John J. Mearsheimer - The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy under Obama

welcome to coach University I invite president anon to officially open the two lectures by John Mearsheimer ladies and gentlemen we appear to have a full house welcome to coach University all of you we live in a globalised and troubled world as you know and it seems that scientific discourse on international relations and international politics have come to fall in terms of importance our world is growing smaller in leaps and bounds but it appears that the gaps between peoples is expanding nevertheless today we are delighted to have the opportunity to hear from one of the most eminent experts in the area of international relations here honored to host this very special guest from the United States who is the our Wendell Harrison distinguished service professor of political science and the co-director of the program of international security policy at the University of Chicago with books like the tragedy of great power politics and why leaders lie and with many other articles his contributions to the better understanding of international politics has indeed been exemplary he is well known as the strong voice of offensive realism and today we are excited to hear about his most recent ideas thoughts and suggestions for a better world on behalf of Koch University I thank professor John Muir's himer once more for joining us today and welcome him to coach University please this is the first of two lectures to be given by Professor John Mearsheimer at quartz University as part of the international relations seminar series but let me start by thanking our sponsors and staff who made the organization of this fantastic event possible my name is Jan Erik Turk and I am the coordinator of international relations seminar series but this talk is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Social Sciences and humanities distinguished speaker series college of administrative sciences and economics international relations speaker series Satur for globalization and democratic governance the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Center for Strategic Research in Ankara we thank the in epigenetics refers amazos by to the director and the acting director of G SSH we thank barouche Tom the Dean of college of administrative science and economics mr. blunt our ask the director of Centre for Strategic Research in Ankara shubhankar - organizer of the talks in Ankara and of course the staff of coach University Communications Office including aho para la bi flare and Honda colossal for their support which made this event possible John Mearsheimer needs no introduction but let me refresh our collective memories about some of the most important facts of his life in about three minutes professor Misha Emery has been regularly ranked as being among the most influential international relations colors and often as the most authoritative scholar in offensive realism of in theory of international relations in addition to being the Vandal Harrison Distinguished Service professor of political science and the co-director of the program on international security policy at the University of Chicago that he has taught for the last thirty years he graduated from West Point in 1970 and served five years as an officer in the US Air Force he then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975 receiving his P HD in 1980 he was a fellow at the Brookings Institution and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Affairs during the 98 99 academic year he was the Whitney Shepherdson fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York professor Misha has published five books conventional deterrence in 1983 which won the Edgar furnace Book Award Leiden heart and the weight of history in 1988 the tragedy of great power politics in 2001 which won the Joseph left gold book prize and has been translated into eight different languages the background for today's talk the Israel lobby in u.s. foreign policy co-authored with Stephen Walt in 2007 which made the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated so far into 21 languages including Turkish and why leaders lie the truth about lying in international politics in 2011 which has already been translated into 10 different languages including Turkish he has written many articles that have appeared in academic journals like international security and popular magazines like the London Review of Books as well as op-ed pieces for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times dealing with topics such as Bosnia nuclear proliferation American policy towards India the failure of arab-israeli peace efforts and the folly of invading Iraq he has won numerous teaching awards throughout his career too many to list here and I can testify to that personally as a few of you also in the audience as he was a very popular professor and an excellent adviser when I wrote my graduation thesis under his supervision 10 years ago at the University of Chicago in 2003 in recognition of his many accomplishments professor's mission was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences he has been a very vocal and public opponent of the second war in Iraq and together with Stephen Walt the former dean of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard they wrote articles including an unnecessary war in foreign policy magazine in 2003 just before the US invasion of Iraq which brings us to the last minute and the topic of this talk in the fall of 2002 the Atlantic Monthly Magazine invited professor Mishima and Stephen Ward to write a feature article on the Israel lobby and its effects on u.s. foreign policy they worked on this article for the next two years and incorporated all the suggestions of the Atlantic's editors and sent the final manuscript for publication in January 2005 a few weeks later the Atlantic decided not to publish the article and expressed that they are not interested in any revisions either eventually the article was published not in the United States but in the United Kingdom in the famous London Review of Books it became an instant success because London Review of Books does not allow for footnotes a fully documented version of the paper with all the footnotes was posted in the faculty working papers website of Harvard by July 2006 a few months later this working paper the background for today and the book was downloaded more than 275 thousand times many people Jewish and non-jewish came out to support the article or to attack it and in 2007 the book version of the article was published with the same title became a New York Times bestseller and translated into more than 20 languages in a moment professor Misha Andrews talks will begin so please sit down if you are still looking for a seat please turn off your cellphone's the talk will last about 4045 minutes and then those of you who have classes or other obligations at 3 o clock 3:15 will have the opportunity to leave at the end of the talk and leave the auditorium if you leave at that point please try to be quiet as you leave after the talk we will have a moderated question-and-answer session until 4 o'clock our assistants are walking around auditorium with pencils and question cards assistants please raise your hands you see their systems they are going to be walking around if you want to ask a question to Professor mu Shimer attract the attention of your of their systems and they will pass your pencil and question card where you can write your question and pass it back they will bring them to the or you can write your name under your question if you prefer we prefer brief questions professor Mohammed prefers brief questions that end with a question mark I'll read out as many of your questions as possible during the Q&A okay this is Professor Mitch armors first ever visit to Turkey and we at Koch University are honored and proud to be hosting him without further ado ladies and gentlemen please join us in welcoming professor John Mearsheimer it's a pleasure and an honor to be here at Cutts University I would like to thank professor Anand for his welcoming remarks as well as the various groups that are sponsoring my talk today I would especially like to thank professor shin or actor for inviting me to Turkey and of course all of you for coming out today to hear me speak I'm going to talk about a very important subject not just for Americans but for people all around the world and that of course includes Turkey my topic is the Israel lobby and us Middle East policy under Barack Obama my core argument today is that the Israel lobby is a remarkably powerful interest group within the American political system and it shapes us Middle East policy in profound ways specifically it is the principal reason that no American government including the Obama administration has been able to put meaningful pressure on Israel to stop building settlements in the occupied territories and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own the lobby is also the main reason that the United States is contemplating using military force against Iran's nuclear facilities absent the lobby Israel would not be able to push the United States toward another war in the Middle East as it is now trying to do regarding the future of us Middle East policy little is going to change whether President Obama gets a second term where Mitt Romney moves into the White House and takes his place let me begin by describing what I mean when I talk about the Israel lobby the lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and groups work openly to influence American foreign policy in a pro-israel direction it is not a centralized organization and the groups that make up the lobby do not agree on every issue it includes organizations like AIPAC the anti-defamation league the conference of Presidents of major American Jewish organizations the Zionist Organization of America and Christians United for Israel just the name of few it also includes think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute the Brookings Institute and the Washington Institute for Near East policy as well as publications like the New Republic The Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard it is not Nye under what want to underline that word not a cabal or a conspiracy that quote-unquote controls u.s. foreign policy rather it is an especially powerful interest group like the National Rifle Association the farm lobby the Cuba Lobby or the American Association of Retired people and it operates basically the same way that those other interest groups do it is very important to recognize that the American political system is configured in ways that allow well-organized and well-funded interest groups or lobbies to wield enormous influence on public policy and they have done so since the founding of the United States in the late 18th century although one could argue that lobbies wield more influence today than they have at any time in the past mainly because of the importance of money for winning political office regardless the key point to keep in mind is that the actions of the Israel lobby are as American as apple pie very importantly the lobby is not synonymous with Jewish Americans surveys suggests that about one third of American Jews do not care much about Israel others do not support the lobbies positions and some groups that work on Israel's behalf such as the so-called Christian Zionists are not Jewish in short the lobby is defined by its political agenda not by ethnicity or religion the lobby also does not include individuals who simply have a favorable attitude toward Israel rather one has to actively work to try to shape US policy in a pro-israel direction obviously some groups and individuals are more active and influential than others although there is no question that overall the lobby has gotten the relationship between the United States and Israel that it wants as you know Steve Walt and I wrote a famous book about the Israel lobby which has been translated into Turkish as has been noted here almost all of the critics of our book acknowledge that there is a lobby but they either argue that it is not very powerful where they say that Steve and I are claiming that it is all-powerful and that it controls u.s. foreign policy to be perfectly clear we explicitly say the lobby is not all-powerful and that it does not control us Middle East policy instead we argue that the lobby is extremely powerful and has a marked influence on American foreign policy indeed when you look carefully at the evidence there is little doubt that our description is accurate the Israel lobby is an especially powerful interest group which again is perfectly legitimate in American politics consider a pact which is just one of the many organizations in the lobby well though surely the most influential one Bill Clinton said that AIPAC is quote better than anyone else lobbying in this town and Newt Gingrich who rarely agrees with Clinton about anything said in his quote the most effective general interest group across the entire planet former congressman Lee Hamilton who served in Congress for thirty-year 34 years said quote there's no group that matches it they're in a class by themselves former senator Fritz Hollings said as he left office that quote you can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you Stephen Rosen the AIPAC official who was indicted a few years ago for passing classified information once put a napkin in front of Jeffrey Goldberg who was then a journalist for The New Yorker and said quote in 24 hours we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin and Goldberg who wrote one of the most vicious reviews of our book calls AIPAC quote Leviathan among lobbies speaking of our critics I might note that Alan Dershowitz that quote my generation of Jews became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fundraising effort in the history of democracy thus it is hardly surprising that the former Israeli prime minister a hood Olmert said as he was leaving office in early 2009 thank God we have a pact the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world and again AIPAC is just one part of the lobby the best evidence however of the lobbies influence is America's special relationship with Israel which is the wrecked result of relentless and effective pressure that the lobby puts on politicians and policy makers of every political persuasion to put it succinctly the United States has a relationship with Israel that has no parallel in American history indeed as the late Israeli prime minister it chakra being once said us support for Israel is quote beyond compare in modern history what makes the relationship between America and Israel so special is the sheer amount of support that we give to Israel and the fact that we give it unconditionally the Jewish state is the largest recipient of US economic and million military aid about five hundred dollars per year per Israeli even though Israel is a prosperous country with a per capita income that the IMF ranks 27th in the world since the end of World War two Israel has received more foreign aid from Washington than any other country Israel also gets consistent diplomatic backing from the United States and we almost always take Israel's side in regional disputes for example since 1972 the United States has vetoed 43 UN Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel which is greater than the combined total of all the vetoes cast by other Security Council members for that same period most importantly however that aid is given unconditionally in other words Israel gets this aid even when it does things that the United States opposes like building settlements in the occupied territories furthermore Israel is rarely ever criticized by American officials and certainly not by anyone who aspires to hire a political office it is very important to understand the full magnitude of the special relationship so let me say a few more words about it as I'm sure everyone here recognizes no two countries always have the same interests and of course that includes Israel and the United States however the special relationship means that when Israel pursues policies that are detrimental to American interests the lobby invariably sides with Israel and puts enormous pressure on US policymakers to support Israel no matter what it is extremely difficult for any American president to get tough with Israel when it takes actions that harm the United States this is a truly remarkable situation and again it is unprecedented in world history to illustrate this point let's look at the historical record every American president since 1967 which is when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza every American president since 1967 has opposed settlement building in the occupied territories yet no president has been able to put serious pressure on Israel to stop building settlements much less dismantle them perhaps the best evidence of America's impotant is what happened in the 1990s during the Oslo peace process between 1993 and 2000 Israel confiscated 40,000 acres of Palestinian land built 250 miles of connector and bypass roads doubled the number of settlers and established 30 new settlements President Clinton did hardly anything to halt this expansion in fact the United States continued to give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid each year and to protect it at every turn on the diplomatic front one might think that President Obama has been different from his predecessors but there is hardly any evidence to support that view and much to contradict it consider that during the 2008 presidential campaign Obama responded to charges that he was quote unquote soft on Israel by pandering to the lobby and repeatedly praising America's special relationship with Israel of course he is doing the same thing now in the present election in the month in the month before he first took office he was silent during the Gaza massacre when Israel was being criticized around the world for Operation Cast Lead its brutal assault on that densely populated Enclave since he took office in 2009 President Obama has clashed with Prime Minister Netanyahu four times over the Palestinian issue and in each case Obama backed down and Netanyahu won the fight for example shortly after the administration came to power the president and his principal foreign policy advisors began demanding that Israel stop all settlement building in the occupied territories to include East Jerusalem so that's serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians could begin after calling for two states for two people in his Cairo speech in June 2009 President Obama declared it is time for these settlements to stop Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made the same point one month earlier when she said quote we want to see a stop to settlement construction additions gnash natural growth any kind of settlement activity that is what the president has called for end of quote George Mitchell