Six Opinions on Special Interest
Last summer, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy became a New York Times bestseller, accumulated mixed reviews, and a deep and intense loathing from Alan Derschowitz. The book, as you probably know, argues that the Israel lobby exerts a discouragingly strong hold over U.S. politics and policymaking, and argues that it was the Israel lobby that got us into war in Iraq.
The book concludes that obeying the U.S. Israel lobby is neither in the best interest of the U.S. nor in the best interest of Israel. Recently, the Dutch TV station VPRO International has made a documentary about it.
Big Think interviewed half of the book’s writing team, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University Stephen Walt, and one of the major detractors of their argument, Former Middle East Envoy Dennis Ross.
Ross criticizes Mearsheimer and Walt’s arguments as ideologically rather than factually driven. He argues that U.S. went to war in Iraq because of the president, not because of any lobby. He argues that lobbies hold no sway over the executive branch and that significant other reasons led the U.S. to initiate war:
Walt clarifies that the U.S. provides more financial and military aid to Israel than to any other country. He thinks this is problematic since Israel is not a poor state and it’s not in the best American interest. Although Israel faces more serious security problems than European countries because of its religious status in a primarily Muslim region, its existence is under no real threat because of its significant nuclear holdings. He likes that there is a Jewish state, but he thinks that the Israel lobby has exaggerated the dangers that said state faces:
Here are what other foreign policy experts say about the interests of Special Interests.
Yale Forestry Professor Gus Speth argues that special interest groups hold too much power in Washington. He wants to fight against them as much as possible:
Senator Ted Kennedy argues that interest groups should be accountable to the individual people it represents and not those who provide the funding:
AARP CEO Bill Novelli thinks that lobbies hold the real power in the U.S. Congress. Lobbies think in terms of groups, not individuals:
On Israel, Professor of Law at Harvard University Alan Dershowitz thinks that we should criticize Israel, but that criticism should be fair and not fall prey to a bigoted double standard:
