The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

• Author: Montanye, James A.
• Position: Book review

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Pp. xii, 484. $26.00.

America's favorite son, the indebted, slaveholding bon vivant Thomas Jefferson, set the tone for modern political economy by substituting the right to "pursuit of happiness" for the common-law right of property. Jefferson's novel right, which the state now labors to guarantee, nominally entitles every American to live happily at the expense of someone else's effort, sacrifice, blood, and treasure. The upshot, as the economist Leland Yeager observes, is that government has become the weapon of choice in the ongoing Hobbesian war of each against all.

Political theorists John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government) show how the right to the pursuit of happiness presently enables foreign governments to exert adverse influence over foreign-policy questions of war and peace simply by coordinating the expression of private citizens' ostensible self-interest. Public-choice scholars and other curious individuals will relish the analysis and insights presented in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The work documents the means by which the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) established itself as the fourth node in America's military-industrial-congressional complex by conditioning elected and appointed officials to fashion Middle East policies that are inimical to U.S. strategic interest.

Public officials understandably incline toward describing their response to factional pressure as a passive, Pascal-style wager: "There is no political advantage to not signing [a piece of controversial legislation pushed by the Israel lobby]. If you do sign you don't offend anyone. If you don't you might offend some Jews in your state" (p. 140, quoting an unnamed senator). The lobby, by contrast, describes public officials as competing to "outdo their colleagues by showing that their pro-Israel credentials are stronger than the next guy's" (p. 311, quoting an unnamed Jewish activist). Although the authors characterize public officials as typically voting and deciding Middle East policy according to their best judgment of U.S. national interest, the book's analysis speaks differently, not only implying the customary venality, but also describing a class of public officials who knowingly and consistently choose against their country's strategic interest in matters that affect Israel.

The present volume began life as a similarly titled article published in 2006 by the London Review of Books. The Atlantic Monthly encouraged the work initially, then abandoned it abruptly and apparently without explanation after...