the president's special envoy for the Middle East at the time conveyed this straightforward message to Prime Minister Netanyahu in person on numerous Asians in response Netanyahu made it clear that Israel intended to continue building settlements and that he and almost everyone in his government opposed a two-state solution he made but a single reference to two states in his own speech at bar-ilan university in june 2009 and the conditions he attached to it made it clear that he was talking about giving the palestinians a handful of disconnected apartheid style Banta stands not a fully sovereign state Netanyahu naturally won this fight the Israeli prime minister not only refused to stop building the 2,500 housing units that were under construction in the West Point West Bank but just to make it clear to Obama who was boss in late June 2009 he authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank Netanyahu refused to even countenance any limits on settlement building in East Jerusalem which is supposed to be the capital of a Palestinian state by the end of September 2009 Obama publicly conceded that Netanyahu had beaten him in their fight over the settlements the president falsely denied that freezing settlement construction had ever been a precondition for resuming the peace process and instead meekly asked Israel to please exercise restraint while it continued colonizing the West Bank fully aware of his triumphs Netanyahu said on September 23rd 2009 I am pleased that President Obama has accepted my approach that there should be no preconditions indeed his victory was so complete that the Israeli media was full of stories describing how their prime minister had bested Obama and greatly improved too shaky political position at home for example gideon cement wrote in maha reeve quote in the past weeks it has become clear with what ease an Israeli Prime Minister can succeed in thwarting an American initiative perhaps the best response to Netanyahu's vennett in Yahoo's victory came from the widely read author and blogger Andrew Sullivan who wrote that this sad episode should quote remind Obama of a cardinal rule of American politics no pressure on Israel ever just keep giving them money and they will give the United States the finger in return the only permitted position is to say you oppose settlements in the West Bank while doing everything you can to keep them growing and advancing the Obama administration has engaged in three more public fights with Prime Minister Netanyahu over the Palestinian issue and has lost all three times the West spat was in May 2011 when Obama called for creating a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders although the president used rhetoric that had been employed by his predecessors Netanyahu and his American supporters were furious with him they responded by lambasting the President to include a televised meeting where the Israeli prime minister lectured the about the flaws in his thinking about the Middle East peace process subsequently Netanyahu went to Capitol Hill where he was treated like a conquering hero Obama facing a tough election in 2012 and deeply fearful of losing support in the American Jewish community quickly backed off from pressuring Israel and instead decided to support Israel unreservedly not surprisingly the Obama administration hardly talks about the Palestinian issue these days much less tries to put pressure on Israel to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own one might think that Obama would prevail over Netanyahu every time they clashed since the United States is the most powerful state on the planet and it gives Israel so much material and diplomatic support in fact we should have massive bargaining leverage in their dealings with Israel but we do not instead Netanyahu has the upper hand over Obama the reason for this unusual situation unprecedented situation I should say is the lobby which invariably sides with Israel against the United States when the two sides have conflicting interests and because the lobby is enormous ly powerful no president will pick a fight with it remember that Alan Dershowitz said it is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fundraising effort in the history of democracy and by the way there is no chance that Governor Romney will stand up to Net yahooo if he is elected president next month consider that in a debate during the Republican primaries late last year this is in late 2011 Romney responded to a question asking him how he would deal with Iran by saying quote I get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say would it help if I said this what would you like me to do I'm going to repeat that I get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say would it help if I said this what would you like me to do I must say that I find it incomprehensible that a man running for the Presidency of the most powerful state in the world would even contemplate taking his marching orders from a foreign leader when an issue of great strategic importance is it state Israel supporters in the United States often claim that the special relationship is not due to the lobby's influence which they say is not very powerful anyway they have an alternative argument the American people so the argument goes identify closely with Israel because we share common values and thus the American people put significant pressure on their leaders to support Israel generously and unconditionally there are two problems with this argument first at the deepest level we do not share common values the United States is a liberal democracy that goes to great lengths not to discriminate against any of its citizens on the basis of race religion or ethnicity it is certainly not a Christian State and Jews are treated no differently than Christians or Muslims or any other religious group for that matter Israel on the other hand sees itself as a Jewish state and it discriminates against those who are not Jewish both in theory and in practice as for the claim that Israel is a democracy yes Israel is a democracy but so are many other countries and none gets anywhere near as much support and certainly doesn't get it unconditionally plus Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens and Palestinian subjects is sharply at odds with us values second there is abundant evidence showing that the American people have a generally favorable attitude toward Israel but do not feel any special attachment to it for example a survey of public opinion in the United States published just last month by the Chicago Council on global affairs found that and listen very carefully now found that 65% of Americans think that the United States should not take sides in the israeli-palestinian conflict by the way I would add I have seen polls with that number is as high as 75 percent but the shock council felt that 65% of Americans do not think the United States should take sides in the israeli-palestinian conflict only 30 percent favor taking Israel's side in that same survey 50% of Americans said the United States should not defend Israel if it were attacked by its neighbors again let me repeat that 50% of Americans said the United States should not defend Israel if it is attacked by its neighbors and 52 percent think that the US government should be ready to meet and talk with a mas when asked what the United States should do if Israel bombs Iran and Iran retaliates against Israel 59% of Americans say we should not enter the war on Israel side only 38% say we should come to Israel's aid I could point to numerous other surveys that tell a similar story in short there is no evidence that the American people have a special attachment to Israel if anything most Americans want to treat Israel like a normal country let me now turn to the question of what US Middle East policy is likely to look like after the November elections let me focus on two issues the Palestinian issue and Iran's nuclear program there is no question that America's support for Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians is a huge strategic problem for the United States of course that is why both Republican and Democratic presidents have worked so hard implement a two-state solution and that includes president george w bush as well as his father George HW Bush and certainly President Bill Clinton to be more specific there is no hope of ending our terrorism problem and improving America's standing in the Middle East if the israeli-palestinian conflict is not resolved but that will only happen if there is a two-state solution it certainly will not happen if the special relationship remains firmly in place and Israel continues to colonize the West Bank and create a greater Israel that is an apartheid state not surprisingly Israel's backers maintain that us support for Israel had nothing to do with September 11th but this claim is simply not true consider the motivations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who the 9/11 Commission describes as quote the principal architect of the attacks according to the Commission and now I'm quoting from the Commission KSM s animus towards the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student but rather from his violent disagreement with u.s. foreign policy favoring Israel end of quote numerous independent accounts have also documented that Osama bin Laden was deeply concerned about the Palestinians dire situation since he was a young man and the 9/11 Commission reports that he wanted the attackers to strike Congress