It took a few
years, but it is hard not to conclude that the noxious doctrine first
advanced back in 2006 by two American professors of an all-powerful Israel lobby,
controlling and misguiding American foreign policy, has now been
accepted by much of the foreign policy establishment and more
importantly, by the White House itself.
Professors
Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of
Chicago have never relented in their attacks on the "Israel lobby,"
which started as a long paper in the London Review of Books, and was
then published as a more comprehensive treatment of the subject in a
book with the same name. The initial paper was well received by a
predicable audience -- anti-Zionists in academia and on the broader
Left, Arab and Palestinian groups, and neo-Nazis and other fringe groups
on the Right. But it was also harshly and justifiably attacked in many
quarters for shoddy scholarship, and the authors' tendentious tone,
resulting in a screed that appeared to have been written with blinders
on to screen out any evidence that might conflict with the authors'
predetermined point of view about the pro-Israel crowd causing U.S.
foreign policy to go off the rails, and thereby ignore the arguments of
"realists" for adhering to important American strategic interests
overseas (which of course mean abandoning Israel for the Arabs).
Not quite
eight years after the initial article was published, we have a spectacle
today where the leading pro-Israel lobbying group in the United States,
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, appears to have given up
the fight for new sanctions legislation to pressure Iran. That effort,
which at one point attracted a bipartisan group of 59 senators (43
Republicans and 16 Democrats), resulted in a bill that toughened
sanctions with Iran if the current second stage of negotiations between
the so-called P5+1 and Iran did not produce a final agreement on that
nation's nuclear weapons program, or if Iran ignored what has already
been agreed to in the preliminary deal between the two sides.
The momentum
for the new sanctions bill collapsed when U.S. President Barack Obama
made clear he would veto such a bill (for which an override would
require 67 senators) and the supposedly pro-Israel leadership among
Democrats in the Senate and the House immediately did the president's
bidding, making clear that what mattered to them, above all else, was
loyalty to the president of their party -- Israel and America be damned.
As Caroline Glick
laid out this week, an Iran with a nuclear weapon or weapons would be a
disaster not just for Israel but also the United States. But Democratic
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, an administration lackey of the
first order, understood his marching orders -- there was to be no vote
in the Senate, since Obama did not want to be forced to veto the
sanctions legislation and did no want to put Democratic senators and
House members in a position of having to choose in an election year.
Of course,
it was more than that, since the president had other issues with the
legislation: a desire to continue to humiliate AIPAC, accomplished when
the group announced it was standing down and was not going to push for
the bill's adoption, and also annoyance with the substance of the bill
-- since the president at this point seems to have switched sides and
was now seeking a strategic alliance with Iran, a redrawing of the
Middle East to reflects Iran's new role.
Toying with
AIPAC has become a sport for the Obama administration. Seemingly trapped
by its red line on the need for a military response to the use of
chemical weapons by the Assad government in Syria last year, the
president asked AIPAC to lobby on Capitol Hill, for what was clearly a
hopeless effort to get congressional support for limited strikes against
Syria. While AIPAC's top people were getting the cold shoulder in their
effort from most members of Congress, the president was busy selling
out AIPAC by quickly agreeing to a Russian compromise to remove Syria's
chemical weapons (a process that of course has resulted in far less than
advertised on that front).
AIPAC, in
retrospect, went to the mats for a president who seemed anxious to have
them look weak in case the lobbying effort failed, and look ridiculous
when the deal with Russia was announced. While some have argued that
pulling back on the Iran sanctions bill this week was a strategic play
by AIPAC (don't take on the president in an effort you can't win), the
eagerness to please the president on the Syria vote was an enormous
mistake since in that case, they were ready to get their heads handed to
them for following the president's direction. AIPAC has seemed
terrified of Obama from the get-go, when its leaders downplayed any evidence
that Obama had a far different background than other candidates for the
White House when it came to Israel, and issues of national security in
his first campaign for the White House.
With the
administration's missteps in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, the strategic
repositioning with Iran took on even greater importance for Obama. As
Reid has played puppet to Obama, the president appears to be channeling
his own inner muse -- namely Walt, who is, of course, overjoyed by the
shift away from Israel in U.S. policymaking.
The
president's lip service to all options remaining on the table to prevent
Iran from securing nuclear weapons, has as much resonance at this point
as arguing that the frigid weather in most of the United States this
winter is just more evidence of global warming. The president would be
more likely to order airstrikes against Great Britain at this point than
Iran.
While the president has chosen sides, Walt is celebrating the collapse of AIPAC along with his buddies, the lobbyists for the National Iranian American Council, a group that has long done the bidding of the Iranian mullahs and whose lead lobbyist, Trita Parsi, is crowing
about the victory of the so-called pro-diplomacy group, otherwise known
as those who would like to see a nuclear Iran and the relaxation of all
remaining sanctions against that country.
Walt is now being feted
as the George Kennan our time, a tribute that reflects his new
authority and prominence, more than the wisdom of his counsel. Lee Smith
describes Walt's new ascension:
"As Obama
explained to David Remnick in a recent New Yorker interview, the goal is
to create a 'geopolitical equilibrium' between Sunni 'Gulf states and
Iran in which there's competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active
or proxy warfare.'
"And so it
turns out that the Kennan of Obama's Middle East policy is Stephen Walt,
the Harvard professor, who outlined the same idea Obama described to
Remnick in a Nov. 21 post on FP.com in which he argued for a 'realist,
balance-of-power policy.' According to Walt, the specific question
facing U.S. policymakers is how to achieve such a policy, when the
United States has 'special relationships' with certain regional powers
-- like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and, of course, Israel. It is the focus on
the impediment posed by these 'special relationships' to realist
balance-of-power policymaking that distinguishes Walt from virtually
every other American in the realist school."
As Smith
makes clear, Walt believes the new balance of power arrangements can not
work unless Israel is taken down, and de-emphasized in the strategic
equation. And for that to occur, the Israel lobby has to be knocked off
its power pedestal in Washington, and onto its heels.
While the
president's record in foreign policy is not one he can write home about,
on the question of bringing AIPAC down to size, he has triumphed. The
group lives off its commitment to bipartisanship, and fears being viewed
as captive to one or the other political party. In the current Iran
stare-down, Obama called in his Democratic troops, and some Democrats
(Reid, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz) came running. Others
simply decided that they did not like such a face-off, and backtracked
from their previous support of the new sanctions bill. AIPAC saw the
handwriting on the wall and stepped down. Now, just three weeks out from
its giant annual policy conference, it is unclear if AIPAC has even
come up with an agenda
for its citizen lobbyists when they visit Capitol Hill offices on the
third day of the conference. Maybe they can tell senators and House
members to support the annual foreign aid bill, an indication of how low
the bar has been set for members of Congress to demonstrate to AIPAC
that they are "pro-Israel."
A year from now, the
chances are good that Iran will have joined the nuclear club. Certainly
the interim deal will not stop Iran, and all the Iranian public
pronouncements the last few weeks suggest that the mullahs are chuckling
at how easily they have played an all too willing to surrender
president, anxious for a deal, any deal. Those in Congress who
understand the risks of the president's strategic giveaway to Iran and
of a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, such as Senator Mark Kirk and Senator
Robert Menendez, may rue the day that their erstwhile allies in AIPAC
were discouraged from fighting a real fight that mattered, because
rocking the bipartisan boat looked too risky.
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