‘Special relationship’ has only threatened the ’stable flow of oil’
May 2nd, 2010 § 10 Comments
Earlier I had criticzed The Electronic Intifada rather harshly for publishing a really poor article attacking John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt. Having had a day to think about it, I regret the tone of my post and the failure to acknowledge EI’s otherwise exceptional record (although my criticism stands). I therefore preface my expanded article for Mondoweiss.net with an acknowledgment of what I actually think of EI’s work.
Since its founding in 2001, The Electronic Intifada has earned a well-deserved reputation for being the most influential and effective voice for Palestinian rights. It is backed by a team of smart, savvy and committed individuals. Its co-founder Ali Abunimah is in my view an examplar of what Antonio Gramsci called an ‘organic intellectual’, successfuly fusing political action with theoretical rigrour. I have therefore been a long time supporter of the project, occasionally contributing articles and reviews. However, at the moment I am terribly disappointed. Presently on its front page EI runs a ludicrous attack on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s work — work that has been pivotal in shifting the debate on US Middle East policy. I find it pointless to respond to the author who has freely purloined others’ work, misused sources, and constructed a slipshod argument. But I’ll give two illustrative examples of the deliberate distoritions that keep resurfacing in these ideological assaults on M & W (in both cases the specific claims have been ‘borrowed’ from Noam Chomsky):
Chomsky has long maintained that the war in Iraq was for oil. He always adduces the same evidence to support his case. A State Department document from 1945, a quote from Zbigniew Brzezinski and another from George Kennan. Chomsky argues that Middle East oil is ‘a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history’ (State Department), and anyone who controls Iraq’s vast oil reserves gains ‘critical leverage’ (Brzezinski), indeed ‘veto power’ (Kennan), over competitors. All of this is indisputable: the United States would no doubt like to control Iraqi oil; it recognizes the ‘critical leverage’ the control affords it; and the critical leverage no doubt would grant it ‘veto power’. Now here is the problem: The State Department document Chomsky cites is about Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. And it recommends that, precisely because Saudi oil is so important, US must maintain friendly relations with the kingdom. Also, it does not follow that regime change is the only means to achieve these goals. Indeed, all of these claims have been just as true the past half century, but they did not necessitate war. The US has long preferred shoring up authoritarian regimes which could ensure its dominance and maintain a stable flow of oil.
Secondly, The Iraqi government was not withholding its oil; it was the US-led sanctions that were preventing it from reaching the markets. There is no evidence that Iraq was unwilling to cede control of its oil to the United States. Indeed, in the months leading up to war Saddam Hussein’s government made several attempts to stave off war by offering the United States exclusive concessions to its oil reserves. (Iraq’s increasingly desperate attempts to avert war by offering all kinds of inducements in the lead up to war are well documented by Seymour Hersh, Ron Suskind, James Risen, and Stephen Sniegoski among others). If oil was indeed the motivation, then one would expect plentiful evidence of oil interests influencing policy, or their role in selling the war. Chomsky offers none. Nor does he inform readers that Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man whose words he cites as evidence of Iraq as a resource war, was one of its most vocal opponents. Bzrezinski has called the war ‘a historic, strategic, and moral calamity…driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris’.
Also untenable is the view that Israel serves as a ’strategic asset’ because it keeps watch over the region’s resources for the US. It seems like a very curious argument to make considering that US commercial interests and the Israel lobby’s aims have frequently been at odds, and the conflicts have almost invariably been resolved in favour of the lobby (e.g., the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, or the Iran Libya Sanctions Act). In his peculiar reading of Brzezinski, Chomsky ascribes to him a view that is an inversion of what he actually says. Brzezinski saw Iraq as an unnecessary war waged by pro-Israel neonconservatives, and in the very passage from which Chomsky picks his quote, he rejects the notion that Israel serves a strategic interest. He writes:
American and Israeli interests in the region are not entirely congruent. America has major strategic and economic interests in the Middle East that are dictated by the region’s vast energy supplies. Not only does America benefit economically from the relatively low costs of Middle Eastern oil, but America’s security role in the region gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region. Hence good relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates…is in the U.S. national interest. From Israel’s standpoint, however, the resulting American-Arab ties are disadvantageous: they not only limit the degree to which the United States is prepared to back Israel’s territorial aspirations, they also stimulate American sensitivity to Arab grievances against Israel. (my emphasis)
Since the scrivener writing on EI reproduces Chomsky’s exact interpretation of the ‘critical leverage’ quote, it is clear that he has never consulted the original article. But what of Kennan? Surely the late grand strategist must have been thrilled by the prospect of war which would finally secure the ‘veto power’ he pined for? Not quite. Shortly before the war started, the nanogenarian architect of the ‘containment’ policy, and author of the infamous ‘X Article’ spoke to Albert Eisele of The Hill. He called the escalation against Iraq a distraction from the war on terror, he defended the record of the UN weapons inspectors, called the alleged Iraq-al-Qaida link ‘pathetically unsupportive and unreliable’, and denounced the Democrats failure to confront Bush on the war as ’shabby and shameful’, blaming it on ’timidity out of concern for the elections’. Tellingly, according to Eisele, Kennan
Insisted that there is no evidence that Iraq has succeeded in developing nuclear weaponry, and even if they had, it would be targeted on Israel and not the United States;Said the Israelis almost certainly possess nuclear weapons, and would be “quite capable of mounting a devastating retaliatory strike” if Iraq ever uses weapons of mass destruction against Israel
The EI contributor similarly introduces a second distortion, related to the notion that Israel serves as an offshore base for the US. Noam Chomsky and Stephen Zunes have borrowed this description from Alexander Haig who called Israel ‘America’s largest aircraft carrier which never could be sunk’. However, they elide the context: As Patrick Tyler has shown in his excellent book A World of Trouble (see my review) Haig would frequently leverage Israel lobby power in his bureaucratic struggle against Reagan (whom he saw as an intellectual inferior). Tyler reveals in detail the lengths Haig would go to undercut Reagan with Israeli assistance.