because he saw it as the most important source source of support for Israel in the United States the Commission also tells us that bin Laden wanted to move up the date of the attacks on two occasions because of events involving Israel even though doing so would have increased the risk of failure former President Bill Clinton has speculated that the ongoing israeli-palestinian conflict provides the impetus for about half of our terrorism problem and President Obama Vice President Biden and General David Petraeus have all made comments that make clear that Israel's colonization of the occupied territories is doing serious damage to America's interest in the greater Middle East there is also a powerful moral rationale behind the two-state solution what has happened to the Palestinian people since November 29th 1947 when the u.s. put forth its plan to partition mandatory Palestine is one of the great crimes of modern history the Zionists and Israelis ethnically cleansed about 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 and then expelled roughly another 200,000 Palestinians when they captured the West Bank in 1967 Israel is not only refused to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own but prominent Zionists like David ben-gurion Golda Meir and Haim veidt's men have gone so far as to argue that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people Palestinians who live inside Israel today are treated like second-class citizens while those in the West Bank and Gaza effectively live in an apartheid state it is worth noting that a number of South African who have visited the occupied territories have said that the Palestinians live in worse conditions than blacks did in white ruled South Africa and let us not forget that the Goldstone report which was a UN sanctioned assessment of Operation Cast Lead concluded that Israel committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity the bottom line is that it is imperative for both strategic and moral reasons for the United States to push forward a two-state solution but that is not going to happen mainly because Israel has no interest in a two-state solution and its leaders are determined to control both the Westberg Bank and Gaza for the foreseeable future neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney is going to be able to prevent a greater Israel simply because Israel's supporters in the United States will not allow any American president to pressure Israel into giving up the West Bank and allowing for the creation of a viable Palestinian state this means that in all likelihood the Palestinians will end up confined to a handful of impoverished enclaves inside Greater Israel which will look a lot like the bantha stands in white ruled South Africa I believe that this outcome will prove disastrous for Israel since it will be impossible to justify an apartheid state over the long term as South Africa came to discover indeed two former Israeli prime ministers have made this very point a hood over who was Netanyahu's predecessor said in late November 2007 that quote if the two-state solution collapses Israel will face a South african-style struggle he went so far as to argue that as soon as that happens the State of Israel is finished that's a former Israeli prime minister saying that if you don't get a two-state solution Israel will end up in a South Africa like situation and that will be the end of Israel that's an Israeli Prime Minister another former Israeli prime minister Barak who is now Israel's defense minister said early February two years ago that as long as this territory west of the Jordan River has only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non Jewish or non democratic if this block of millions of Palestinians cannot vote that will be an apartheid state turning Israel into a full-blown apartheid state will also do serious damage to u.s. foreign policy for years to come will foster instability throughout the Middle East and will obviously have horrible consequences for the Palestinians I might add that it will continue to poison relations between Israel and Turkey as well again that depressing outcome is likely whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is sitting in the White House let me down turn to the matter of Iran's nuclear program Iran is developing a nuclear enrichment program which is its right as a signatory to the NPT there is no hard evidence however that it is developing nuclear weapons and indeed the consensus view in the American intelligence community is that Iran is not now pursuing nuclear weapons nevertheless the Israeli government and the lobby have done an excellent job of creating the impression in the United States and in the West more generally that Iran is developing nuclear weapons moreover they have worked assiduously over the past two years to make the case that the only way to deal with the problem is with military force and the sooner Iran's nuclear facilities are bombed the better in particular Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that he is prepared to turn the Israeli Air Force loose to strike Iran if the Obama administration would simply give him a green light however it's also clear that he would much rather have the more capable American military do the job for Israel consequently President Obama has been under enormous pressure from Netanyahu and his friends in America to tell Tehran that if it does not shut down its nuclear enrichment capability immediately the United States will use force to eliminate it the Obama administration has no interest whatsoever in starting another war in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter indeed save for Israel's hardline American supporters there is hardly any interest in the United States in starting a war against Iran this is especially true in the Pentagon were the wear and tear of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past eleven years have taken a heavy toll I might add that the recent Chicago Council on global affairs survey that I mentioned earlier found that 70 percent of Americans oppose a unilateral American strike against Iran if it continues its enrichment program fortunately the Obama administration has been able to resist the pressure from Israel and the lobby to attack Iran well at the same time telling Netanyahu that under no circumstances can the IDF attack Iran before the election thankfully it now seems clear that neither Israel nor the United States will attack Iran this year but the issue is likely to come up again in 2013 whether Obama remains in the White House or Romney replaces him this means that the United States is likely to be under great pressure in the next few years to attack Iran's nuclear facilities of course the smart policy for the United States would be to negotiate seriously with the Iranians to work out a grand bargain that allows them to enrich uranium while providing the necessary safeguards to ensure that they do not secretly develop nuclear weapons and if that doesn't work the United States should seek to contain a nuclear Iran similar to the way it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War and similar to the way it contains North Korea today but Israel and the lobby will go to great lengths to thwart a diplomatic solution to the crisis as they have consistently done over the past two decades and President Obama has already said that he will never agree to a containment strategy for dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran all this means that whoever is sitting in the White House next year is likely to be under great pressure to go to war with Iran or at least give Israel permission to attack Iran's nuclear facilities I believe that neither Obama nor Romney will have any interest in precipitating a war with Iran because it would have disastrous consequences for u.s. foreign policy and it would create great turmoil in the Middle East for many years to come moreover attacking Iran would not prevent Iran from eventually getting nuclear weapons as even the war hawks admit it would only delay the process for a few years and remember we have no good evidence that Iran is now pursuing nuclear weapons however a military strike by Israel or the United States would surely give the leadership in Tehran powerful incentives to quickly acquire a nuclear deterrent I believe that these considerations will cause either President Obama or president Romney to resist Israeli pressure to strike Iran the lobby of course will side with Israel in this tug of war and make it very difficult for the man in the White House to say no to war but the lobby is not omnipotent it does not control American foreign policy it does not always get its way as Barack Obama has demonstrated in recent months by refusing to sanction an Israeli attack on Iran and not caving in to Netanyahu's pressure to draw red lines and strike Iran if it crosses those lines but even if neither Israel nor the United States attack Iran after the election relations between Tehran and Washington are likely to be awful and there will always be the possibility that a crisis will break out and lead to war and of course one cannot completely rule out the possibility that the president be it Obama or Romney will cave in to pressure from Israel and the lobby and attack for rent all of this is to say that there is little reason that this juncture to be optimistic about resolving either the Iranian nuclear problem or the israeli-palestinian conflict in fact the situation with regard to the Palestinians