The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy
09/26/07, All DayStephen Walt and John Mearsheimer at Cleveland City Club at noon and CWRU's Ford Auditorium at 7pm, followed by a book signing.
The Case event is free and open to the public.
Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
On Wednesday September 26, 2007, at 7 PM, in Ford Auditorium, on the Case Western Reserve University campus, two foremost international relations scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, will discuss their new major work The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Originally published as an article in the London Review of Books in March 2006, The Israel Lobby has entered the canon of contemporary political culture while it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo subject for the American press and frequently within academia: the power and impact of AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee. Professors Mearsheimer and Walt contend that AIPAC has a far-reaching influence on America's image throughout the Middle East,in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and upon the players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mearsheimer and Walt argue that these policies, encouraged and supported by AIPAC, are neither in America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest. Further, the lobbys influence affects Americas relationship with European and Asian allies, increasing dangers that all states face from global terror.
In this major work of scholarship, heavily documented and researched, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand the argument of their earlier article, and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran, as a further imposition of AIPAC upon US foreign policy. No lobby, they write, has managed to divert US foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical. They describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel (more than $23,000 per Israeli in 2007), concluding that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. AIPAC counters that such aid to Israel has long been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy and is a cost-effective way of ensuring that America's closest ally in the Middle East can defend itself against regional threats. Like President Jimmy Carter, Mearsheimer and Walt have faced ugly and unsubstantiated allegations of racism and anti-Semitism for drawing attention to the imbalance in US Middle East policy and AIPACs clout.
Who They Are and What They Wrote
John J. Mearsheimer 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. He has published several books, includingThe Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
Stephen M. Walt is the Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and was academic dean of the Kennedy School from 2002 to 2006. He is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, among other books.
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