I realized that I had never taken the trouble to read through Walt-Mearsheimer. So I wandered through their LRB essay. Their evidence is interesting, and proves beyond a doubt that there is an Israel Lobby in the United States. But their conceptual framework is ridiculous, and their notion of how American foreign policy operates dead wrong. Take the conceptual framework, which stipulates a “national interest,” from which the Israel Lobby causes American foreign policy to deviate. Is there a national interest (no quotation marks)? Undoubtedly—Americans have a national interest in avoiding global warming, and in a national healthcare system. Palestinians have a national interest in national liberation. There is a common-sense national interest, the shared interests an impartial observer would impute to all Americans or all Palestinians or all human beings. But is there a “national interest,” as realist IR theory claims? Of course there isn’t. Capitalism creates vested interests in rampant carbon-producing consumption, with a total “cost” of the annihilation of civilization, and perforce the eventual annihilation of capitalism. The health care system is the least efficient in the developed world, with trillions in costs for the American economy. Palestinians produce a collaborator class, entrenched in the highest levels of the PA and living glitzy make-believe lives in Ramallah. The “national interest” is not a serious concept. American politics, as Thomas Ferguson has established, is better explained by the “investment theory”: contending groups of investors struggling for governmental power. The evidence Mearsheimer and Walt adduce is still relevant, and it still establishes that there is an Israel Lobby. But it turns out that the Lobby doesn’t do what M-W think it does. Take one claim, the one I am interested in, because it gets to the issue of causal motors:
Probably the most popular argument made about a countervailing force is Herf and Markovits’s claim that the centrepiece of US Middle East policy is oil, not Israel. There is no question that access to that region’s oil is a vital US strategic interest. Washington is also deeply committed to supporting Israel. Thus, the relevant question is, how does each of those interests affect US policy? We maintain that US policy in the Middle East is driven primarily by the commitment to Israel, not oil interest. If the oil companies or the oil-producing countries were driving policy, Washington would be tempted to favour the Palestinians instead of Israel. Moreover, the United States would almost certainly not have gone to war against Iraq in March 2003, and the Bush administration would not be threatening to use military force against Iran. Oil is clearly an important concern for US policymakers, but with the exception of episodes like the 1973 Opec oil embargo, the US commitment to Israel has yet to threaten access to oil. It does, however, contribute to America’s terrorism problem, complicates its efforts to halt nuclear proliferation, and helped get the United States involved in wars like Iraq.
This is the trouble when realist scholars of international relations start analyzing political economy. Place to the side that the only two independent variables are the Lobby and oil prices—or access, or the “oil interest,” or “oil companies,” or “oil-producing countries,” (what fun is this conceptual slippage, as we move here-and-there, not bothering to be consistent or to many any sense, the prerogative of scholars working in the interests of domestic power). To be fair, M-W are only echoing conceptual disagreement amongst Marxian scholars unable to agree on how and why oil affects American policy in the Middle East, but that’s no excuse for not sifting through all the theories to see if any of them are accurate. In any case, there are at least two other influences on American foreign policy: the military-industrial complex, and the interests of capital enterprises not affiliated with petroleum or petroleum-related interests, the broader armament industries, or the Israel Lobby.
Nitzan and Bichler clarify:
The realist failure to square the circle around oil prices is only understandable. The basic reason is that, by the 1970s, while the world was already well into the ‘limited flow’ era, realist theories were still stuck in the ‘free flow’ logic. Stephen Krasner, for example, claimed that there was a negative trade-off between the level and variability of petroleum prices (1978b: 39–40). The consequence, he concluded, was that policy makers had to choose between low but variable prices, or stable but high ones. Yet, when those lines were written, this menu had already become irrelevant, and in fact misleading. From the late 1960s onward, with oil shifting to a ‘limited flow’ footing, the relationship between the level and variability of prices became positive. The choice now was not between low and variable oil prices as opposed to high and stable ones, but rather between low and stable prices against high and volatile ones.
Obviously, this transition fundamentally altered the relationship between the oil companies and the so-called ‘national interest’. During the early period, when the companies were concerned mainly with concessions, the Administration’s willingness to have higher prices in order to secure stability and access seemed sensible. It helped the companies, as well as the broader U.S. ‘national interest’. Since the late 1960s, however, harmony gave way to discord. The United States could no longer pay higher prices in order to achieve access and price stability; it couldn’t, simply because access was no longer negotiable, whereas higher prices were clearly causing greater instability. The oil companies, on the other hand, were now interested not in access but in higher prices. Contrary to the earlier situation, therefore, there was now clear conflict between the companies and the ‘national interest’, and the Administration’s pursuit of both instability and higher prices only indicates where its allegiances lay.