is likely to get worse over time as Israel turns itself into a full-fledged apartheid state the United States obviously has a deep-seated interest in resolving both of these problems as soon as possible but it cannot mainly because the lobby makes it impossible to do so the sad truth is that if there were no Lobby the United States would pursue different and smarter policies in the Middle East of course there would still be problems but unbalanced the United States and all the players in the middle in the region to include Turkey and Israel itself would be better off without the lobby thank you States on gun control it's quite clear that most Americans would like some meaningful gun control laws but the reason that the majority of Americans can't get their way is because you have a small number of people who don't want any gun control laws who have formed this Lobby called the National Rifle Association that is remarkably powerful it's a small group of people are very well organized and very well financed and they get their way so the key point to keep in mind here is that it's collective action logic at play that drives this train in very important ways to be a bit more specific about it let's just talk about money to get elected president in the United States as many of you have surely noticed requires raising huge amounts of money to get elected to Congress whether it's in the House of Representatives or the Senate requires huge amounts of money and the lobby directs money at candidates who are pro-israel and in cases where there are candidates who are hostile to Israel they will direct large amounts of money to any opponent of that politician who is perceived to be anti-israel so the vast majority of American politicians have come to the conclusion that it is not worth crossing the lobby over Israel because what will then happen is the lobby will go to great lengths to find another politician and give that politician lots of money to help defeat you in the next election and if you look at Barack Obama Barack Obama is well aware right that he needs lots of money and he wants organizations and individuals who are deeply committed Israel to make sure they direct lots of money to him so money in elections matters votes also matter and let me give you an example here Jews are somewhere between two and three percent of the population which is only a small slice of the American population but in a close election they matter and a perfect case in point would be Florida in the 2000 election you all remember the election in 2000 between George Bush and Al Gore it all came down to Florida and apparently Bush v Gore by handful of votes well there is a large Jewish community in Florida and if that Jewish community is in favor of you and you're running for president and it's a close election like it was in 2000 you win if that Jewish community is opposed to you and it's a close election like 2000 you lose so not surprisingly no candidate for the presidency is going to alienate any Jewish voters if he or she can avoid it and by the way let me point out that in Miami there is a large Cuban community that is the heart and soul of the Cuba Lobby and if you want to know why the United States has this ridiculous policy towards Cuba today it's because of the Cuba Lobby and it's due to the fact that no presidential candidate worrying about a possible election like 2000 wants to alienate the Cuban Americans in Miami anymore that he wants to alienate Jewish Americans so votes matter in the American electoral system and that is another mechanism through which the lobby exercises its influence I could go on and on because there are many mechanisms but you get a feel from those to how it operates there were a few questions that you asked within New York in the course of your response the importance of money in US elections and how that is growing by is just enormous it's just the influence of money is enormous and it has a corrupting influence for sure by the way I just would say on this just to give you a feel for how the lobby fits into the bigger picture the United States had a financial meltdown in 2008 and we seriously needed to reform our financial system well Wall Street is not interested in reforming the financial system they want to you know continue business as is and it's been almost impossible to get any reform in Congress and the reason it's almost impossible to get any refine an shal reform in Congress is because Wall Street has put together these powerful lobbies that operate in Washington and thwart the efforts of Congress to reform the financial system and those financial lobbies are remarkably powerful and again it's because of the influence of money there are several questions without names which ask what is the real benefit of Israel and Lobby so that US government would accept its actions that contradict US interests and another person ask there must be a large benefit for the u.s. gained by the existence of the lobby what is it I think I don't know what it is I wish the question would tell me what he or she thinks that advantages my argument is that the lobby is pushing the United States to pursue policies that are not in the American national interest by the way I argue as does Steve that do not in Israel's interest either remember what I said about a hood all mert's views on where this is all headed its core to the Palestinian issue so I think that the lobbies efforts to thwart barroco murrs planned to have a two-state solution is not in Israel's interest it's certainly not in America's interests right the reason you need a Lobby by the way is that if American policymakers and American politicians were left to their own devices we'd have a very different policy that was the point that I concluded with the reason you have a Lobby is because they're pushing us to pursue a policy that we otherwise were a set of policies we otherwise would not pursue but I do not believe that there is any advantage for the United States and in fact I think that there are tremendous disadvantages there are three questions asking why this influence was not recognized before why maybe in from the truck sector for American strategy asks do you think there's an increasing awareness about Israel lobby since American people are against foreign aid in general and another person without this is a question without the name as why do you think the literature on ethnic lobbies and interest groups on American foreign policy making process is very little or turn a blind eye on the effects of lobbies why the effect of lobbies have not been prevail the first question was do you think there is an increasing awareness about Israel lobby since your American people are against foreign aid in general here he says I think that there is an increasing awareness of the Israel lobby for two related reasons one was our article and book which created a huge splash and to a number of events that have occurred since then that have made it clear to many Americans just how powerful and influential the lobby is you would have to be blind to not see how Bobby has been operating over the past year to push Barack Obama to attack I ran it's very clear that hardly anyone in the United States wants to go to war against Iran except for Israel's hardline supporters and their pressure on the president and on the American political system is evident for everyone to see and I think we Steve and I played a key role in cracking open that door so I think that's the main reason those are the two main reasons that people are now away aware of the lobby the lobby cannot operate as quietly as it did in in the past and what was the second question was second question why isn't that a big literature on ethnic lobbies in philosophy of American policy you know it's interesting I Steve and I spent a lot of time in dealing with criticisms of our article and book we spent a lot of time looking at the literature on lobbies and on interest groups and it's actually a quite terrible literature I'm talking about the scholarly literature here and I've told the number of students who study American politics that they really should write on the subject of interest groups because I didn't think the literature was very good my view on why it's not very good is that in American politics in the United States if you can't do quantitative studies of a particular subject then it's not worth doing anything on the subject and interest groups does not is the sub interest groups of subject it does not lend itself to quantitative studies and I think as a result you just haven't gotten much really good literature on it but it's a subject that's really ripe for study there's a question about evangelical Christians which occupy a place in your book selling Chetan asks do you think the evangelical Christian communities support for Israel is important for the effect Israel lobby has on American foreign policy do you think this Christian Evangelic o support for Israel will be long-lasting I think there's no question that the Christian Zionists matter greatly for American policy towards Israel and towards the Middle East it is important to understand that Christian Zionists are a subset of the general category of Christian evangelicals and not all Christian evangelicals are deeply committed to supporting Israel at every turn but the Christian Zionists are and is most of you know their basic position is that to facilitate the second coming of Jesus Christ it's imperative that Israel control every square millimeter of mandatory Palestine so when