But, so long as the decontextualized quotes fit preconceived notions it probably doesn’t matter what was actually said or done, I suppose. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim called this the ‘ideological method’: the use of ‘notions to govern the collation of facts, rather than deriving notions from them’. In the a-historical writings of the analysts-on-the-cheap who have rushed to attack M&W, two and two usually adds up to twenty-two. There is no correlation between US support for Israel and its known interests in the region’s energy reserves. As I explained elsewhere,
United States Middle East policy has been defined since World War II by the tension between two competing concerns: the strategic interests which require good relations with Arab-Muslim states, and domestic political imperatives which demand unquestioning allegiance to Israel. That the US interest in the region’s energy resources has remained consistent, as well as its support for Israel, leads some to conclude that somehow the two are complementary. They aren’t. US President Harry S. Truman recognized the state of Israel the day of its founding over the strenuous objections of his State Department in order to court the Jewish vote and, more significantly, Jewish money for his re-election campaign. Every president since — with the exception of Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, who saw no cause to feign balance — has sought to address this tension with attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. All these efforts have so far foundered. A study of US policy in the region over the decades, then, is inevitably a study of the causes of these failures [among which the Israel lobby looms largest].
I hope EI is able to put this embarassing episode behind it and shows more discernment in what it choses to publish in the future.
Firstly, Stephen Maher’s article on EI is not an attack, per se, on Mearsheimer and Walt, as Idrees Ahmad hysterically claims. Maher mentions them once in passing, but overall speaks in general about the proponents of concept of the “lobby” position and then attempts to dissect their arguments and explain why he thinks they are wrong.
I also find it interesting that Idrees Ahmad does not address the author by name at all in his rebuttal article – even if you disagree with the writer’s arguments, why the refusal to extend a common journalistic and/or academic courtesy to the person you are rebutting?
Idrees Ahmad also calls EI’s publishing of the article an “embarassing episode” and then basically demands that EI shouldn’t put for this point of view forward. The debate regarding “lobby vs US imperialist interest” has been one which has been going on for many years and is one which continues today.
Despite his contrition about being to “harsh” on EI, Idrees Ahmad still seems to be arguing that EI should not publish such an article. But why shouldn’t EI run articles that support the position Maher has put forward? Why is Idrees Ahmad calling for silencing of the debate?
Personally, I as someone who has spent extensive amount of time as an international human rights volunteer in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I agree with Maher’s arguments that the primary reason the USA supports Israel is because it suits US imperialist interests. This does not mean of course the Zionist lobby doesn’t have a role to play, but it is not “all powerful” as Idrees Ahmad seems to imply.
Interestingly enough Idrees Ahmad in his rebuttal of Maher does not address at all the central thesis made by Maher about US imperialist interest in other areas of the world (he cites examples, such as Latin America and Indonesia).
As Maher notes: “A central claim of the ‘Israel lobby’ thesis is that the ‘lobby’, however defined, overwhelmingly shapes US policy towards the Middle East. Thus, if the argument were true, its proponents would have to demonstrate that there is something qualitatively unique about US policy towards the Middle East compared with that in other regions of the world. Yet upon careful analysis, we find little difference between the purported distortions caused by the lobby and what is frequently referred to as the “national interest,” governed by the same concentrations of domestic power that drive US foreign policy elsewhere.”
Maher then goes onto note that “There are states all around the world that perform similar services to Washington as Israel, projecting US power in their respective regions, whose crimes in advancing Washington’s goals are overtly supported and shielded from international condemnation”.
