One more thing about Steve Walt and Larry Summers.
Three years ago Walt published a fine book called Taming American Power. The editor of Foreign Policy said it was "brilliant." It is a mature discourse on the problems of global dominance, and the need for America to exercise its strength more thoughtfully. It opens with a line from Burke–"We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto undheard-of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it"– and includes a chapter called the Roots of Resentment that discusses Israel/Palestine and states that if Israel tries to impose an "unjust solution," the U.S. should "end its economic and military support."
Walt ends with a realistic/ethical statement that feels very patriotic (nationalistic) to me:
More than anything else, the United States wants to retain its position of primacy for as long as it can. To do this, it must persuade the rest of the world that U.S. primacy is preferable to the likely alternatives. Achieving that goal will require a level of wisdom and self-restraint that has often been lacking in U.S. foreign policy–largely because it wasn't needed. But it is today. Although geography, history, and good fortune have combined to give the United States a remarkable array of advantages, it would still be possible to squander them…
It is easy to imagine these words coming from Barack Obama in the inauguration speech that will lead us all into the future. Walt is a very responsible, discrete type, a tall guy made for that climate. According to the acknowledgements of his book, he showed portions of the manuscript to his friend Larry Summers, former Treasury Sec'y, then Harvard president, who offered "valuable suggestions (many of which I took)." Sampo–Samantha Power–also offered suggestions. And as Walt's friend John Mearsheimer has said, at that time Steve Walt was being talked about for high university administration or leadership in Washington. As well he should have been. (And Sampo too.)
What a difference a day makes. A few months later Walt and Mearsheimer publish their paper on the Israel lobby, and Larry Summers says that Walt threw all those prizes away. For a greater good. I don't think our nation is going to be healed from Iraq until, among many other developments, the good name of Steve Walt is restored. He's been called an antisemite all over in the Jewish community, including Yivo in New York, because he challenged the American Jewish adherence to Zionism at a time of apartheid and the American mirroring of Israel's violent occupation of Arab lands. This is really the gordian knot of Jewish identity. It is about a great people sticking by oppressors, and about Jewish establishment power in the U.S. We may think we will never abuse these hitherto unheard-of powers. But others will think we do.
P.S. Joachim Martillo has factchecked the Summers-Walt story and says that Summers played a fairly enlightened role in the brouhaha…