Ariel Sharon pulled out of the Gaza Strip and subsequently had a stroke a prominent Christian Zionist said in the United States that that was his punishment for pulling out of Gaza so you get a sense for how deeply committed on religious grounds these Christian Zionists are to Israel and to the special relationship pardon I think it's the ad campaign in the New York subway station that our audience member oh yeah before I get to the ad campaign let me just say just another word about the Christian Zionists and Christian evangelicals more generally they are a very important part of the Republican base and therefore any Republican presidential candidate is going to be remarkably sympathetic to Israel for fear that if he or she is not he or she will alienate that chunk of the base and not be able to secure the presidential nomination or become president so within the Republican Party the presence of the Christian Zionists in the base really matters greatly with regard to these subway advertisements I'm not sure that has much to do with Christian evangelicals doesn't yeah yeah this is hateful campaign advertising campaign were pamela geller and assorted other people on the far right have put up posters depicting the palestinians in terrible ways and of course many people on the other side of the debate have then put signs over those posters that say words like racist hate speech and so forth and so on very interesting to speculate what will be the consequences of all of this you know in the past nobody really talked about these issues in public and now you're having advertising campaigns at bus stops and train stations and on buses and on trains in ways that you didn't have in the past and i think what this is doing is it's bringing the issue out into the open and i think bringing the issue out into the open is not to israel's advantage i think that what is going on in the occupied territories is an absolutely horrible thing and the israelis have a deep-seated interest as do their supporters and making sure that as few people as possible know what's actually going on in the occupied territories and once you begin to have these poster wars that piques people's interest and they began to say what's really going on over there and once you start looking into it it becomes very clear very quickly who are the white hats and who are the black hats right and in this case you know the israelis of the bad guys because they're doing terrible things to the Palestinians and Israel and its supporters don't want the Americans to know that that's why if the lobby went to enormous lengths to make sure that Steve Walt and I got his little good publicity for our book as possible and they went to considerable lengths to make sure that we didn't speak it all sorts of venues in the United States because they don't want the message getting out my view is if you have an open discourse on the israeli-palestinian conflict really open discourse where everybody's free to say what they want this would not work to Israel's advantage and of course that's why the lobby has gone to such enormous lengths over time to make sure that we don't have it open discourse a couple of more questions on the lobby and then there's a group of questions on Israel Iran and Syria so I want to wrap up the lobby questions Dennis Lutz asks how does increase partisanship and gridlock in the US Congress in recent years affect the ability of the lobbying organizations like a PAC to function effectively if at all Jon Arbuckle asks what determines success and failure of Israeli Lobby in general a question without a name is there a chance that Obama will veer away from Israel after reelection as he would no longer need to fear electoral repressive and finally get a glute Kerr asks professor Mishima what is your advice to the responsible people in Washington DC on how to react the Israel lobby and pursue real national interests of the United States of America these four questions you just repeat that the first question had to do with gridlock yes gridlock does gridlock make the lobby yes gridlock has no effect on the lobby because both the Republicans and the Democrats are closely tied to the lobby and it doesn't matter whether you have a Republican president or a Democratic president and if you look at the votes in Congress for example the votes are on any issue having to deal with Israel are overwhelmingly in favor of the Israeli position and there are hardly any Republicans or Democrats who vote against Israel so you don't have gridlock when it comes to Israel you have extreme bipartisanship and the reason of course you have extreme bipartisanship is the lobby many people point out that Israel is the one issue where the parties don't fight with each other they actually compete with each other to see who can prove that they're the better friend of Israel what was the second the second question was that what determines success and failure of Israeli Lobby in general I think that's very simple whether or not the president pursues policies that are the ones that the Israeli government wants the lobbies basic job is to push Israel's position the Israeli government's position in the United States and if they can get the American president to support Israel then they've been successful and if they can't then they've been unsuccessful with regard to the Palestinian issues I tried to make clear up here they've been successful for decades now with regard to Iran they've been less successful because the lobby was pushing very hard with the Israeli government over the past year to get the United States to attack Iran but that did not happen so that would be a case where the lobby was not successful is there and we can combine these two questions is there a chance that Obama will veer away from Israel after re-election as he doesn't need to fear about reelection and what would your advice be to the politicians in Washington DC in dealing with the lobby I don't think that after the last four years or Obama consistently lost to the lobby that he will be enthusiastic about taking them on again and believing that he could win first of all he couldn't win and secondly Obama is not a tough guy he's not the kind of guy who likes to pick fights he's a conciliator and so I think it's highly unlikely he will pick a major-league fight with the Israelis it's not to say he won't have his disagreements with them and with regard to what I would tell policymakers I've pretty much said what I have to say and everybody knows what I think but the fact is that most American politicians live in fear of the lobby and they're afraid to stand up to the lobby there very few people who have the courage very few American politicians who have the courage to stand up and challenge the lobby and so I think that my talking to them has not done a lot of good and would not do a lot of good fight continued it and we have a group of questions as to whether Israel lobby is good for Israel itself and the first question says settlements Jewish settlements in the West Bank are not popular even within Israel among Israeli citizens because of economic costs and security issues is there any prospect of internal pressure in Israel leading to Israel's suspension of building settlements and exactly similar to this question is considering that Israeli prime ministers some of them have defended a two-state solution as you said the questioner asks does the lobby also conflict with Israel s policy does Israel love in the United it's conflict with Israel's national interest in the long term with regard to the first question a lot of Israelis are upset about all the money that goes to the settlements but there's no evidence in my opinion that the Israeli public is going to demand that the settlements end and that the two-state solution be implemented if anything the America the Israeli political system is becoming more hawkish and there is in my opinion no chance that the public will rise up and force the politicians to abandon the settlements and create a Palestinian state you have over 500,000 settlers at this point in time the settlement enterprise is huge there are hundreds of miles of roads huge settlements in the West Bank it's just not going to happen now with regard to the Israeli prime ministers there have been a few Israeli prime ministers in particular a hood Olmert who said that he was interested in creating a viable Palestinian state he said that at the very end of his term in office and he did not even come close to accomplishing it and I'm not sure if he had stayed in office he would have followed it through to the end it's very easy to say I'm in favor of a two-state solution but the proof is in the pudding the question is when push comes to shove is that Israeli Prime Minister willing himself and is the country willing to make the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a two-state solution and no Israeli Prime Minister has done that or even come close to doing that up to now and given how far to the right the body politic is Moo I see no chance of that happening again I believe that the two-state solution is dead and you're going to get a one state solution and I believe that initially that one state will be an apartheid state and then the $64,000 question is where the Israelis can maintain that apartheid state over the long term I believe that they're betting that they can that they can rely on the lobby to provide protective cover and the end result will be that even though the Palestinians are treated like second or third class