even, from Israelis’ perspective, unfair, but Israeli leaders have borne this burden for 70 years because they knew Israel had no choice, that there was no home for Israel except within the liberal world order. That many Israelis now believe they have a choice is a reflection of our times, but it is a dangerous illusion. Those Netanyahu campaign posters showing him shaking hands with Putin, Modi and Trump carry the tagline, “A Different League.” Indeed, it is. Good luck.

Good luck indeed. The world Netanyahu hopes to help build is a world where Israel one day -- and perhaps not a particularly distant day -- will find itself truly alone, truly cut-off, and if the worst comes without America or anyone else interested in bailing it out.

Many Motives, One World

The constant debate in terms about Israel is about whether any given act it takes is done to "preserve Israeli security" or "maintain the occupation". The answer, of course, is "both". Or more accurately, "either". Do they maintain the occupation? Yes. Do they protect Israel from real, extant security threats? Also yes. Israel has legitimate and illegitimate objectives, and the same actions can plausibly advance either. It is often impossible to tell which is the "real" motive from afar. The odds are, it is a mixture of each.

Take the three companies that the PCUSA may soon divest from: Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard. Caterpillar sells armored bulldozers to Israel. Motorola runs cell phone networks in the settlements. And Hewlett-Packard provides information technology to the Israeli navy.

Caterpillar's bulldozers are sometimes used to build Israeli settlements, which is bad. Sometimes they demolish Palestinian houses because these houses are built "illegally" (in quotes because the process for Palestinians to gain building approval seems to be deliberately arcane and Kafka-esque), which is also bad. Sometimes it's because these houses are being used as bases for terrorist activity and firing, which is good. Sometimes it's to do normal construction activities inside Israel, which is good. When Caterpillar operates in Israel, it advances all these possibilities at the same time. If it withdraws from Israel, it retards all these objectives. It is true that we can sometimes clearly distinguish between good and bad usages -- but not always: demolition of a Palestinian house on claims that it is being used to smuggle weapons or as a firing post for terrorist will likely be met with skepticism by pro-Palestinian activists claiming it is gratuitous punishment -- we really have no way of knowing who is telling the truth from afar.

Motorola provides cellular technology to settlements, and settlements are illegal. Is that bad? I suppose, though it's unclear why this is different from companies which sell, say, food to settlers. Motorola also apparently provides some weapons technology (such as bomb fuses), and again, one can point out that the IDF's capacity to deliver lethal force can be used either to "protect Israel" (good) or "maintain an occupation" (bad). And one also points out that these are indistinguishable from afar. That Israel has an effective military by definition means its military is capable of pursuing both legitimate and illegitimate objectives. Trying to cripple that military means the opposite -- it would weaken both Israel's ability to maintain an occupation and it's ability to defend itself. It's difficult to disentangle these from one another.

Hewlett-Packard is perhaps the toughest case to justify. HP provides technology to Israeli Navy. To the extent this debate is about the settlements, HP is irrelevant -- Gaza has no settlements and the West Bank isn't on the water. Rather, HP is presumably being indicted because of the navy's efforts in placing a blockade on Gaza. I'm not convinced the blockade is illegal at all (it seems to fall inside the rules laid out by the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, and most of the arguments against its legality either don't cite any legal arguments at all, or, as in the case of the UNHRC's report, made me embarrassed to share the profession of "attorney" with them). Of course, I also don't care about international law anyway -- so the blockade may still be wrong. In any event, the point is more or less the same: a blockade both can restrict the flow of necessary goods into Gaza (bad), and restrict the flow of weapons into Gaza (good).

A large part of why the bulk of the Jewish community is so uncomfortable with divestment from these companies is that they are unconvinced the divesters are putting any moral weight on the other side of the ledger. That is to say, while I say that Motorola simultaneously is enabling "good" (enabling Israel to defend itself) and "bad" (enabling Israel to maintain an occupation), the divesters don't consider the former to be "good" at all. It's either "irrelevant" or perhaps even "bad". This is particularly so with HP, which arguably isn't doing anything wrong at all -- it is not supporting the settlements at all. But regardless, the point is that there are two sides to the ledger, and it's not clear that even legitimate Israeli interests are being taken to account -- indeed, whether it is acknowledged that Israel has interests capable of being characterized as legitimate at all. In essence, it's the same problem in reverse -- the same tactics could plausibly advance legitimate (end the occupation) and illegitimate (end Israel) objectives, and it is impossible to tell from afar which is which.