Support for Israel, or Israeli belligerence, usually means constant conflict, or the constant potential for conflict, in the Middle East, and constant conflict in the Middle East usually leads to higher oil prices (during the Iran-Iraq War, both sides overproduced, busting OPEC quotas, in order to pay for their arms purchases). This system continued in one or another form through the early 1990s, when every time the average return for major petroleum companies dipped below the Fortune 500’s average return, there was an “energy conflict,” jolting up oil prices and arms sales. The Gulf War was the temporary break in this pattern: “During the 1990s, dominant capital as a whole was increasingly seeking cross-border expansion, a process which required tranquillity, not turmoil. Given that military conflict endangered such expansion, and that high energy prices threatened to choke the green-field potential of ‘emerging markets’, the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition found itself increasingly isolated.” What happened, as petroleum prices again plummeted in the late 1990s and early 2000? We went to war again, first in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq, whereupon profits for the petroleum companies, the weapons industries, and the Tel-Aviv stock market shot through the roof—just look at the figures—representing a confluence of interests between arms manufacturers, the oil industry, and the Israel Lobby. Is this a functionalist explanation? Yes, it is. Does it explain the political economy of the Middle East? Fairly compellingly. Does this mean there’s no Lobby, or that it has no power? Not at all: it has plenty of power, just not determinative influence vis-à-vis American foreign policy in the Middle East. Has Nitzan and Bichler’s book been studiously ignored by those writing on the Israel/Zionist/Jewish Lobby? Yes, it has. In the case of M-W, this ignorance makes a great deal of sense. In the case of leftist analysts, this ignorance is more confusing. It’s not our problem to explain that ignorance, but the repercussions of writing the petrodollar-weapondollar core out of our analyses is all of our problem, especially when those trying to root the Lobby in materialist analyses are dismissed as crypto-Zionists, Jewish apologists for Israel, or whatever term of abuse is hauled in to avoid real discussion.
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Excellent. Will look at the Nitzan and Bicherl book.
I think one of the reasons that this debate is so ongoing is that the main terms are not clearly defined, or people are not interpreting them in the same way — “national interests”, as you say, and even the Lobby itself. If the terms are not clearly defined, it is really impossible to even have the discussion at all.
“especially when those trying to root the Lobby in materialist analyses are dismissed as crypto-Zionists” — yes, this is quite funny sometimes. Another good one is “gatekeeper”. Some fail to see that the two views are not at all mutually exclusive.
In a sense, the W&M idea of the Lobby goes too far (too nebulous), and in another sense it doesn’t go far enough into recognizing it as a symptom of the deeper systemic corruption of politics in the US, and how it fits quite nicely into place there — and if it were gone, it would leave the US imperial hands somehow less bloody, and white as snow.
Tony Judt did, however, bring up an important point, in that it has had a very destructive effect on free speech, and it is the only lobby which tries to deny its very existence. But, are we to believe that every person who puts pressure on or harasses journalists or academics voicing critical views on Israel’s behavior is also part of the lobby? There are stupid, bigoted people out there who have no need of a lobby to tell them what to do. I see it as more like the Bernays/Herman/Chomsky model of “manufacturing consent”, or a very effective PR machine, in which people basically become self-censuring.
I think this is the right way to look at it and I think it’s unfortunate that the debates are so vitriolic and sterile due to the accusations that get slung around when an analysis deviates from some stipulated orthodoxy.
Brilliant, Max. Thanks for alerting us to the complexities of oil pricing as one more factor required for a truly materialist analysis. This overlaps to some extent with the debate on the left during the first Gulf War about whether the US was more interested in profits from oil, or control over access to it by other imperialist powers. And with regard to the former, how did the interests of domestic versus foreign oil production and/or refinement affect ruling class policy makers differentially?
Of course on top of all these questions is the role of pro-US Arab regimes in helping maintain profitability and/or control.
