THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY CONFERENCE 2019
Janet McMahon: Hello. I’m Janet McMahon, the managing editor of
the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. I was out at the
registration table trying to help sign people in when Dale started
speaking, so I don’t know if he told you that the Washington Report
would be 35 years old next month. And we have been following the
Israel lobby since our very first issue in 1982, so it’s a special
pleasure to introduce our first keynote speaker - Professor John
Mearsheimer. He is the R. Wendell Harrison distinguished service
professor of political science and the co-director of the Program on
International Security Policy at the University of Chicago.
In March of 2006 he and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard published
an article in the London Reviewer of Books entitled The Israel
Lobby. The article had originally been commissioned by The Atlantic
monthly, but that American publication decided not to publish it
after all. Instead it found a home overseas. The paper’s publication
caused an uproar in no small part because it shed light on what
AIPAC operative Steve Rosen described as a night flower that thrives
in the dark and shrivels up in the sunlight. Harvard posted the
paper on its website, but removed its logo. Attacks on Mearsheimer
and Walt range from naïve, that’s from Noam Chomsky, to - and this
will shock you - anti-Semites. The following year their article
evolved into the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy which
has since been translated into 22 languages.
Professor Mearsheimer, by the way, will be signing copies of his
book at 12:15 at the registration table where you signed in. I’m
also particularly glad that he is joining us today. Because every
year people ask us if he is going to be speaking at our conference,
so it’s been a great pleasure this year to be able to say of course
he is. Today he will be discussing what, if anything, has changed in
the decades since The Israel Lobby was published. Please join me in
welcoming Prof. John Mearsheimer.
What has changed since publication of The Israel Lobby and What The
New Administration Can Do Differently
John Mearsheimer: Thank you for the kind introduction. It’s a great
pleasure to be here today to speak before this distinguished
audience. I would like to thank IRMEP and the Washington Report for
inviting me to give this talk. Of course I thank all of you for
coming out to hear me and the other speakers.
I would like to focus my talk on what has transpired regarding the
Israel lobby and the U.S.-Israeli relationship in the ten years
since Steve Walt and I wrote The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy. My talks comprise of four parts. I’ll begin by briefly
restating the core arguments in our book. I’ll then describe four
major changes that have taken place regarding the lobby and the
U.S.-Israeli relationship over the past decade. I will then describe
what has not changed and conclude by speculating about the future.
The central argument in the book is that the United States has a
special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in modern
history and it is almost wholly due to the lobby. What makes
Israel’s relationship with the United States extraordinary is not
simply the fact that Israel has received more foreign aid than any
other country or that Washington almost always backs Israel
diplomatically. What makes it truly special is that the aid is given
unconditionally. In other words, Israel gets this aid even when it
does things that the United States opposes like building settlements
in the West Bank.
This discussion raises the obvious question why does the United
States give Israel so much aid and without any conditions. Israel
supporters sometimes argue that it is because Israel is a vital
strategic asset. This is not a serious argument. In fact, giving
Israel nearly unconditional support is one of the reasons we have a
terrorism problem. Others argue that there’s a moral rationale for
this special relationship. Israel is said to be a democracy that
shares our values.
The two countries certainly share some values, but Israel is a
Jewish state which clearly privileges its Jewish citizens. Non-Jews
are second class citizens in both theory and practice. The United
States, on the other hand, is a liberal democracy that works hard to
treat all of its citizens equally. It certainly is not a Christian
state that treats non-Christians as second class citizens. Indeed
that kind of discrimination, which is part of Israel’s essence, is
apathetical to the American way of life. Furthermore, Israel’s
treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories is sharply
at odds with U.S. values.
Finally, there’s the claim that the American people have such a
favorable view of Israel that they demand their politicians back
this special relationship. This argument, however, is not
persuasive. If you look at the survey data on how the American
public thinks about Israel, as Grant made clear before I spoke,
there’s no question that Americans have a generally favorable image
of Israel in part because media coverage tends to be favorable. But
as poll after poll shows, that support is not especially deep or
wide. So what explains the special relationship if there is no
strategic or moral imperative and if most Americans do not favor it?
