Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Iran, Israel & a Masterclass in US foreign policy - with Walter Russell Mead

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Are we getting closer to or farther away from an Iran deal? Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal has been following developments closely. I wanted to check in with him. But I also wanted to talk to Walter about his big new and groundbreaking book, called “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.” Walter has been immersed in writing this book for over a decade – it covers the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but it’s much more than that. It’s also a book about the history of US foreign policy. What has been America’s calculation behind U.S. support for Israel? Is it based on shared values – a fellow democracy in a dangerous region, defending a country born out of the ashes of the Holocaust? Or has U.S. policy been based on realpolitik – because Israel advances U.S. geopolitical interests? Or is it a blend of all of the above? What role does U.S. domestic politics play in all of this, if at all? Walter’s book frames our discussion not only about the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but the future of the relationship, and the future of U.S. foreign policy. Walter is at the Hudson Institute, he is the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a professor at Bard College. He was previously the Henry Kissinger fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People: shorturl.at/bdhpz

If you say the deal is dead, you really do have to say, OK, so what are we now going to do? Iran is full tilt moving to build a bomb. Where is Biden going to go? As long as the negotiations are going forward, it looks like you have an Iran policy. But you take away even the fig leaf of negotiations and you have to declare what you're going to do now that negotiations have failed. I honestly don't think they want to do that. Are we getting closer to or farther away from an Iran deal? Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal, who's been a guest on this podcast before, has been following developments closely.

I wanted to check in with Walter about Iran, but I also want to check in with him about his new, big, and groundbreaking book called The Ark of a Covenant, The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People. Walter has been immersed in writing this book for over a decade. I've actually read earlier drafts years ago. It covers the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but it's also a book about the history and future of U.S. foreign policy. We tend to romanticize the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship. It is true that President Truman's administration supported Israel in its declaration of independence, but the U.S. also maintained

an arms embargo on Israel during its war of independence. Israel fought that war with Czech rifles, not U.S. arms. It was actually the Kennedy administration that was the first U.S. administration to sell Israel any weapon system. Why? And why does the U.S. still support Israel militarily today? What has been America's calculation behind U.S. support for Israel? Is it based on shared values, a democracy in a dangerous region, defending a country born out of the ashes of the Holocaust? Or has U.S. policy been based on real politique because Israel advances America's geopolitical interests? Or is it a blend of all of the above? And what role does U.S. domestic politics play in all of this, if at all? Walter's book got me returning to these questions,

not only about the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but the future of the relationship and the future of U.S. foreign policy. Walter's at the Hudson Institute. He's global view columnist at the Wall Street Journal and a professor at Bard College. He was previously the Henry Kissinger Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast my friend Walter Russell Mead of the Hudson Institute of Bard College, a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of a fabulous new book recently released called The Ark of a Covenant, The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People, which is not only a terrific book, but it is terrifically blurbed.

One could say the surge in sales and rave reviews is because of the blurb. No, I'm just joking. I wanted the blurbs. All due to you, Dan. All due to you. But you should know that I was with my 13-year-old son in the Barnes & Noble in the Upper West Side,

and we were buying books for their summer reading for school, and he stumbled upon your book, and he saw my name on the back, and he picked it up and was quick to rush over and point out to me that I had a new book out. And I told him, no, just because he saw my name on a book doesn't mean I have a new book out. You should have let him, you know, you could have had a couple of good years out of it

banged out this you know 600 page you know book while while you didn't even notice uh asher of course okay so i do want to talk about the book because there's um there's a lot in there to unpack but before we do uh there's a lot happening in the world, as you have been chronicling in your column in the journal. And one of the many things happening in the world is this, is it going to happen or is it not going to happen, Iran deal? Or is America and the West going back into the JCPOA? And the talks are ongoing in Vienna. And I want to quote from a recent column you wrote in the Wall Street Journal. You wrote, Republicans can justly say that Mr. Obama's decision to sign something as consequential and controversial as the Iran nuclear deal without

