Professor Stephen Walt argued last night that a pro-Israel interest group disproportionately influences U.S. foreign policy. He delivered the lecture, sponsored by the political science department, to an overflowing audience in Barnum 008.
Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He recently co-authored the controversial book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" with John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago.
Last night, he continued to reiterate his support for Israel's existence as well as his criticism of foreign policy toward the Jewish state.
"The issue is the special relationship between the United States and Israel," Walt said.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid despite its relative economic might. Walt emphasized that it also receives this aid unconditionally, even if it deliberately disobeys U.S. policy requests.
"Today, unconditional support for Israel helps fuel our terrorist problem and makes it harder, not easier, to deal with problems in the area," said Walt. "The special relationship is now a strategic liability.
"I am not saying Israel acts worse than other countries do, only that it has not acted better," Walt continued, underscoring the need for an open discussion about the disproportionate amount of aid Israel receives.
Walt argued that the Israel lobby, defined as a loose coalition of groups that work to openly influence U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction, works in two main ways. First, the groups in the lobby help pro-Israel candidates get elected. According to Walt, only $800,000 were donated to pro-Arab candidates' campaigns, compared with $55 million to pro-Israel candidates during one time period he studied.
Second, the lobby shapes public discussion and discourse to favor Israel through the media and even on college campuses.
Walt also posed two questions that he later answered during the course of the lecture: Is the lobby's influence positive or negative? And what would U.S. policy look like if the lobby were less influential?
According to Walt, the United States enabled settlement construction that was ultimately damaging to U.S. and Israeli security. Between 1993 and 2000, Israel confiscated 40,000 acres in the West Bank, an action that Walt claims has subsequently emboldened Hezbollah and bolstered anti-American sentiment in the region.
"If the lobby were weaker or if it were favoring different policies, the United States would have been much less likely to invade Iraq in 2003," Walt said. In fact, Walt argues, the majority of those pushing for the invasion of Iraq (some as early as 1998) were members of the Israel lobby.
He said that the 2006 war with Lebanon would also have been different without the influence of the lobby. Walt noted that Israel's strategy in the war was unconventional and doomed to fail. "[The] U.S. backed Israel to the hilt," Walt said, which turned out to be "a disaster for Israel."
Walt argued that the United States would have been a better ally if it had made its support more conditional. "In all of these cases American policy has been bad for the United States and bad for Israel as well," he said.
Walt also refuted the counterargument that U.S. interests in Middle East oil primarily drove its foreign policy by exposing the lack of evidence for such a claim and explaining how the major oil companies rarely lobby for foreign policy.
The assertion that the United States' support for Israel is based on broad public support is also invalid, he said, because he believes that the vast majority of Americans think that the United States should not pick a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As for what to do about the problem, his "basic view is that the U.S. should begin to treat Israel like a normal country," as well as "[use] our leverage, which is considerable, to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict."
In response to a question from a student, Walt also proposed thorough campaign finance reform as a remedy for the lobby's disproportionate influence.
Walt expressed doubt about the ongoing peace conference in Annapolis, Md., where the major players in the conflict will meet. He is skeptical because the United States has been reluctant to present a sufficiently comprehensive plan in favor of a two-state solution.
With regards to Iran, Walt expressed his belief that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments concerning Israel are often misinterpreted as direct threats to its existence. "I don't think Israel is without security challenges, but none of them pose an existential threat," he said.
