Are Walt & Mearsheimer Realists?

Azure has posted an advance copy of Martin Kramer’s article on the Walt/Mearsheimer “paper” — “The American Interest” — from the forthcoming Autumn issue. 

Kramer first sets forth in detail Walt & Mearsheimer’s “realist” argument:

By any “objective” measure, American support for Israel is a liability.  It causes Arabs and Muslims to hate America, and that hate in turn generates terrorism.  The prime interest of the United States in the Middle East is the cultivation of cooperation with Arabs and Muslims, many of whom detest Israel, its policies, or both.  The less the United States is identified as a supporter and friend of Israel’s five million Jews, the easier it will be for it to find local proxies to keep order among the billion or so Muslims. And the only thing that has prevented the United States from seeing this clearly is the pro-Israel lobby, operating through fronts as diverse as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and so on.

And then Kramer refutes the argument — on strictly “realist” grounds, without reference to moral arguments for supporting for Israel or support for Israel as a fellow democracy.

[L]et us set aside the claim that Israel and the United States share democratic values, rooted in a common Judeo-Christian tradition.  Let us set aside the fact that the American public has a deep regard for Israel, shown in poll after poll.  Let us just ask a simple question:  Is Israel a strategic asset or a strategic liability for the United States, in realist terms?

My answer, to anticipate my conclusion, is this:  United States support for Israel is not primarily the result of Holocaust guilt or shared democratic values; nor is it produced by the machinations of the “Israel Lobby.”  American support for Israel — indeed, the illusion of its unconditionality — underpins the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean.  It has compelled Israel’s key Arab neighbors to reach peace with Israel and to enter the American orbit.  The fact that there has not been a general Arab-Israeli war since 1973 is proof that this pax Americana, based on the United States-Israel alliance, has been a success.  From a realist point of view, supporting Israel has been a low-cost way of keeping order in part of the Middle East, managed by the United States from offshore and without the commitment of any force.  It is, simply, the ideal realist alliance.

The rest of Kramer’s article fleshes out this argument.  It is a perceptive and subtle argument for which Kramer cites considerable historical evidence and strategic analysis.  Here is his conclusion at the end of the article:

In summation, American support for Israel — again, the illusion of its unconditionality — has compelled Israel’s Arab neighbors to join the pax Americana or at least acquiesce in it. I would expect realists, of all people, to appreciate the success of this policy. After all, the United States manages the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean from offshore, out of the line of sight. Is this not precisely where realists think the United States should stand? A true realist, I would think, would recoil from any policy shift that might threaten to undermine this structure.

Among the many perplexing things in the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, certainly none is so perplexing as this. After all, if the United States were to adopt what they call a more “evenhanded” policy, Israeli insecurity would increase and Arab ambitions would be stoked. Were such a policy to overshoot its mark, it could raise the likelihood of an Arab-Israeli war that could endanger access to oil. Why would anyone tempt fate — and endanger an absolutely vital American interest — by embarking on such a policy?

That is why I see the Mearsheimer-Walt paper as a betrayal of the hard-nosed realism the authors supposedly represent. Sometimes I wonder whether they are realists after all.

Here’s the proof that Walt & Mearsheimer are not “realists” but rather something else.  In January 2003, two months before the Iraq war commenced, Walt & Mearsheimer published an article setting forth the reasons for the imminent war and arguing against them.  No mention of Israel as a cause.  No mention of “neocons.”  No listing of Jewish names.  If a vast Israel Lobby had been the critical impetus, or simply an important one, you would think they would have mentioned that.

They didn’t.  But three years later, it was the fault of an Israel Lobby that Walt & Mearsheimer had apparently been unable to perceive in real time.  They may have been realists back in 2003, but Kramer convincingly demonstrates they are not realists now.