citizens in this apartheid state world opinion and American opinion won't turn against Israel in any major way a hood Olmert disagrees with that and I disagree with that and that's where I think Israel is in real trouble and then there's a group of questions do you believe the lobby influences Israeli domestic and international affairs as well not just u.s. foreign policy but Israeli domestic and foreign policy and who would be the natural ally of the United States in the Middle East without Israel I think that the lobby the Israel lobby is mainly designed to influence American policy and not Israeli policy there may be some individuals in the Israel lobby who also have influence inside Israel I think this would apply to Sheldon Adelson who's a huge supporter of Governor Romney and the Republican Party more generally here in the United States but also is a huge supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu so there are a number of very influential American Jews who matter politics in America and matter for politics in Israel but I think by him Lords the Israel lobby restricts its its influence to the United States and the second question was second question was who would be the nature of ally of the United States if it abandoned Israel to be clear I was not talking about the United States abandon Israel I was turned by the United States putting pressure on Israel very firm pressure to change its policies with regard to the Palestinians but I wasn't was not arguing yet they should abandon Israel but the United States has lots of natural allies in the Middle East Turkey is one of them Egypt is another one Jordan is another one and there's no reason it couldn't have other natural allies it was once closely allied with Iran Saudi Arabia is now and has been a natural ally so there are plenty of other allies in the Middle East I know that you have given examples but I will mention this question nonetheless one audience member asks is there any example where u.s. foreign policy conflicted in a major way with Israeli interests but I mean maybe that's somewhere on two issues one is the Palestinian issue and two is on Iran and then we have a group of questions on Iran maybe I can ask those questions now that we are moving into Iran what is your viewpoint of having a nuclear or near nuclear Iran in the Middle East will it be a balance against is really nuclear weapons yes and another question along the same lines if there is no hard evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons can we say that the United States and Israel is making perceptions about Iran and finally yes similar almost the same question considering the remarkable power of the Israel lobby what is the probability of United States starting or getting involved in a war against Iran Obama's leadership these are the three questions on Iran that we have the first question had to do with the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons this is an interesting question obviously one that should concern everyone in Turkey since Iran is a next-door neighbor I've come to believe over the years I didn't think this when I was young but I've come to believe that nuclear weapons have hardly any utility except the terrain an attack on your homeland the idea that Iran is going to get nuclear weapons and threatened Turkey and become a regional hegemon and dominate the neighborhood is not a serious argument nuclear weapons provide a country with almost zero offensive capability if I were an Iranian I would want nuclear weapons and I would want nuclear weapons because I would want to be able to tell the United States and the Israelis to stop threatening to attack me and I would tell them in no uncertain terms that if you attack my homeland I'm pretending that I'm an Iranian here you should understand that you run the risk of nuclear retaliation if Iran had nuclear weapons we would not be threatening Iran do you understand that if Iran had nuclear weapons we would not be threatening Iran that's why Iran should want nuclear weapons and that's why we should stop threatening Iran because that's what gives them incentive to have their weapons so nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent but they have remarkably little offensive military capability the United States and Israel both have nuclear weapons what offensive capabilities to those weapons give us please tell me I don't see any so I think if Iran were to get nuclear weapons it would not be the end of the world however I would prefer Iran not get nuclear weapons for three reasons one is there is always the possibility that if two countries with nuclear weapons get into a war that it might inadvertently escalate to the nuclear level and the best case here is the india-pakistan case you can tell unlikely but plausible stories about how a conventional war breaks out between India and Pakistan and it escalates inadvertently to the nuclear level okay so if Iran had nuclear weapons it is possible it could get involved in a war with another country with nuclear weapons and you could get inadvertent escalation is it likely no but is it possible yes therefore I don't want a random nuclear weapons second there's always a possibility the country with nuclear weapons can have a political meltdown and those weapons can fall into the hands of terrorists I want to be clear here I do not believe that Iran or Pakistan is going to give nuclear weapons to terrorists this is a boogeyman that's not going to happen right what I do worry about and we worry about this with regard to Pakistan is that you have a revolution or you have a political meltdown and those weapons fall into the hands of the wrong people so that's the second reason the third reason is that if Iran gets nuclear weapons that would be very powerful incentives for you Turkey Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region to get their own nuclear weapons this is the proliferation scenario and once that happens then the likelihood of a possible nuclear war goes up because you have more nuclear powers I'm not saying that you would have a nuclear war in fact the mere presence of nuclear weapons would make the region more peaceful because nuclear weapons or horrific weapons but I prefer not to see proliferation and I'd prefer to avoid the nuclear meltdown problem and I prefer to avoid the inadvertent escalation problem so for all those reasons I'm opposed to nuclear proliferation to Iran and I think we should go to great lengths to prevent that from happening and of course the best way again to prevent it is to stop threatening around what does that mean there's nothing we can do to prevent them from developing a threshold capability this is the great flaw in the NPT the NPT says that you can develop a significant enrichment capability as long as you don't weaponize and the problem that you've probably faced is that if you have a significant enrichment capability you don't weaponize but you have a significant enrichment capability you're remarkably close to having nuclear weapons this is the Japanese case the Japanese don't have nuclear weapons and in fact they go to great lengths to say they never are going to get nuclear weapons but everybody understands that the Japanese have what we call a breakout capability they're very close to the point where they could build nuclear weapons they have enough plutonium in Japan to build quite a few nuclear weapons and this is a technically or technologically sophisticated Society Japan so they could do it very quickly and basically you're facing the same situation with Iran you understand this is why the Israelis do not want Iran to have an enrichment capability at all this woman's question is right on the money right because once the Iranians have a significant enrichment capability they're that close to the bomb and that the Israelis don't want the Americans on the other hand have basically concluded partly anyone will say this in public but the Americans basically concluded that you have to let the Iranians have some enrichment capability right pardon well 5% she said 5% that there were already enriching at 20% right there's sort of three levels this is very crude three levels of enrichment five percent is fine 20 percent not good 90 percent is what you need for a bomb 90 plus percent enrichment for a bomb but once you could enrich up to 20 percent it's easy to enrich up to 90% right so what the Israelis would like is no enrichment but if they're going to have any enrichment 5% ready but the problem is the Iranians already have a 20 percent enrichment capability they've been the Iranians have already enriched a lot of uranium up to 20 percent right so they're not far away from there not far away from having the capability to build the bomb and the Israelis find this intolerable and I think the Americans in the Europeans have reached the conclusion that in a perfect world they would have no enrichment capability in a slightly less than perfect world they'd only have 5% but we can't go back that far so we're probably going to have to live with 20% and just do everything we can to make sure that they don't go the final couple inches into the end zone as we would say in American football but yeah we have a question about Syria we have questions I'm sorry that I will not be able to read all the questions I'm picking the germane one's grouping them because we need to end in ten minutes Chanda is really Lobby and Israel be the reason for United States's current anti-assad policy in Syria or is there a justifiable reason