Our answer of course is the lobby.
What exactly is the lobby? Steve and I argue that it’s a loose
coalition of individuals and groups who actively work to influence
U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. It’s not a
centralized organization and the groups that make up the lobby do
not agree on every issue. It includes organizations like AIPAC, the
Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents, the Zionist
Organization of America, and Christians United for Israel just to
name a few.
It also includes think tanks like WINEP, and the American Enterprise
Institute, and publications like The Weekly Standard and Commentary.
It certainly is not a cabal or a conspiracy that - quote, unquote -
controls U.S. foreign policy but rather it’s a powerful interest
group like the NRA, the farm lobby, the Cuba Lobby, or the AARP. It
operates pretty much the same way those other interest groups too.
Very importantly the lobby is not synonymous with Jewish Americans.
Surveys suggest that about a third of American Jews do not care that
much about Israel. Others do not support the lobby’s positions. Some
groups that work on Israel’s behalf, such as the so-called Christian
Zionists, are not Jewish. In short, the lobby is defined by its
political agenda. Not by ethnicity or religion.
Finally, we argue that the lobby is pushed policies that are in
neither Israel’s nor America’s national interest. In particular, we
maintain that it would have been much better for both countries if
the United States have long ago pressured Israel to stop building
settlements and allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian
state. But this did not happen and it will not happen because the
lobby makes it impossible for American leaders to use the leverage
at their disposal to pressure Israel. In essence, that’s the story
Steve and I tell.
Let me now switch gears and talk about what has changed regarding
Israel and the lobby since the book was first published in 2007. I
think that there had been four noteworthy changes. First there’s
been a fundamental change in how Americans think and talk about
Israel - the special relationship and the lobby. When we initially
wrote our book, there was much ignorance about these subjects. My
sense is that most people who read our book or who have read our
book thought there was a large element of truth in what we said but
that we had, nevertheless, exaggerated the lobby’s influence.
There was also a great deal of ignorance in the American body
politic about Israeli policies, especially toward the Palestinians,
and little understanding of the special relationship. This is hardly
surprising because one of the lobby’s main goals is to prevent an
open conversation in the media about Israeli policy, the
U.S.-Israeli relationship, and the lobby itself. It was successful
for a long time, but my sense from talking to many people about
these matters and from closely following the public discourse is
that those days are over. For example, it’s commonplace even in the
mainstream media to talk about the lobby using just that word. I
cannot tell you how many people have said to me that, if anything,
Steve and I just scratched the surface in our discussion of the
lobby’s power and influence.
I might add that there’s now more discussion of Israel’s policies
and actions in the American media. If you read the comment section
that follow many newspaper stories, you will see that there are a
substantial number of Americans who are critical of Israeli behavior
especially towards the Palestinians. Only someone who is blind and
deaf would not recognize that the United States is deeply committed
to defending Israel’s behavior at almost every turn. In short, there
is much more awareness of these critical issues today than there was
a decade ago.
What has caused this change? I think that our original article and
the book helped. Both attracted an enormous amount of attention.
Indeed the lobby book made The New York Times bestseller list and,
because of the Internet, the article on which the book was based was
widely read all over the world. But I think that ultimately our
arguments would not have had much impact were it not for a number of
other factors. First, the actions of Israel and the lobby over the
past decade have done much to substantiate many of the claims we
made in the book.
Just to take one example, consider how Israel and the lobby
responded to the Iran nuclear deal. Prime Minister Netanyahu went to
extraordinary lanes to sabotage the agreement, going so far as to
give a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 3, 2015 that
not only sought to undermine the deal but was also an indirect
attack on President Obama. Of course he was aided by AIPAC which
went all out to defeat the deal. This nasty fight between Netanyahu
and the lobby on one hand and the Obama administration on the other
hand played out in full public view.