Idrees Ahmad has not addressed this argument at all and unless his does then his insistence that the lobby is all powerful is not convincing and neither is his rebuttal of Maher.
So you aren’t bothered by the fact that the fellow falsified evidence? Since you are misrepresenting my own arguments back to me, I presume not.
Yes, I don’t think EI should publish disinformation that misuses sources and makes false claims (as I have demonstrated). That’s not censorship. Its called sound editorial judgment.
Could you explain how this is a vicious attack on Walt and Mearsheimer? It seems to me he disagrees with them, and presents an argument. How is that an attack?
Yeah, presents an argument based on false evidence. Hence it is an attack. Don’t know about ‘vicious’, the fellow is too light-weight to merit such an adjective.
I don’t know — you seem a bit tough on him. He is saying, by using the quotes you take issue with, he asserting that state planners ahve long understood the value of the resource rich middle eass.
Whether Bryzinski supported the war in Iraq seems a bit unrelated, no? Maher, and the people he quotes, is talking about the importance of having a strong ally in the Middle East due to its strategic importance.
“Light-weight” seems like nothing but an attack. Are you a heavy weaight, then? I just don’t get the vitriol in your attack — to Maher and (originally, though you backtrack, the judgement of the ei editors).
It almost seems like you are refusing to allow dissent to people that don’t agree with. You find the piece to be unprofessional and disingenious, but don’t you trust the editors of ei to heavily vet the paper? If Maher is leightweight, then so must ei be for publishing this egregious piece?
I can accept if you disagree with the piece — but to claim it is an attack, filled with falsehoods, and so on, seems hyperbolic and inaccurate. Why not keep things civil, as Maher did in his critique of the Lobby Thesis?
Anything
Looks like you’ve missed the whole point of the piece. No one has denied that Middle East oil is important to the US. But is a leap of logic to suggest that US support for Israel could therefore be explaiend through by this fact. The argument is over whether support for Israel hinders or advances US material interests. He takes quotes out of context (as do Chomsky and Zunes from whom he steals them) to suggest the opposite of what these people are saying. Other than the neocons they are all clear on one thing: US support for Israel undermines its material intersts in the region. This is not a matter of opinion, it is empiricially verifiable.
As regards disallowing dissent, I am not sure how you reached that conclusion. We often turn down articles even if we agree with their politics if they are poorly argued or factually insupportible. That’s called good editing, not censorship. Dissent is not synonymous with lying and misrepresentaiton. Unless of course you mean dissent from reality?
So you don’t trust ei to edit the pieces? the editors there understand these quotes, this argument — do they lack sound editorial judgement? Did they, in a sense, attack Walt and MEarheimer?
That’s a red herring. The point is they published a piece that falsified evidence and misrepresented sources as I have demonstrated. Why, you think that should be acceptable if it confirms one’s prejudices?
Seriously Idrees, your argument is quite lacking and dare I say it “lightweight”, to say the least. Maher did not falsify evidence as you claim.
Maher’s quoting of Brzezinski is entirely legitimate as it relates to the issue of “critical leverage”, which even you state is “indisputable”. Whether Brzezinksi supported or opposed the war is irrelevant to the issue, so criticising Maher (or the “fellow” as you so ridiculously and rudely call him) for this is ridiculous.
In relation to the much quoted State Department report about control the oil reserves, Maher specifically notes in his article that this report primarily referred to those os Saudia Arabia. So again, how is he falsifying anything?
As for “purloining” others work, oh please! Maher is an academic (as well as an activist) and just like journalists, academics use the work of others to back up and substantiate the arguments they are making. As long as they acknowledge their sources, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
In relation to whether EI should have published the article or not, I could not agree more with the posts of Michael C. Firstly, Maher’s article did not misuse sources and it did not make false claims.
Secondly, your comments about editoral judgement are pure arrogance (as is unfortunately, much of your article on Maher). As Michael C, notes, EI is perfectly capable of making sound judgements about articles submitted to them and are perfectly capable of editing them – afterall they have been doing it for years. You may not agree with Maher or even EI for publishing the article, but EI had every right to publish Maher’s article and your call for censorship is not only absurd, it is totally unjustified.
As I pointed out in my first post, you do not rebutt in any way, the central thesis made by Maher about US imperialist interest in other areas of the world (he cites examples, such as Latin America and Indonesia).
Unless you do this, your response to Maher is totally “lightweight”.
It isn’t sound judgment to publish something which falsifies evidence and misrepresents sources (or rather reproduce the misinterpretation of the original sources from the secondary ones he has lifted them from). As regards your earlier comments, it appears you either haven’t read my piece or haven’t understood my point since you reproduce the same leaps of logic I objected to in the first place. I can’t make it any clearer than this.