Andy Pollack
Thanks Andy. N+B go on to argue that OPEC and the petro-core essentially arrived, at least during the golden years, the 70s, at an understanding between oil companies and national governments allowing for the maximization of profits on all sides, so pro-US Arab regimes always play a strong role, creating a built-in excuse for supporting Israel that becomes cyclical: Israel needs dictatorships working against the interests of their populations to maintain its predatory expansionism/occupation, that very colonization and occupation further radicalizes the populace of the Arab/Muslim countries; in turn you need dictatorship to keep the policies of the states roughly pro-Israel, and via dictatorship you can prevent oil wealth from seeping down to the populations, keeping them poor and atomized and desperate. Works until it blows up of course.
Another term of abuse might be “supporter of Israel,” except Chomsky has already used that one to characterize himself. I mention this only in order to point out that he seems to evince little more enthusiasm for a Weapondollar-Petrodollar-Lobby Coalition analysis than the so-called realists, largely dismissing the Lobby and somewhat vulgarly reducing Israel to a US regional catspaw — surely not a serious materialist analysis.
Well, two things. One, Chomsky’s approach is a fairly vulgar Marxism, and that approach does explain fairly decently most of what he writes about. with holes.
Two, writing on the left about I-P seems to have scarcely discussed this book. It came out in 2002; I don’t understand why. To me it seems like it should be framing the conversation.
the Nitzan and Bichler book is truly extraordinary, as it excavates a subterranean economic world that provides insight into actions and behaviours that would otherwise be inexplicable
but the manipulation of conflict in the region was about more than just increasing the return on investment, rather it was about a privileged group of capitalists regulating the return up and down so as to increase concentration of wealth and power within themselves
hence, they could accept lower returns, and even losses, if, on a proportional basis, they suffered less and controlled a greater concentration of capital as a result
they exhaustively document the concentration of capital within Israel that occurred as a result
starting with a critique of classical economics that shows that capitalists do not always profit maximize, they then proceed to understand why they don’t
this is an essential book for the left, a marvel, and their most recent book may be as well, the one they published a year or so ago
yes, for sure. I think everyone writing/involved with I-P or on the left should read this book; there’s plenty to get out of it whether or not you’re much for Marxist political economy. and plain everyone should read their more recent one.
Max, where do you think the idea of “grand area strategy” fits into all of this? That refers, I presume, to interests beyond the price of oil and corporate profits, to control of oil vis a vis Europe and Asia. Do you think there are “wise men” operating at an even more abstract level of interests–“wise men,” so to speak?
I’m not sure. Kolko generally and Gowan in the Global Gamble are pretty good on this; during the Bush years if we accept the distinction between breadth and depth regimes, a fragment of dominant capital associated with oil, high technology, and weapons manufacturing (and Israel) took control of the presidency, and just went on a binge of energy conflicts and looting. They had their “plan” for grand strategy, the Project for a New American Century but that stuff is not at the level of post-WWII strategic planning vis-a-vis Europe and Japan, it’s kind of absurd stuff. And even then, post-WWII Grand Strategy did not work as intended, they never intended so much development in Japan for example. But the “wise men” may have just gotten dumber in the Bush years.
I am not sure how much of an issue direct access to M-E oil for Europe/Japan is anymore; more important I’d think is the flow of petro-dollars.
Thanks for this insightful analysis! I will have to look into Nitzan and Bichler’s work. I also considered Mearsheimer and Walt’s reasons for dismissing the role of oil in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq one of the weakest parts of their analysis, although I’ve relied primarily on Chomsky’s explanation of the issue of oil as primarily one of control of Europe’s supply. I’ve also considered the larger geopolitical objective of keeping China isolated to be a possible factor, although I’m not sure if anyone has verified that one.
I don’t think that opposition to a materialist analysis of Israel’s relationship to the US is so much based on fear that it’s somehow “crypto-Zionist” as much as it is opposition to materialism or anything that smacks of Marxist analysis in general. Clearly, we all know better than to expect mainstream academics to embrace materialism, as the primary function of an academic is to act as an apologist for the status quo. While the grassroots and civil movements that are slowly coming together to form a genuine resistance movement tend to be a little bit more open to materialism, anything associated with Marx still scares off a large number of liberals, and networks of committed socialists and Marxist intellectuals still seem to be divided into different factions. The fact that materialism has repeatedly proven itself effective at explaining the really existing conditions in many cases, on the other hand, as well as the growth of cooperation between socialists and anarchists and different Marxist factions, seems to be slowly winning such analysis a larger audience than it has received in a long time.
