In the complex calculus of American foreign policy, few relationships are as contentious as that between the United States and Israel. Two competing theories attempt to explain it, each proposing a starkly different solution to a fundamental question: Who is really in charge of whom?

In my recent podcast, JasimAzawiShow, I posed the question to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson—a man who worked for years in the engine room of American power as Chief of Staff to the late US Secretary of State Colin Powell—whether Israel dictates US ME foreign policy or merely plays this role. He paused, as he often does when guiding the listener to an unpleasant truth. He recalled Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on the US Senate floor, shouting, “Come on, people! If Israel doesn’t do it, then we have to do it!” The tantrum, Wilkerson stated, revealed what Washington would prefer to conceal: that Israel is the United States’ “forward operating base,” a willing implementer of policies Washington itself cannot openly pursue. The US, Wilkerson implies, uses Israel as a smokescreen, a prop, and an alibi so that it can say: we cannot act differently because Israel dictates our domestic policy. 

Wilkerson’s contention—that Israel is a surrogate instead of a master—is an interesting inversion of the conventional narrative. Israel’s power, to him, is not structural but functional: it does America’s dirty work in the area, from confronting Iran’s ambitions to containing Arab nationalism and overseeing regional oil flow. Yet that same contention runs directly into the face of one of the most controversial claims in modern political science.

Then, in 2007, University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer and Harvard Professor Stephen M. Walt published “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.“ The........

© Middle East Monitor