John Mearsheimer on Iran, Israel and the US. But Does The US Subordinate its Own Interests to Israels?

Richard Mellor

I have considerable respect for John Mearsheimer. I believe he is a genuine character, though he does not place his considerable skills at the service of the working class by any means. I’m halfway through this but Mearsheimer is laying down the law. He must be despised by both the left and right of the US body politic and the US ruling class in general. He’s just reminded us that if there was a present day Nuremberg like in 1945 after the genocide that took place against the Jews at that time, “Biden and his lieutenants and Trump and his lieutenants would be hanged.”

 

Mearsheimer is a bourgeois strategist and since co-authoring a book about the Israeli Lobby or AIPAC in 2007, his views on the Middle East and the Israel/US relationship have been borne out to a great degree.

 

I do not agree though with his affirmation that Israel calls the shots saying that while countries have national interests and sometimes the national interests of countries can converge, when the US and Israel have opposing interests, the US acts in the interests of the latter against its own; this is due to the power of AIPAC is his argument. Some would call it the Jewish Lobby.

 

I believe the US has very important interests in the region being oil of course, as well as the Suez Canal and the general need for a global hegemon to maintain important footholds in other parts of the world and especially so as the US now has a peer competitor globally in the form of China.

 

US imperialism is losing its influence in this region and a significant defeat for Israel, its settler colony would be a humiliating defeat for US imperialism globally. It will hang on to Israel as it is the only reliable ally of the US in this part of the world. So it sees defending its proxy as in the interests if the United States.

 

Mearsheimer talks of the Israeli strategy to build a greater Israel and the need to ethnically cleanse the region, that is what it is doing in Lebanon, ethnically cleansing the southern part of the country below the Litani river and it has even greater ambitions for Syria, and beyond. I see this as driven by US imperialism’s interests. Israel could not have done what it has in Gaza or what it is doing in Lebanon and Iran now without US money and weapons and points out that Israel’s strategy is to weaken Iran and have a regime there compliant to the US, so does Washington. Washington is facing increasing pressure domestically given the cost to the US population of this venture not to mention the horrors that cannot be hidden given the role of social media.

 

To not see it that way and accept that AIPAC is the driving force to get the US ruling class to act against its own interests, what is it about AIPAC, a group representing a small country, and more importantly, a small population, specifically Jews both inside Israel and out, that makes it so powerful? 

 

I know what some would say and I certainly don’t think Mearsheimer is proposing it although the Zionists have accused him of that.

 

But what do I know? Mearsheimer has a Phd. I have a GED