The second factor behind the increased awareness of Israeli policy
and the lobby is the Internet and social media. There are now all
sorts of places on the Internet one can go to for information about
these subjects. The website Mondoweiss, which I’m sure everyone in
this room knows about, is a case in point. It posts a steady stream
of stories that reveal important information about Israeli policy
and the lobby’s activities, not to mention critical assessments of
those matters. Mondoweiss, which is now 11 years old, had eight
million visits to its site in 2016.
Of course there are other sites that provide valuable information
like the Electronic Intifada which is run by Ali Abunimah, and the
site for the Israeli magazine +972. Another important source of
information on the Internet is Haaretz, the liberal Israeli
newspaper which often runs pieces that take a critical perspective
on Israel as well as the lobby. And in the age of Twitter, important
pieces that appear on these sites are immediately spread around the
world to huge numbers of people. These same pieces are also
circulated on email lists that go to hundreds if not thousands of
interested readers.
Third, there are hosts of organizations that are willing to
criticize Israel and the lobby. IRMEP is a case in point as it has
played an important role in exposing the lobby’s activities over
time. There are also a number of organizations that are deeply
committed to Israel which, nevertheless, are willing to take Israel
to task when they disapproved of its behavior. They include J
Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, Americans for Peace Now, and the
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem among others.
Finally, there are some important voices in the mainstream media who
have taken to speaking critically about Israeli policy and the
lobby. The most important person in this regard is Peter Beinart who
wrote a very influential article in the June 2010 issue of the New
York Review of Books entitled The Failure of the American Jewish
Establishment which is critical of the lobby for aiding and abetting
Israel’s misguided policies in the occupied territories. He has
continued to write and speak about these matters since this article
appeared.
Before Beinart, there was the late Tony Judt who offered searing
criticisms of Israel and its American defenders. Of course there are
a number of other key figures in the mainstream media who have
occasionally taken aim at both Israel and the lobby over the past
decade. They would include Roger Cohen, Thomas Friedman, and
Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, as well as Jon Stewart of
Daily Show fame. In sum, I think there has been a significant change
in how Americans think and talk about Israel since our book
appeared.
The second big change is that Israel’s image in the West, especially
in the United States, has suffered serious damage over the past
decade. This is due in part to the fact that information about
Israel is more readily available now than it was in the past, thanks
in good part to the Internet and social media. But it is also as a
result of the fact that things have been changing inside of Israel
in recent years. For starters, the political center of gravity in
Israel has been moving steadily rightward for decades and it has now
reached the point where government ministers occasionally make
racist comments about Palestinians and right legislation that is
directly at odds with basic liberal values. The recent legislation
banning individuals who support BDS from entering Israel is the
latest example of this phenomena. All indications are that this
rightward shift will continue for the foreseeable future and Israel
will become an increasingly illiberal country even towards its own
citizens.
But the key stain on Israel’s reputation is its brutal treatment of
the Palestinians and the fact that it has become an apartheid state.
Until recently Israel and its supporters were able to maintain the
fiction that there would eventually be a legitimate Palestinian
state living side by side with Israel, but it is now clear that
there is virtually no chance that will happen and Greater Israel is
here to stay. That Greater Israel, as Richard Falk and Virginia
Tilley make clear in an important new UN study, is already an
apartheid state. Israel and its defenders vehemently deny that fact,
but even among Israelis it’s not unusual to hear Israel described as
an apartheid state. For example - two former Israeli prime
ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, have said that if there is no
two-state solution, Israel will - to quote Olmert - face a South
African style of struggle. Well, there is no two-state solution.
Speaking of South Africa, there are a number of individuals who were
well acquainted with the situation in that racist state before it
collapsed who believe that the situation in Israel is worse. John
Dugard, the eminent South African law professor, says that the
crimes against the Palestinians are – to quote him – infinitely
worse than those committed by the apartheid regime in South Africa.