the bipartisan support needed to get a treaty ratified in the Senate was a historic mistake. And then you say that Democrats can reasonably respond that Mr. Trump's unilateral withdrawal made everything worse. Such matters can be left to the historians. The question before us now is not who was right in 2015, that's when Obama entered the deal, or 2018, referring to when the Trump administration pulled out of the deal. It is what we do next. So Walter, I guess I have three questions. Where are we with these Iran negotiations in Vienna? What is likely to happen? And what should happen? Okay, where are we with the negotiations? We are right where the Iranians like to be, where we are telegraphing our eagerness to buy a rug, and they are haggling over the price of the rug. You know, at this point, the Obama,

sorry, the Biden administration has been really saying since last December, almost a year ago, well, now these negotiations can't drag on forever, just a few more weeks. You know, we've really got to reach a conclusion here, and the Iranians have been responding with, well, we still have some details to work out. We're making progress, but we have a few more details. Meanwhile, they're enriching uranium like crazy with their centrifuges and making progress on the nuclear program. One assumes also that their relationships with both Russia and China are getting better and that Russia is seeing more and more advantages in working with Iran and is more and more determined, whatever else it does in diplomacy,

to do things that frustrate the United States. So I would say, you know, the picture is not getting better. And I say three weeks ago, a month ago, the Biden administration was pretty sure that the deal was dead. Then they went through a period of, wait a minute, there is hope. I called it at that point, the Iran deal is the Schrodinger's cat of diplomacy. Yeah, explain. It was a great metaphor. Yeah. And we won't know until somebody opens the box whether the cat is alive or dead. So there were some meow-like sounds were coming out of the cat box last week. But then the most recent news we've heard from the Europeans is that the Iranian response was not helpful.

In some ways, they've gone backwards. So the effort to have... And that particular development is like in the last few days, right? Yes, exactly. And this was after the EU had drafted what they said was the final no more changes document. And the Iranians immediately got into a negotiation over that document. So the wheels are spinning.

The administration, I think, very much wanted to get this deal done as far away from the midterm elections as possible. Not only because the deal is not particularly popular and it will be less popular as various elements come out in campaign ads and so on, but also that for many Democrats running for office they'll be obliged maybe to take stronger stands against the deal than they would after the election. And so Congress has a 30-day review period under the current system. The administration just doesn't want any of that happening close to the midterms. That's why they were hoping to get the thing settled in the summer. And that's why the Iranians perhaps have been interested in dragging things out. If we don't get a clear answer soon, I imagine what the administration

will do is then kick the ball forward, kick the can down the road until after the midterms and go back into another round of final negotiations then. I don't expect them, they're certainly not eager to pull the plug publicly on the process to open the box and say the cat is dead. Because then that would force them to really say, well, okay, what's our policy now? And that's something I don't think they want to do. I mean, you mentioned congressional Democrats heading into the midterms. When I speak to congressional Democrats who are on the ballot in November, I can't find a single one who's in a swing district who wants the reentry negotiations to conclude with us heading back into the deal. Not a single one.

When I consider that fact, and I presume many of those congressional Democrats are talking to Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, saying this is really bad timing. They're saying that the congressional Democrats are in a little bit of a role right now legislatively, and they've got a little bit of momentum, and the Republicans are back-footed. Why would we hand Republicans this incredible gift right now on the eve of the midterms? when you think about, when you consider the assassination attempt, the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie, when you think about these plots we're reading about, about attempted hits against human rights activists in the West, Iranian human rights activists in the West, against former Trump administration officials, when you consider Russia's role in the negotiations and how instrumental Russia is in implementing the deal, and they're really kind of indispensable

to the process, unfortunately, when you just add all this up, and by the way, I'm not persuaded that President Biden's heart is in it. I mean, one feels like he was truly committed to our withdrawal from Afghanistan. That was what he was arguing for in the early decision points in the Obama administration when he was vice president. He was arguing for, he felt strongly about complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. And so it made sense that a year ago, when he had the opportunity to withdraw from Afghanistan, this was an issue that he felt strongly about. I'm not convinced that he feels so strongly about reentering into the Iran deal. And when you add up all these other factors that I just described,

why wouldn't the administration just kind of quietly walk away at this point? Well, look, I think kicking the can down the road is always more fun than walking quietly away. To some degree, I think the Iranians and the Biden administration are both benefiting from the status quo. You know, they can both hold out the prospect of the deal, but neither has to pay any price for the deal. I'm beginning to think that the Iranian position on this deal and on normalization of economic relations with the West may be a bit like the Cuban position which at least as I saw it back in the 1990s when I used to actually do a lot of work on US.S.-Cuban relations

and would meet with very senior Cuban officials, finally figured out that what they want is they wanted the embargo to stay up, but they wanted it to look like it was America's fault. Because, you know, if they'd opened the island back up to normal relations, basically Cuban Americans would have come in and bought the island back and with investments and so on, challenged their control of the island. But they don't want to be the ones saying, we're boycotting American investment that would create jobs for you. They want it to look like it's Uncle Sam that's doing that.

