More on Mearsheimer and Walt

by Liberty and Power

I’d like to endorse Sheldon Richman’s recommendation that you should read Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay on the Israel lobby and U.S. policy in the Middle East. In fact, I was going to post a link to their article but Sheldon beat me to it. I think it’s well worth reading and has some considerable merit if only to encourage people to think about these issues. Readers shouldn’t be deterred by the false accusations and insinuations of anti-Semitism that are flying around.

To say that, of course, is not to provide a blanket endorsement of Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay. Indeed, Noam Chomsky has posted a substantial critique of their thesis. He concludes that it"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." Chomsky’s comments are well worth reading in their entirety.

Last Tuesday the Financial Times published Mark Mazower’s perceptive account of the outraged reaction to Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay. Don't expect to see an article like Mazower’s in the Wall Street Journal any time soon!

Now Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School (who else?) has posted a reply at the Kennedy School of Government website. There he accuses Mearsheimer and Walt of shoddy scholarship. That immediately reminded me of the proverb about the pot calling the kettle black. Read Norman G. Finkelstein’s recent book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History for a thorough expose of Dershowitz’s own shoddy scholarship.

And while we’re on the subject of Zionism, I encourage you to read Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s discussion of how most leftists once gave a free ride to Zionism and the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine.

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Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Yeah, Jonathan, I know what you mean:

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/22503.html

Irfan Khawaja - 8/4/2006

Nice bluff. I'd give it a D.

Sheldon Richman - 4/10/2006

How ironic that critics of The Lobby thesis have found an ally in Noam Chomsky. There's much truth in what Chomsky says in his critique, but my hunch is that the competing theses are compatible after all. It's a matter of emphasis.

Sheldon Richman - 4/10/2006

Most people would find the quotations and facts in the Mearsheimer-Walt piece news. That makes it worthwhile. You overestimate the knowledge of the American people and the objectivity of the U.S. media's coverage.

Mark: I will of course read the Chomsky response, but on its face, I don't see how the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis leaves the U.S. government untouched.

Aeon J. Skoble - 4/10/2006

Although it's false that (any criticism of Israel)=(anti-semitism), it's blind not to see that a lot of anti-Israeli fervor is rooted in anti-semitism. The double-standard is a key consideration: if Israel does something objectionable, along with a dozen other coutries, but Israel is the only one singled out for criticism, I smell animus. Here are some pieces from TNR on M&W, hopefully not reg-only:
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=w060403&s=joffe040606
and http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060410&s=peretz041006

Jonathan Dresner - 4/9/2006

Hmmm... In that case, Mr. Brady did in fact defend what he thought were the salient arguments of the piece (which he also made explicit in his original comment), most of which you ignored in favor of semantics and non sequiturs. Unless you're defining "war" in the Bush Administration sense as "unrestricted authority," I don't think you carried the day there.

There is a legitimate place for flawed-but-conversation-starting pieces -- Pariah's piece contributes an argument and a compendium of evidence which was quite unique -- but I don't think the Mearsheimer/Walt piece rises to this level.

So far, the only thing unique about it is the letterhead....

Steven Horwitz - 4/9/2006

Frankly, if anyone is going to take Finkelstein's work seriously, then we've got a much bigger problem. This is a guy who makes it up as he goes along. If folks want to make serious criticisms of Israeli policy and US support for Israel (and I have plenty to make), citing Finkelstein (and Chomsky) is simply not going to do the trick. And neither will citing M&W's warmed over version of the same arguments.

I've read that piece and Dershowitz's and I'm persuaded by Dershowitz's reply. And no, I don't think criticism of Israel or US policy toward Israel is ipso facto anti-Semitism. But I must admit my significant discomfort at the ways in which M&W's piece dresses up many of the same old anti-Semitic canards in fancier duds. That doesn't make it anti-Semitic, but it sure does make it suspect as a work of scholarship. And Finkelstein and Chomsky do the same dance but much more clumsily.

It also offends me personally when "American Jews" (of which I am one) are implied to be disloyal to the US's interests for their "support" of Israel. This is another of the oldest tricks in the book and one that no serious scholar should countenance.

Libertarians who oppose US imperialism and who oppose a variety of Israeli policies do themselves (and libertarianism as a movement) no good whatsoever by aligning themselves with the likes of Finkelstein and Chomsky (and, to be honest, M&W by implication). The real criticisms to be made, and the real evils to be fought, will be clouded by the imagined evils and poor scholarship of folks like this. With friends like these, anti-imperialist libertarianism does not need enemies.

Jonathan Dresner - 4/9/2006

some considerable merit if only to encourage people to think about these issues.

I love endorsements like this: it justifies all sorts of attention-getting shortcuts in the name of "raising issues" and "starting discussions" -- like there wasn't already a discussion underway and the issue hadn't been raised a hundred times in the last year -- while insulating the endorser from any responsibility for the content.

I read the essay, and I nearly fell asleep: if a graduate student gave me something with that much boilerplate and that little context, balance or originality, I couldn't justify giving it more than a C.

I'm still waiting for anyone to point to the essay and say something about what it actually adds to the debate, what's original about it, or why it matters more than commentaries on the same issue by Chomsky, Juan Cole, Adbusters, Justin Raimondo, or any number of other people.