End of quote. He is hardly the lone voice in that regard.
For anyone who doubts how bad life can be for the Palestinians
living under Israeli control, one only has to consider what happened
in Israel’s three major assaults against Gaza over the past decade –
Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defense, and Operation
Protective Edge.
Because of time constraints, I will focus exclusively on the first
of those operations – Cast Lead – which took place in the weeks
before President Obama was inaugurated in 2009. Israeli forces
killed about 1,400 Palestinians of whom roughly 1,200 were
civilians; 350 of those civilians were children. In contrast, 13
Israelis were killed. The ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed
in that operation is 108:1. That’s not a war in my lexicon. That’s a
massacre. I might add that 6,300 Palestinian homes were destroyed
contributing to the 600,000 tons of rubble that littered Gaza when
the shooting ended.
The UN commissioned an investigation in the wake of that conflict
which was headed by the distinguished South African jurist Richard
Goldstone. The final report concluded that Israel had engaged in,
quote, a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish,
humiliate and terrorize a civilian population. End of quote. It went
on to accuse Israel of committing war crimes and possible crimes
against humanity. There are other signs of serious trouble in
Israel. Especially worrisome are the racist attitudes among large
segments of Jewish Israeli youth. Given these attitudes, it is
hardly surprising that a year ago today a young Israeli soldier shot
and killed or wounded a defenseless Palestinian.
Equally unsurprising, there was a huge outcry in Israel when he was
indicted and later convicted of the reduced charge of manslaughter.
Press reports from Israel make it clear that many Israelis thought
his behavior was justified and, in fact, it was hardly an isolated
incident. He simply had the misfortune of getting caught on film.
The fact that the shooting was captured on film virtually guaranteed
that it would go viral on social media and further damage Israel’s
image. The bottom line is that the days when Israel was seen as a
morally upright David taking on an evil Goliath are over. The damage
to Israel’s reputation probably started in 1982 when it invaded
Lebanon, but has accelerated at a marked pace over the past decade.
The third big change involves changes within the American Jewish
community. One of the most important developments in recent years is
a shift in the balance of power between the mainstream organizations
and the lobby that reflexively support Israel policies towards the
Palestinians and a more progressive set of organizations that are
determined to find a way to make peace between the two sides. The
divide between those groups has long been present, but the balance
of power between them has always been lopsided in favor of the
organizations that support Israel no matter what it does.
That situation, however, has begun to change especially with the
rise of J Street which was created in November 2007 as a home for
individuals with progressive views on Israel. It not only has a high
profile, but it also is willing to criticize Israeli policies in the
occupied territories and actually take on the hardline organizations
in the lobby. J Street is surely not as powerful as an organization
like AIPAC, but the mere fact that it has survived and is thriving
shows that times are changing. After all a similar organization
called Barrera [phonetic] was established in 1973, but the mainline
forces in the lobby quickly crushed it. Not only has J Street
survived, but there is good reason to think that it will grow in
strength over time as increasing numbers of American Jews look to
join institutions that challenge Israel’s oppressive policies
towards the Palestinians.
In addition to these changes in the Jewish establishment, there are
changes taking place in the broader American Jewish community that
do not bode well for either the lobby or Israel. In particular, it
seems clear that younger Jews are not as committed to Israel as
their parents and grandparents. For example, a Pew survey from 2013
found that among Jews who are 65 years or older, 53 percent say that
caring about Israel is essential to being what Jewish means to me.
That’s 65 years or older, 53 percent. In contrast, 32 percent of
American Jews under the age of 30 held a similar view. That is a gap
of 21 percentage points. It seems likely that support for Israel in
the American Jewish community, which has been weakening over the
past decade, will weaken even more in the years ahead as
generational change continues.