for United States to uphold such a policy on Syria asked oh no John yet from econ Department and a more general question should turkey that's a separate question should turkey intervene in Syria to bring democracy to the Syrian nation I'll take the last question first no I think having watched the Americans over the past ten years intervene in the domestic politics of countries in the Middle East all Turks should fully understand that social engineering at the end of a rifle barrel is a prescription for big trouble I would stay I would stay out of Turkey for sure as most of you have surely noticed the Americans have backed off in recent months because they fully understand that intervening in Turkey would be the equivalent of jumping into a hornet's nest and that of course applies to Turkey as well it'll all be responsible for the anti-assad position of the United States is Israel against that government I think is what it boils down to well this is a complicated question first of all the the obvious connection with Israel in the lobby has to do with Iran one of the reasons that the United States and the Israelis would like to topple Assad is because he's closely allied with Iran and they believe that if you topple the Assad regime in Syria that will drive a dagger into the heart of Iran I think this is more American wishful thinking I think if Assad were to be toppled it would matter only a little bit for the Iranians but but but there's that linkage I think the more important question is just sort of how the Israelis think about Syria and I think they have very mixed emotions or mixed feelings on the matter I think on balance the Israelis have decided unbalanced that it would be good to get rid of Assad but I don't think they're they're sure that anymore you know ciri was no threat to Israel and Assad kept order in Syria and he was reasonably easy to deal with most Israelis that I've talked to do not believe that the person who replaces Assad of peace topple is all of a sudden going to become pro-israel in fact most Israelis understand that because they refused to give the Golan Heights back to Syria whoever is in charge in Syria is going to be an enemy of Israel so getting rid of Assad and replacing him with X or Y or Z and the end is not going to matter very much and furthermore it's not clear that all this turmoil is good for Israel you can make a case that you know if Assad's topple it'll be damaging to Iran it'll weaken a neighbor who is that is you know somewhat dangerous you can make those arguments but they only take you so far so my view is that both Israel and the lobby have mixed emotions on Syria and on balance would like to see the Assad regime topple but it's not like akhmad in Assad I mean they would really love to see us take down Ahmed in a shot if we could Assad not that big a threat do you think Turkey should have a closer relationship with Israel in order to make a contribution to the israeli-palestinian peace process whether Turkish is really close relations is a necessary condition for Middle Eastern peace well if the question is can turkey put pressure on Israel to solve the israeli-palestinian problem if Turkey forms a close alliance with Israel or reestablishes a close alliance with Israel I think the answer is no turkeys not going to be in position to put any pressure on Israel regarding the Palestinians I think that present Turkish policy towards Israel is the correct one I think that Turkey should make it very clear to Israel as it has done and as it should do in the future that what it's doing to the Palestinians is simply unacceptable and that there has to be either a two-state solution or one state solution where the Palestinians are given full civil rights that should be the Turkish position so I applaud the way turkey has behaved towards Israel in recent years and I hope that they continue to behave that way this could be the last question as we have four more minutes and there are kinds of others your book the Israel lobby is dedicated to your late friend Samuel Huntington of Harvard University and he is known around the world as the author of clash of civilizations and the remaking of World Order do you think in any way his scholarship especially the article and the book clash of civilizations also contributed maybe to some of these conflicts in the Middle East Sam Huntington was a very good friend of mine and a very good friend of Steve Walt's as well and I was actually present in Washington DC when he first presented The Clash of Civilizations as as a paper at a conference and I was sitting next to Fareed Zakaria who had just been named the managing editor of Foreign Affairs at the time and he of course went up to Sam afterwards and asked Sam if he could publish the clash of civilizations the manuscript as an article in foreign affairs and the rest is history when I first listened to that talk that night and then later reading the article and later reading the book I thought that Huntington was dead wrong I think that nationalism is the most powerful ideology on the planet most Americans think democracy is the most powerful ideology on the planet I don't believe that I think nationalism is the most powerful ideology on the planet and I think the whole notion of civilizational loyal things which would transcend national loyalties is just not the way the world operates and I talked to Sam on a number of occasions about this so he knew my views so I don't think it makes good sense to talk about civilizational clashes I think there's a lot that's happened in the world in recent years that contradicts that whole line of argument just look at Syria right here you have Syria that is in the middle of a civil war and supporting it from the outside you have the Russians uranium and the Iraqis on the other side you have the Saudis the Americans and the Turks doesn't look like the clash of civilizations to me if you look at what happened in the Balkans doesn't look like the clash of civilizations to me there we were basically aligned with the Bosnian Muslims and then we supported the cause of ours were mainly Muslims against the Serbs the first Iraq war right the United States and its allies came to the defense of Kawai first of all you had a intrest civilization of war Iraq attacked Kuwait that contradicts Mountain and then America and a number of other European countries came to the defense of Kuwait that contradicts his thesis as well so I don't think that it makes much sense to think of civilizational terms I think it was an important book and it got people thinking about international politics in all sorts of important ways but I think nevertheless like a lot of important books Sam was fundamentally wrong that civilizational clashes don't matter very much and as we were talking about yesterday if you look at the Middle East today the real potential for trouble is not civilizational in nature it's Shias versus Sunnis if you want to transcend nationalism you want to put nationalism aside right the scenario that makes lots of people very nervous is one where you have a number of Shia States on one side or she has nominated States on one side and a number of Sunni dominated states on the other side but I wouldn't describe that as a clash of civilizations so anyway although I had normos I had have enormous respect for Sam and was good friends with him I disagreed with him on that issue and actually disagreed with him on a number of other issues I want to make one other point just on on this issue in 2000 in 2002 Steve Walton died and Shibley talha me organized an advertisement in The New York Times opposing the Iraq war we got 33 scholars to sign that advertisement we paid 38,000 dollars out of our own pocket to put this it's a quarter page ad in The New York Times it's on my website for anybody who's interested and but anyway it was 33 academics and Sam Huntington did not sign the advertisement in the end but nevertheless he was adamantly opposed to the Iraq war and he was opposed to the Iraq war because he believed that it would facilitate the clash of civilizations right that was his argument Huntington was very clear that he was not in favor of provoking the clash of civilizations right he thought the world operated according to a civilizational paradigm that's where I disagreed with it right but let's assume he was correct in the world does operate according to his civilizational paradigm he was not interested in exacerbating tensions between the civilizations he was not interested in fostering a war between the west and Islam again I don't buy that distinction but he was not interested in fostering that that that clash and therefore he opposed the Iraq war although he did not sign the advertisement let me remind our audience that professor Mishima will be speaking tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. in the founders hall on realism and the rise of China in the future geopolitical map of the world with the end please do come to that if you have time with that note please join me in thanking professor Mishima for this two hours of

Channel: Koç Üniversitesi

Views: 16,124

Rating: 4.7122302 out of 5

Keywords: John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, Alan Dershowitz, Ehud Olmert, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Sheldon Adelson, George Mitchell, Benyamin Netanyahu, David Petraeus, Mitt Romney, Umran Inan, Sener Akturk, AIPAC, WINEP, Koc University

Id: GTWLEWSB3f4

Length: 109min 52sec (6592 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 10 2012