So what does one do? In essence, the problem is one of trust -- all parties have ample reason to distrust one another, and little way of verifying which moves are legitimate and which ones are aggressive -- they tend to look the same. So I tend to focus on two, seemingly contradictory ambitions: (1) Rebuilding trust and (2) Making it so parties don't have to trust one another. The first is obvious -- mistrust significantly diminishes the range of actions one party can take without provoking the other. So in order to get things done, there has to be space for political action to breathe. That means listening to the other's concerns and claims of serious threat, even if one thinks they're unfounded. I don't think that Israel secretly harbors a desire to maintain control of Jericho forever, but I understand why Palestinians worry about it. And so Israel should behave in ways that alleviate that concern, and be mindful of how their actions interact with that lens upon Israeli motivations. Likewise folks operating from a pro-Palestinian perspective -- they may be absolutely confident that they're totally incorporating Jewish interests and concerns, but Jews seem convinced of the opposite. They have to take account of that fact, rather than engaging in further inflammation. This is the general project of groups like OneVoice, and why they are worthy of your support.

The second proposal is less romantic, but in some ways more important. Israelis and Palestinians don't trust one another. They don't think the other has their best interests at heart. Each are probably, at least to some degree, right about that. But right now they have to trust on another, because they're enmeshed in a relationship of mutual dependency -- both have to take actions predicated on what they believe the other will do. That is one reason why a two-state solution is not just the best solution but also, as Ziad Asali of the American Task Force for Palestine reminds us, is the only one that will ever work. A situation where Israelis and Palestinians are regularly in a position to influence the other's lives is a situation that will likely be characterized by strife, discord, and probably violence. So the goal should be to extricate the warring parties from one another as soon as possible.

This also, in part, is why I do not support a demilitarized Palestine. Part of the reason is simply because I want Palestine to have a monopoly on violence in its territory (if the PA doesn't have guns, then only Hamas will have them). But in part, it's also because I want Palestine to be in a position where it doesn't need to trust Israeli good intentions because it is capable of defending itself. For the same reason, I support Israel having a strong military (including a strong navy). Israel has a great many people who claim to want to destroy it. If Israel is militarily weak, it has to take those threats extremely seriously (in neorealist terms, it has to act aggressively on turn one because it can't guarantee there will be a turn two). If Israel is militarily strong, it can afford to take more risks and concessions because if its goodwill is exploited, it can rest confident its ability to utterly demolish whoever it is that was dumb enough to cross them. Power doesn't guarantee cooperation, but it creates the conditions by which cooperation is possible, because it makes it so that losing once doesn't mean losing everything. And that same logic is why, ultimately, empowering Palestine is the largest step in making Israel secure -- and vice versa.

Mearsheimer's New Friend

I'm pretty skittish about the term "self-hating Jew". Remember that post I wrote about how self-loving Jews is a better moniker? Most of the time, it seems fairer and more sensible, and keeps the focus of the debate where it belongs.

But there are exceptions. Gilad Atzmon, for example, describes himself as a "proud self-hating Jew". So far from me to disagree. Anyway, Atzmon is one of the most vicious and vitriolic anti-Semitic writers out there today -- even stalwart anti-Zionists of the "[I] want the state of Israel to be destroyed" mold think he's beyond the pale -- and even the briefest perusal of his writings demonstrates a proclivity for attacking Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness with the fervor of a neo-Nazi.

So it is disappointing to see that, if Atzmon's publisher is to be believed, John Mearsheimer has endorsed Atzmon's new book. You can follow the links to see some of what that endorsement entails, with Atzmon approvingly quoting proto-Nazi Otto Weininger (himself an early Atzmon prototype) on the subject of Jews and Jewishness.

It has to be said that, deserved condemnations aside, there is something deeply tragic about this. The Israel Lobby, in addition to whatever moral problems there might be with it, was also a bad book on a purely scholarly level. And Mearsheimer has only slipped from there -- his list of "good Jews" was an appalling exercise, and this latest step towards the depths of anti-Semitic depravity is even worse. But once upon a time, Mearsheimer was an important international relations scholar. His theories on neo-realism were (and are) exceptionally important. Ironically, The Israel Lobby itself is virtually incomprehensible under Mearsheimer's own theoretical model (neo-realism posits that domestic lobbies should be descriptively irrelevant in international relations).