Lastly, there’s been an important change in Israel support within
the United States. For purposes of background, it’s important to
reemphasize that public support for Israel in the United States has
never been particularly strong. One way that the lobby deals with
this thin support is to have significant influence both inside the
Democratic and Republican parties. In essence the lobby has worked
hard to make sure that Israel enjoys strong bipartisan support and
is not strongly backed in one of the major parties but not the
other. The lobby was successful in this regard for a long time, but
that bipartisan support has begun to erode over the past decade as
support for Israel inside the Democratic Party has plummeted. At the
same time, it has grown substantially inside the Republican Party.
In a Pew poll from this past January, only 33 percent of democrats
said they sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians
while 74 percent of Republicans said they sympathize more with
Israel than the Palestinians. This is a gap of 41 percentage points.
In short, there has been a marked erosion in support for Israel
within the Democratic Party in recent years which raises serious
questions as to whether the lobby will be able to maintain
bipartisan support for the special relationship in the years ahead.
Let me switch gears again and now focus on what has not changed over
the past decade. Three things have not changed. First, the lobby is
as powerful as ever. One might be tempted to see the lobby’s defeat
on the Iran nuclear issue as evidence that its power is waning, but
that would be a mistake. The lobby does not win every time and it is
most likely to lose when it is pushing the United States to do
something that might get it into a war. The Iran deal fits squarely
in that category. Its failure to make a deal with Tehran would have
sharply increase the chances that the United States would have
attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Where the lobby almost always wins is on matters relating to the
Palestinians and financial support for Israel. The fact that the
Obama administration could do virtually nothing to get Israel to
move toward a two-state solution yet still opted to provide Israel
with $38 billion in aid over the next decade is clear evidence that
the lobby remains very powerful. It’s important to understand that
the key to the lobby’s success is that it focuses mainly on
influencing high level policymakers and opinion makers, as well as
the elites in both political parties. Not the rank and file.
I noted earlier that there has been a significant decrease in
support for Israel within the Democratic Party. The reason that that
change has had little effect on policy is that the elites in the
Democratic Party remain deeply committed to the special
relationship. They fear the lobby will target them if there is any
evidence they are wavering in their support for Israel. One might
think that politicians who are supposed to place the American
national interest above the interest of all other countries would
stand up to the lobby when it pushes policies that they know are not
good for the United States. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
explains why this does not happen: I saw most of Congress as
uncivil, incompetent to fill in their basic constitution
responsibility, micro-managerial, parochial, hypocritical,
egotistical thin-skinned – here are the key words – and prone to put
self and reelection before country.
The second big non-change is that U.S. policy toward Israel remains
the same as it has been for the past decade. The special
relationship, in other words, is firmly intact. Of course this
continuity is hardly surprising given that there has been no
diminishment in the power of the lobby. As many of you probably
remember, there was a brief moment during the recent presidential
election where it looked like candidate Trump might favor a more
evenhanded approach to dealing with Israel and the Palestinians. But
he quickly reversed field and made it clear that he would go to
great lengths to be even more pro-Israel than President Obama.
Naturally Hillary Clinton made the same pledge. Thus, there is no
good reason to think that American policy toward Israel is going to
change in a meaningful way any time soon.
Finally, there is hardly any sustained criticism of Israel in the
American foreign policy establishment. This, too, is unsurprising
since the lobby is as powerful as ever. As I emphasized, it focuses
most of its attention on keeping the country’s elites in line.
Anyone who wants to be a serious player in the making of U.S.
foreign policy understands full well that if he or she criticizes
Israel, there will be a price to pay. The result is that there is no
serious debate about Israel or the special relationship in Congress,
the mainstream media, or prominent think tanks like the Council on
Foreign Relations. This is not to deny, however, that there is an
open and vigorous discussion of Israel and its relationship with the
United States outside of these establishment and institutions.
Let me conclude by talking about where we go from here. I believe
dark times are ahead for both Israel and the lobby. There is no
reason to think Israel is going to move toward a two-state solution.
