[Marxism] Mearsheimer and Walt on "The Lobby"

[Andrew Pollack <acpollack2@xxxxxxxxx>]

The lead article at the London Review of Books website now is a very bizarre 
article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt on the influence of "The Lobby" on 
US foreign policy. That lobby is the Jewish friends of Israel. None of the 
facts in the article will be a surprise to any Marxmail reader, but the 
conclusion drawn -- that the Lobby has been able repeatedly and without 
difficulty to twist US foreign policy in the Middle East against the will of 
Presidents, including Dubya, is unbelievably one-sided. Mearsheimer is a very 
prominent political scientist (see Peter Gowan's review of his book in New Left 
Review), who analyzes power politics. In this analysis no other faction of the 
ruling class exists, no other faction is portrayed as having any influence on 
US foreign policy -- not Big Oil, not Boeing, not manufacturing, real estate, 
finance -- they're just not in the picture.  Certainly the lobby exists and is 
uniquely placed to wield disproportionate -- but not sole -- influence,
 because of the centrality of the Middle East to US imperialism, and because of 
the unique niche that Jewish members of the ruling class fill in this country 
(as opposed to working class or middle class Jews). And it certainly has been 
able to face down even powerful ruling class figures like Jim Baker on 
occasion. But the omnipotence described in the article is a fiction.

  So as much as one relishes seeing mainstream academics repeat, in exhaustive 
detail, the same facts that one normally only sees from the Left, I have to 
assume that the fallout from the article will be a smear campaign against them 
which they have left themselves open to by their one-sided analysis of these 
facts.
  http://www.lrb.co.uk/index.php  full article:
  
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf



                
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