I don't mean to say we should forgive Mearsheimer simply because he was once important and had valuable things to say. But we should recognize the tragedy of the fall. It has been swift, shocking, and very, very ugly.

What Does It Mean To Have Dual Loyalties?

One of the more pernicious charges leveled at pro-Israel Jewish voters is that they possess "dual loyalties" -- their allegiances are split between Israel and the United States. Some make the point with the characteristic vitriolic racism we've come to expect. But Glenn Greenwald ties it to the ever-present Republican push for Jewish votes through claiming that their party is better for Israel:

I've previously noted the glaring contradiction among neoconservatives, whereby they simultaneously (a) tell American Jewish voters to vote Republican because (they claim) the GOP is better for Israel and (b) insist that it's anti-Semitic to point out that some are guided by their allegiance to Israel when forming their political beliefs about U.S. policy. Obviously, anyone who does (a) is, by logical necessity, endorsing the very premise in (b) which they want (when it suits them) to label anti-Semitic. Neoconservatives constantly make political appeals to Jewish voters expressly grounded in the premise that American Jews are guided by allegiance to Israel (vote Republican because it's better for Israel), yet then scream "anti-Semite" at anyone who points this out. When faced with this glaring contradiction, their typical response -- as illustratively voiced by Commentary's Jennifer Rubin, after she argued in a 2008 Jerusalem Post column that American Jews should vote against Obama because he'd be bad for Israel -- is to deny that "that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are antithetical" and insist that "support for Israel in no way requires sacrificing one’s concerns for America’s interests." In other words: to advocate for Israel is to advocate for the U.S. because their interests are wholly indistinguishable, even synonymous. [internal hyperlinks omitted]

Now, I think I've sufficiently registered my displeasure at the notion that Jews are single-issue voters whose vote can be grabbed based on whomever runs to the most hawkish position possible on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's deeply patronizing to begin with, and clearly doesn't match either Jewish political behavior nor expressed Jewish preferences regarding the conflict; yet, instead of re-evaluating what it would take to get Jewish votes, Republican operatives just moan louder and louder that we're crazy. So yes, that annoys the hell out of me.

Nonetheless, I think this dual loyalty argument needs some interrogation. Specifically, what does it mean to have dual loyalty?

The general definition I read is that one has conflicting loyalties when one is willing to prioritize the interests of another nation over ones own. So I constantly read folks saying how the US supporting Israel clearly isn't in America's interest, because it has this effect on our budget or that effect on our other foreign policy priorities in the region or the other effect on our general national security posture. Implicit in all of this is a pretty narrow, generally neo-realist (think Walt and Mearsheimer), understanding of what "American interests" are. Neo-realists would hold that nations are only interested in maintaining and augmenting their national security posture; because the structure of the international system is anarchic, states cannot trust one another and must perpetually behave defensively.

I don't entirely reject this outlook, but I think that it is typically taken too far and doesn't match actual state behavior. And particularly for a hegemon like the United States, it really doesn't make sense. To say the United States must adopt its foreign policy towards Trinidad and Tobago with an eye towards minimizing security threats simply defies belief. States want security, yes, but states want lots of other things as well: prosperity, cultural interchange, and moral progress, to name a few. And, as we might expect, these values are often contested -- what is in "America's interest" depends greatly on moral priors which can and are disputed; in most cases, to say "you're not behaving in America's interest" is to say "you're not behaving in my conception of America's interest". So long as one is putting forward a good faith vision of what the American project should be, I don't think it makes sense to accuse them of failing to be loyal to America. Fool-hardy, perhaps, but not disloyal.

And I do think such a conceptualization of pursuing the American interest can encompass urging policies which help another nation. Let's say the United States was considering adopting a policy which would simply gratuitously hurt Greece. I think a citizen would be perfectly justified in opposing it; it is quite reasonable to conceptualize American interests in such a way so as to not be vicious to other countries for no reason (I also would expect Greek-Americans to be more vocal in their opposition -- something I see no problem with. Greek-Americans have the same right as everyone else to promote their own conception of the national interest). Even if we modify the hypothetical so that the policy was not "gratuitous", but instead was just financially exploitative: suppose Wall Street had an opportunity to loot Greece blind, sending billions of assets into our borders. Once again, I don't think "loyalty to America" requires one to support the action. Mutual international prosperity can be an American interest. And once we accept that, we can accept anything as at least potentially in America's interest, because that category is something that gets developed through a process of democratic deliberation -- it doesn't exist in the ether waiting to be plucked out by Salon columnists and Harvard neo-realists.