Greater Israel is here to stay, and that state is and will remain an
apartheid state. That brute fact will become increasingly clear to
people all over the world especially now that it’s clear the
Palestinians are not going to get a state of their own. Moreover,
the Palestinians who already comprise almost half of the population
of Greater Israel will continue to resist their oppression which
will force Israel to escalate the repressive policies that have
already badly tarnished its image.
The Palestinians most potent weapon in this fight will be BDS, which
is a global movement that aims to generate significant economic and
political pressure on Israel that will ultimately force it to give
the Palestinians equal rights. Israel and its supporters in the West
view BDS as an existential threat because it not only has the
potential to delegitimize Israel, but it might ultimately lead to
Israel’s undoing. After all the Palestinians, if they were given
equal rights, Israel would cease to be a Jewish state as there
eventually will be more Palestinians than Jews inside of Greater
Israel.
There are good reasons to think that BDS might succeed, at least
when it comes to delegitimizing Israel. First, it takes dead aim at
apartheid which is a morally repugnant political system that is
universally condemned. Apartheid South Africa eventually
disappeared. Why should Israel be any different? Second, the call to
give the Palestinians equal rights is fully consistent with basic
Western values. It’s a demand that will surely resonate in Western
Europe and the United States causing all sorts of problems for
Israel and its supporters. Of course Israel and its supporters are
counting on the lobby to stymie BDS.
Over time, however, that will become an increasingly difficult task
simply because there is no good defense for apartheid which is a
reprehensible political system. Nevertheless, the lobby is
extraordinarily powerful and it would go to enormous lengths to
protect Israel at every turn. It’s difficult to say where this
conflict will lead in the decades ahead. Many Israelis will surely
be interested in expelling the Palestinians from Greater Israel if
they have the opportunity; thereby, eliminating the need for
apartheid. But that outcome is unlikely because there are now more
than six million Palestinians living within Greater Israel’s borders
and they would surely put a fierce resistance if Israel tried to
expel them from their homes.
Moreover massive ethnic cleansing would be an enormous and
everlasting stain on Israel’s reputation. It’s more likely that
Israel will simply remain an apartheid state and, with the help of
the lobby, just hunker down and accept the fact that most of the
world considers it a pariah state. Finally, there is the possibility
that BDS will carry the day and Greater Israel will become a
legitimate liberal democracy. If that were to happen, which is not
likely, it would undoubtedly come after much bloodshed as most
Israeli Jews would fervently oppose this outcome since it would mean
the end of the Zionist dream.
Again it’s hard to say which one of these outcomes will carry the
day. It will probably take another 20 or 30 years before we
understand how this conflict will ultimately be resolved or maybe
not resolved. Regardless of the outcome, I’m deeply sad to say that
the decades ahead promise abundant trouble for Israel and especially
for the Palestinians. The United States will not be spared either
simply because the lobby will be working overtime to protect Israel
and preserve the special relationship which is likely to harm
America’s intellectual life, as well as its politics. Thank you.
Question and Answer Portion
Janet McMahon: Thank you very much, Dr. Mearsheimer. We have several
questions. I want to start with one of my own. When you talk about
the deteriorating image in the United States, do you think that’s
because people think it’s because Israel has a right-wing government
and if it didn’t have a right-wing government these things wouldn’t
be happening?
John Mearsheimer: Well, I think at a very general level the
deteriorating image is due to two factors. One is exposure because
of alternative media. Number 2, because of what’s happening inside
Israel. I think that in part what’s happening inside Israel is that
the politicians who now are beginning to dominate the discord that’s
there are unattractive from a liberal American point of view. Since
the vast majority of American Jews are liberal, they’re deeply
bothered by what these politicians are saying. But I think that’s
not the key. I think the key is that it’s becoming increasingly
apparent that Israel is an apartheid state and that Israel’s
treatment of the Palestinians is simply unacceptable to large
numbers of people. My argument is that as time goes by that will be
more and more the case.
Janet McMahon: So now we’ll get to some questions from the audience.
