Foreign Policy Still Does Not Flow From the Will of the People
In the middle of a very long diatribe against Obama, Walter Russell Mead trots out one of his overused arguments and takes it to new extremes:
As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.
It means more. The existence of Israel means that the God of the Bible is still watching out for the well-being of the human race. For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted [bold mine-DL].
Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God.
This is littered with a number of falsehoods and half-truths. First, let’s consider the half-truths. Israel matters in American politics as much as it does because well-organized, dedicated activists have worked hard over the last four decades to make it so. There are some religious Americans who see support for Israel in religious terms and in terms of shared “values.” Then there is the vast majority of Americans that doesn’t see the relationship in these terms.
It is a ridiculous exaggeration to say that “the public mind believes that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith.” For a large part of the public, the issues are and should be unrelated. This is fortunate, since remarkably few Americans actually see Israel as an ally of the United States. Being “pro-Israel” matters because there are strong disincentives to being anything else, and these don’t typically come from the voters. It is true that there are many Christian Zionists in America who roughly fit the description Mead presents here, but their understanding of the relationship between America and the State of Israel and of the relationship of God to the two states is very unrepresentative of most Americans. I am on fairly safe ground saying that most Americans, including most Christians, do not see the establishment in the Holy Land of a secular democratic republic by socialists as vindication of the “religion of the Bible.”
Now let’s look at the falsehoods. Israel does not matter as much it does in American politics because of mystical connections in the American soul, nor is it because of similarities between our nationalist ideologies. When American nationalists appropriate the idea of being a chosen people, this sets up America as a parallel or replacement of Israel, and it openly denies the uniqueness of the covenant made with Israel.
Mead continues:
Obama’s political isolation on this issue, and the haste with which liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi left the embattled President to take the heat alone, testify to the pervasive sense in American politics that Israel is an American value.
No, it stems from awareness on the part of members of Congress that there is no incentive in being seen taking a position strongly opposed by “pro-Israel” groups and the Israeli government. This isn’t because of “the pervasive sense that Israel is an American value” (whatever that could mean). It is because “pro-Israel” activists will withdraw support from critical politicians and direct support to their rivals. In that respect, there is nothing mystical or deep to be found. It is simple interest-group politics.
Matt Yglesias offers a useful corrective to this pseudo-spiritual hogwash:
Protecting Israel is a special project taken on by the United States. The reasons may be good and bad, but it’s a burden we undertake. Israel does us no favors and is no use to us. Recognizing that fact hardly solves the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict, but it ought to be the starting point for what Americans should debate–not Israel’s policy toward its Palestinian subjects but America’s policy toward Israel.
8 Responses to “Foreign Policy Still Does Not Flow From the Will of the People”
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When discussing gun control, Bill Maher said that it is an example of “Two parties, one policy.” The same can be said of American support for Israel.
Daniel, I do actually think some people see the restoration of Israel as a vindication of Biblical prophecies. My evangelical parents did, anyway.
However, you are right to say that the notion that the existence of Israel somehow proves Christianity is utter insanity. People believed in Christ for millennia before there was a state of Israel.
Christian Zionists might not represent Americans, but their voice on Israel is awfully loud. If you want to understand American support for Israel, you have to understand evangelical Christian support for Israel.
I agree with Lev’s comment: I also have evangelical Christians in my family, and they see current events affecting the State of Israel as tied closely to their faith. Mead is exactly right that they see the preservation of Israel as a clear sign – not a proof, but a sign – that their faith is true.
I think Mead and Larison are both right. Larison is right that American support for Israel is largely due to pressure by American Zionists, the large majority of whom are Christians. Mead is right that there is a natural affinity for Israel among many American Christians that would exist (and has existed for centuries) even without any Zionist PR. Both factors are important; if Mead’s factor weren’t, then Britain and France would be as pro-Israel as America, due to Jewish Zionists there. I guess you could argue forever about which factor is more important, Larison’s or Mead’s, and by how much: is it 70%-30%, or 30%-70%? But both are important in combination; neither can be isolated from the other.
Another comment about Mr. Larison’s general argument. He’s arguing theology with American Protestants, which is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t help much in explaining support for Israel. Some of America’s founders referred to America as the New Israel. Whether that supersedes the Old Israel or not is an interesting theological question, but what matters politically are the present-day Protestant echoes of that pro-Israel theology and the present-day answer to Mr. Larison’s objection, not the true answer. Similarly with other theological objections. And similarly with the Yglesias quote about what we should be debating. I agree with him, but what we should be doing doesn’t help much in explaining what we are doing. It was the latter that was the topic of Mead’s article.
OK, I take back some of what I said above. I missed something Mead said, even though Larison helpfully bold-faced it. Mead explicitly said he was talking about Christians who were nothing like fundamentalists. I’m skeptical of that. (The evangelicals in my family are fundamentalists, by the way.) But I repeat, the evangelical Christians have a very loud voice on Israel, so the fact that what Mead said holds for evangelicals is itself very important.
Mead is making blanket statements about American Christians in general and “the public mind.” He continues to argue that “pro-Israel” alignments in Congress are deeply rooted in American culture. My main point here was to say that the views of some American Christians cannot be taken as representative of the views of all of us, and the reactions of members of Congress shouldn’t be taken as proof of some deeply-rooted national affinity with Israel.
Yes, Christian Zionist voices are very loud. They are also motivated, organized, and very interested in the issue. As with any group of mobilized activists, they have a disproportionate impact on the politics surrounding the issue. Mead dislikes the idea that the U.S.-Israel relationship is driven by interest group politics and elite policymaking, and so he keeps repeating this story about deep meaning of Israel for Americans. Put simply, these Christians don’t speak for all evangelicals, they don’t speak for most Protestants, and they certainly don’t speak for the tens of millions of non-Protestants in this country.
Mead wrote, “For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted.”
This is just not true. If he is counting Christian Zionists as the “fundamentalists,” there are not very many American Christians who are “nothing like fundamentalists” who interpret the founding of Israel in this way. I don’t want to run to the opposite extreme and say that there aren’t any at all, but Mead just makes these assertions with absolutely nothing backing them up.
Yeah, that’s what I said too, that I’m very skeptical of his claim that non-evangelical Protestants think that way. Where he’s right is that centuries of American Protestant faith and theology are an especially strong factor in current US-Israel relations – whether or not a majority of Protestants believe in that theology today.
I think we were writing our previous comments at the same time, and my response overlapped with your follow-up.
One of the many problems I have with Mead’s argument is that U.S.-Israel relations were extremely different during Israel’s first two decades of existence despite the same “centuries of American Protestant faith and theology” that are supposed to explain the relationship. There many strains of “Protestant faith and theology” in this country’s history, and many Protestants didn’t and don’t subscribe to the beliefs he describes, but he talks about them as if the vast majority of American Protestants shared them. Until large numbers evangelicals became very politically active in the 1970s, the main constituency he’s talking about wasn’t much of a factor at all.
Yes, today there are a lot of active “pro-Israel” evangelicals, they create additional incentives for Republicans to be considered “pro-Israel” as well, and their major presence in the Republican coalition accounts for why the GOP has become a more enthusiastically hawkish “pro-Israel” party. If that were all that Mead was saying, I wouldn’t be arguing with him, because we all know that to be true. Instead, he takes this and exaggerates a curious example of interest group politics into a defining American cultural value. How are we supposed to take him seriously when he says, “Israel is an American value”? I hope we can agree that this is ridiculous.