Brian,
I wrote the thing about crypto-Zionist because many try to disparage the sort of analyses I synthesized above as “Chomskyite” or “crypto-Zionist” because it “exonerates” the Lobby from its “correct” portion of blame. I don’t like getting into that kind of name-calling in lieu of of dealing with the arguments. what surprises me is opposition to materialist analysis even from leftists; I completely agree that the wide-spread receptiveness to anti-materialist analyses is a result of people being drawn into resistance to Israeli policies from all sorts of ideological orientations, including squishy liberal progressivism. I am thinking especially of James Petras, for example. Only solution is to keep pamphleteering from this side.
one of the problems in addressing a subject like this is the tendency to create what the philosophers call “binary oppositions”
here, that means the US on one side and Israel on the other, so the oppression of the Palestinians must be either predominately the fault of a capitalist elite centered in the US (Chomsky) or Israel, along with its instrumentality in the US, the Lobby (Blankfort)
in fact, as even the most cursory examination will show, there is a substantial political, governmental and economic crossover between the two countries, acting in concert in pursuit of interests beyond superficial nationalist ones associated with either the US or Israel, and Nitzan and Bichler provide a framework for engaging it and understanding it (if only they had the resources to research and publish a book about the global political economy of the US!)
(con’t)
(con’t)
for example, Nitzan and Bichler document the economic interrelationship between US and Israeli capitalists, especially in telecommunications, along with Russian oligarchs, relationships that have effectively neoliberalized Israeli society (this is one of the essential themes of the book, how domestic and foreign capital collude to dismantle existing social welfare systems within developing countries), such that the ability to situate the source of the power that oppresses the Palestinians in one place becomes difficult
perhaps, this puts them closer to the Chomsky perspective, although I have difficulties with how Chomsky formulates it, because he seems to have increasingly become an apologist for the perpetuation of Israel as a Zionist state, something that is not a necessary outcome as a consequence of his analysis or Nitzan and Bichler’s, if anything, Chomsky’s view (a 2-state solution), perpetuates the fragmentation of peoples, boundaries and governmental authority so as to perpetuate such neoliberal processes
“because he seems to have increasingly become an apologist for the perpetuation of Israel as a Zionist state, something that is not a necessary outcome as a consequence of his analysis or Nitzan and Bichler’s, if anything, Chomsky’s view (a 2-state solution)“
– meh.
You’d have to define Zionist here, I think. Also, Chomsky’s “view” is not a 2-state solution, it’s misleading to say that. What one desires and what one thinks is the best way to move forward (whether right or wrong) are two different things altogether.
Anyway, it’s clear that :
1 : The Walt/Mearsheimer essay is not really controversial at all (in my view)
2 : It is not at all opposed to analyses put forth by people like Max and Gabriel Ash, they are just operating at different levels of analyses, and finally are not really talking about the same thing. If anything, they are complementary.
Excellent analysis,
I would agree oil companies like high prices, but I think at this point in history, everybody is concerned more about uninterrupted access and production, than elevated prices. Though for exploration to be profitable today oil prices need to remain about $70 or it’s just not worth it for the majors to look for oil.
I’ve been following the oil market for about five years now. It was pretty well known that we would be hitting “peak oil”, the point where we the flow rate tops out and then goes in to terminal decline, sometime in the first few decades of 21st century since at least the late 50s. It was narrowed down to around now in 00–02(see cheney’s secretive energy task force meetings in 2000 and speech from 1998 when CEO of halliburton in which he states that the ME was “where the ultimate prize lies”). Coincidentally, Iraq is the only region in the world that can significantly increase oil production, which could actually delay peak possibly a decade and may become the new global swing producer if all goes as planned(doubtful IMO). It seems Saddam was not very good at drilling for oil. Regardless, Iraq is the most unexplored major producing region for sweet crude as opposed to the low-quality, hard-to-get, slow-to-extract and expensive, shales and tar sands that can be found in large quantities.
As you point out, Iraq was in all the “power lobbies” interests and Iran is were they diverge, for now, IMO. Though, it seems Israel has been trying to sell it for some time now. If the Israel lobby was so all powerful GW would have bombed Iran. The “war on terror” is a multi-faceted “win”
Anyway, studying the oil market leads to mid-east policy which leads to Israel and the Israeli lobby and Palestinian conflict…which brought me here;)
Cheers