Here are two related ones, I think. Your 2006 book largely
attributed the U.S. decision to invade Iraq to the Israel lobby. But
many of the neoconservative policymakers involved in that decision
were not particularly loyal to Israel, including Donald Rumsfeld.
What was the evidence that the lobby was the primary cause? Another
question. To what extent would you say that the Israel lobby was
responsible for the attacks on various Middle East countries, such
as Iraq?
John Mearsheimer: With regard to the Iraq War, our basic argument
was that of course George Bush and Vice President Cheney had to be
in favor of the war for it to happen and that neither one of them is
part of the Israel lobby. Our argument in the book, and of course in
the article as well, is that the lobby was deeply interested in
getting Iraq and taking Saddam Hussein down for a long time before
the actual invasion on March 19, 2003. The lobby, and here we’re
talking especially about the neoconservatives, is pushing very hard
for a war against Iraq. In the wake of what looked like a stunning
military victory in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, we came to the
conclusion – falsely of course – that we had the magic formula for
taking down regimes and getting out of town quickly so that we could
march on to the next target. This is what the Bush doctrine was all
about.
So what you had in 2002 and early 2003 was a situation where we
thought we could win a quick and easy victory in Iraq. Point number
1. Number 2, you had this group of neoconservatives who were deeply
committed to taking down Saddam Hussein, who had a huge amount of
influence in the media and in the Bush administration, who pushed
very hard. Therefore, we argued they were the main driving force.
But there’s no question that they alone could not have made the war
happen. They needed President Bush, and Vice President Cheney, and
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and they all went along because they
basically bought the neoconservative arguments which were of course
not simply couched in terms of doing something that was good for
Israel. Right? They bought the argument and they thought that we
could go in and win a quick and decisive victory.
They were wrong. We jumped into a quagmire. Furthermore, they were
wrong in the sense that we had not won a decisive victory in
Afghanistan. We had won a temporary victory. And the Taliban
eventually came back from the dead. So we had two huge disasters on
our hand which still exist today - one being Afghanistan, two being
Iraq. Of course as a result of the Iraq War, in part Syria has
turned into a disaster as well.
Janet McMahon: Here is a question about your professional career.
What has been the evolution or impact of your book in your
principled and outspoken views? On your career, has your university
been uniformly supportive of your academic freedom?
John Mearsheimer: I think that there’s no question that for both
Steve at Harvard and for me at the University of Chicago would not
be punished in any significant way at either Harvard or at the
University of Chicago. Both universities have fully supported our
right to speak out on this issue and other issues. American
universities are actually excellent when it comes to freedom of
speech issues in almost all cases. Not every case, but in almost all
cases. We were taken care of in that regard. Larry Summers was the
president of Harvard at the time, and he defended Steve down the
line. The key officials at Chicago did the same with me.
It’s very hard to say exactly how much of an impact writing that
book had on our professional lives. I would note that, just in my
own case, I’ve written a number of other controversial pieces on
controversial subjects that have got me into trouble. For example, I
argue that with regard to the present crisis in U.S.-Russian
relations, that we - the United States - are principally responsible
for creating that crisis. The Ukraine crisis was not the result of
Vladimir Putin’s doing. It had to do with the fact that the West,
and especially the United States, were very interested in making
Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia’s doorstep. The Russians had
long made it clear that that was unacceptable.
It was our policies that led to the crisis. You can agree or
disagree with that, but that view is a minority view. I can tell you
there are probably about five people in the United States who
believe that. So there are a lot of people who are angry at me for
that, right? It’s hard to tell how much of the trouble I have
getting speaking engagements here and there or getting put on this
board or that board is due to the fact that I wrote the Israel Lobby
or due to the fact that I have been controversial on other issues as
well. But I think just in general, without going into any details,
there are surely a number of opportunities that we were not afforded
because we wrote the article and the book.
Janet McMahon: I think we’re out of time. I’m tempted to ask you
more questions, but I think we’re in a pretty tight schedule. So
thank you so very much.