The point is that these appeals to "American interests" (and this is hardly the only context in which they pop up -- including, often, assertions that folks opposed to the prevailing wisdom regarding the American/Israeli relationship are hostile to American interests) almost always take as a given a static conception of what American interests are that is usually the very thing under dispute. By fiating that conflict away, they can then cast their opponents out of the realm of true citizenry. I don't think the move is legitimate.

So is there such thing as "dual loyalties"? I can think of two examples, neither of which describes what pro-Israel Americans are doing. The clearest example is when someone simply does not see themselves, in good faith, as pursuing a project that is in the American interest. Often times, people don't -- I doubt the American al-Qaeda terrorists think they're doing what they're doing for the ultimate good of America (even if they think that it is ultimately good for the people of America). Loyalty in this case means loyalty to the sovereign. Second, I think one could argue that pursuing benefits for an extraterritorial body in a way that runs contrary to domestic law is an example of dual loyalty. I'm not actually convinced of this, because I really think that loyalty is a state of mind, and if a person truly believes their acts are good for America even if they breach the law, I'm not sure loyalty is the block I'd hang them from. Nonetheless, it is a little semantic, since I have no qualms about saying such a person can be punished for their malfeasance. And since I think that loyalty to a country does provide at least a general duty to obey the sovereign, I don't feel that uncomfortable with this formulation (though consider the age old movie plot where the hero has to deliver some secret to the enemy that reveals domestic treachery in order to stop the war which would destroy America).

Getting Realistic About Freeman

Ezra Klein's defense of Chas Freeman being appointed to a top intelligence position essentially is that Freeman is an outlier: a foreign policy realist amongst the liberals and idealists that populate the Obama administration. He may or may not be an ideologue, Klein argues, but since Obama is mustering a diverse array of perspectives to advise him, it's not a huge problem to have a few ideologues, so long as they are different sorts of ideologues and balance each other out.

Okay, reasonable enough. But I've been a bit confused about Freeman for awhile now. Freeman's been under fire for being too harshly critical of Israel, while at the same time serving as a moral apologist for China and Saudi Arabia. But -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- that isn't what one would expect out of a true realist ideologue at all. A true realist would neither support or defend Israeli, Saudi, or Chinese actions on moral grounds. He'd say they're fundamentally irrelevant: All that matters is what is in the American national interest. If it's in America's interest to be buddy-buddy with the Chinese, then it's none of our business if they gun down protesters in Beijing city centers. But that doesn't seem to be the role Freeman is taking. He seems at least partial to the idea that moral considerations are a relevant concern -- he just has different views on who is moral and who isn't.

Hearing Voices

The somewhat infamous Stephen Walt (of, with John J. Mearsheimer, "The Israel Lobby" fame) has a blog on the Foreign Policy website. I don't have a problem with this per se. Walt is an important thinker, albeit one I disagree with rather stridently on a few choice issues (fun fact: posts like this really reduce the credibility of posts like this). And, as Matt Yglesias says, it's probably a good thing to get a few more neo-realist voices into our foreign policy discussion.

But -- always a but -- let's not get too excited. Yes, "The sort of 'realist' perspective that Walt comes from (and helps define) is definitely one that looks better in light of the past eight years worth of events." But recall why realism spent some time in the IR doghouse in the first place (not much -- it is and always has been the dominant player in international relations theory): Because it was massively, dramatically, and embarrassingly wrong in predicting the 15 years prior to that: both missing the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then not really knowing how to handle either the rise of multilateralism in the Clinton administration or the emergence of non-state actors as serious players in the international sphere (Cf.).

That isn't to say it deserves permanent exile: it remains the dominant player, and with the utter collapse of neo-conservatism and with neo-liberalism remaining on shaky territory, it has done a nice job stepping into the gap. I'm just trying to keep folks from jumping on the neo-realist bandwagon too quickly. It deserves attention -- not blind obedience (not that I think Matt is doing that, but I just wanted to give his post a little bit of historical perspective).

Is Samantha Power a Closet Walt & Mearsheimer Disciple?

It doesn't make sense to me, but at the end of this post Paul Mirengoff asserts that Obama adviser and foreign policy guru Samantha Power "subscribe[s] to the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis that that the U.S.-Israel relationship is the product of Jewish power politics, rather than strategic interest."

He's not the only one saying this. Here's The American Thinker making a similar claim, as well as Anti-Liberal Zone.

Noah Pollak appears to be the source, linking to this May 2007 interview with Professor Power. I've bolded the part they think is important, but I include the entire question for context:

Q. Though some analysts see U.S. foreign policy woes as a recent phenomenon, you argue that recent foreign policy missteps by current U.S. leaders have exposed and exacerbated long-standing structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy. Please explain.

Power: It is tempting to see Iraq as the source of all our woes now, whereas I see Iraq as the symptom, in some measure, of a number of longstanding trends and defects in American foreign policy.

One example is the US historic predisposition to go it alone. Because we have long undervalued what international institutions have to offer, we believed that we could go into Iraq, and as soon as we declared the mission accomplished, we expected to be able to turn the problem over to others, regardless of how they had been treated in the run up to the invasion. This thinking is very flawed, but not all that new. In a uni-polar world, the Clinton Administration was able to get away with an instrumental relationship with international institutions, but that is harder with the rise of new powers who are willing to challenge the United States in international bodies. It is also harder now that the Iraq war itself has exposed so many US weaknesses.

In addition, we long saw international authorization as a luxury, something good for global public opinion, but not very relevant to US national security. But what we have seen, by revealing our indifference to international legitimacy both in the Iraq war and in the practices carried out in our counter-terrorism efforts – the disavowal of the Geneva conventions, prisoner abuse, extraordinary rendition, etc. – is that being seen to thumb our nose at international law actually has profound security ramifications, as more and more people seek to take up arms against U.S. citizens and interests.

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued. Look at the degree to which Halliburton and several of the private security and contracting firms invested in the 2004 political campaigns and received very lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the U.S. takeover of Iraq. Also, America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests – especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace – seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.

This is not the W&M hypothesis. At worst, it's a very diluted form of their thesis, in that it argues that sometimes the US listens to pro-Israel special interests, and that sometimes leads to bad results. This, she says, is emblematic of a broader, systemic flaw in how the US conducts foreign policy -- we let special interests construct what the "national interest" is and it leads us away from where we ought to go (Contra Pollak, it is not arguing in any way that Israel was responsible for America's war in Iraq).

W&M, of course, argue that US foreign policy in the area is controlled by the "Israel Lobby", and more importantly, that this is a unique exception to the way foreign policy decision-making operates. Far from being emblematic of anything, the Israel Lobby, from W&M's Realist stance, represents a dangerous exception to the Laws of the International System, which dictate that nation's have fixed and concrete security interests and always pursue them. This exceptional quality is the key reason why W&M's thesis is so offensive -- it's essentially an argument about Jewish hyperpower. But that makes it qualitatively different from persons (like Power) who believe that many factors beyond bare security interests influence how foreign policy operates, and observes that special interests advocating for Israel are one of them.

It is, of course, possible that Power has written something more directly on point that affirms W&M's hypothesis. But I highly doubt it, seeing as they come from drastically different schools of thought on international relations. W&M's thesis operates from a premise that Power doesn't share -- namely, that domestic, moral, or transnational forces never exert meaningful influence on foreign policy. Power appears to believe the opposite -- that these factors are extremely important influences on foreign policy decision-making (for good and for ill).

UPDATE: I sent Paul an email and asked for clarification. He responded with another Power quote, that her version of a sound mid-east policy would require "'alienating a domestic constituency.' That's close enough to the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis for me."

Not only is that not even close to the W&M thesis, it borders on being a truism. Americans (including Jewish Americans) have differences on what we want our mid-east policy to be. For example, I suspect Paul and I differ significantly. One of us is going to be alienated by whatever proposal ends up being adopted. If it's now controversial to point that out, we've got a serious problem on our hands.

Of course, to reiterate again, Walt & Mearsheimer's thesis is not about who opposes their ideal vision of mid-east policy. It's about their perception that the Israel Lobby possesses extreme control over US foreign policy that leads us to do things their predictive model says shouldn't happen. When we collapse every policy that deviates from the Commentary Magazine line as "subscribing to the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis", we're exploding their argument way beyond its actual scope.