John Mearsheimer: prediction

Transcript context

…Well, the argument that Steve Walt and I made, actually, we wrote an article first, which appeared in the London Review of Books, and then we wrote the book itself. Our argument is that the lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that push American policy in a pro-Israel direction. And basically, the lobby is interested in getting the United States, and here we’re talking mainly about the American government, to support Israel no matter what Israel does. And our argument is, that if you look at the relationship between the United States and Israel, it’s unprecedented in modern history. This is the closest relationship that you can find between any two countries in recorded history. It’s truly amazing the extent to which Israel and the United States are joined at the hip. And we support Israel no matter what almost all the time. And our argument is that, that is largely due to the influence of the lobby. The lobby is an extremely powerful interest group. Now, it’s very important to understand that the American political system is set up in ways that allow interest groups of all sorts to wield great influence. So in the United States, you have an interest group or a lobby like the National Rifle Association that makes it, well, not impossible to get gun control. And so with the Israel lobby, you have this group of individuals and organizations that wield enormous influence on US policy toward the Middle East. And this is not surprising given the nature of the American political system. So our argument is that the lobby is not doing anything that’s illegal, or illicit, or immoral, or unethical. It’s just a good old-fashioned American interest group. And it just happens to be extremely powerful. And our argument is that this is not good for the United States because no two countries have the same interests all the time. And when our interests conflict with Israel’s interest, we should be able to do what we think is in our national interest, in America’s national interest. But the lobby tends to conflate America’s national interests with Israel’s national interests and wants the United States to support Israel no matter what. We also argue, and I cannot emphasize this enough, given what’s going on in the world today, that the lobby’s effects, the lobby has not been pushing policies that are in Israel’s interest. So our argument is that the lobby pushes policies that are not in America’s interest or not in Israel’s interest. Now, you’re saying to yourself, what exactly does he mean by that? What every president since Jimmy Carter has tried to do, as I said before, is to foster a two-state solution to push Israel, which is the dominant player in Greater Israel, push Israel to accept the two-state solution. And we have run into huge resistance from the lobby whenever we try to, let’s be blunt about it, coerce Israel. is the dominant player in Greater Israel, push Israel to accept the two-state solution. And we have run into huge resistance from the lobby whenever we try to, let’s be blunt about it, coerce Israel. In a perfect world where there was no lobby and an American president was free to put pressure on Israel, to coerce Israel, I believe, we would’ve gone a long way towards getting two-state solution. And I believe, this would’ve been in Israel’s interest. But we couldn’t get a two-state solution because it was almost impossible to put meaningful pressure on Israel because of the lobby. So this was not in Israel’s interest and it was not in America’s interest. And that was the argument that we made. And we, of course, got huge pushback for making that argument. What’s the underlying motivation of the lobby? Is it religious in nature? Is it similar to the way war hawks are sort of militaristic in nature? Is it nationalistic in nature? If you were describe this loose coalition of people, what would you say is their motivation?…

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