So I think in some ways, the Iranians would actually not be unhappy if the administration walked away from the deal, because then they can say, oh, well, we've tried and the treacherous Americans won't cooperate. And we should remember that the current status quo in Iran, while it imposes lots of suffering on ordinary Iranians, actually concentrates economic power in the hands of people who were secure regime loyalists. And at the same time, I think the Russians and the Chinese are working hard. They don't want the Iranian regime to crumble. And so in terms of trade and other things, they seem to be busting sanctions. So there, you know, there doesn't seem to be a lot. But for the Biden

administration, again, if you say the deal is dead, you really do have to say, OK, so what are we now going to do? Iran is full tilt moving to build a bomb. Now, are we going to have a military action that's going to stop that? I really think the Democratic Party, and a lot of Republicans for that matter, much as they loathe Iran and worry about its nuclear program, are not eager for yet another American war in the Middle East. There's very, very little appetite for that. It would probably split the Democratic Party. Where is Biden going to go? What does he do next? That's the problem. As long as the deal is,

the negotiations are going forward, it looks like you have an Iran policy. But you take away even the fig leaf of negotiations, and you have to declare what you're going to do now that negotiations have failed. I honestly don't think they want to do that. Okay. As it relates to our broader foreign policy, broader set of foreign policy priorities, you wrote in another column in the Wall Street Journal, quote, at the beginning of the 21st century, the world seemed more peaceful and American power more solidly entrenched than ever before. 22 years into the new century now, Americans face the most threatening international environment since the darkest days of the Cold War. The war in Ukraine threatens the post-Cold War order in Europe, Iran is well on its way to a

nuclear bomb, and China's shadow looms larger than ever over Taiwan. Now, you are in regular contact with the Biden administration. Do you think they view it that way? They view the world as menacing as you have just characterized it? Well, of course, there are lots of different people in the administration, but my impression is that they are not unaware. You know, these are not, it's not sort of controversial to say that the war in Ukraine is a big deal. And the Biden people will say they will blame Trump for it, but they will say Iran is making progress toward its nuclear drive.

And as for the threat to Taiwan, it's a public, notorious fact that they are making a center of their policy. So I think that does, you know, it's hard not to pick up a newspaper and see that those things are true. And as it relates to U.S. policy in the Middle East, and I want to get to your new book in a moment, but how much of what we're dealing with as far as the first 22 years of this century and all the instability around it is a function of what appears to be a gradual U.S. disengagement from the Middle East over the course of three administrations, right? The Obama

administration, the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration, all obviously in different ways. But there does appear to be this sense that America, when you talk to leaders in the region, in the Middle East, it's their impression. We talk to Israeli leaders, when you talk to Sunni Gulf leaders, there's a consensus that America is not a reliable, sturdy, durable partner in the region anymore. Right. Well, I think, you know, they've formed that conclusion because they've listened to the things that American leaders in both parties have been saying in public and private. And, you know, President Obama was clear in his view that the United States had become over-engaged and its engagement had been over-militarized in the Bush

years and that we needed to, as he put it, pivot to Asia. President Trump was also, you know, was also clear that he wanted less American engagement. And by failing to or refusing to retaliate against Iranian strikes on Saudi facilities, other things, he gave a very strong signal there that he was not interested in stepping up American military support in the region. And President Biden has been equally clear in his attempt to prioritize China, but then later the war in Ukraine and the attempt to sort of isolate Saudi Arabia and turn its crown prince into a pariah. All of these are things that worry them. But I think we should also not entirely let the Bush administration off the hook. It was engaged, but it was unsustainably engaged. And the war in Iraq ended up seriously reducing America's reputation for judgment and competence in the Middle East.

I mean, the initial war went very well, but the era of American occupation of Iraq was not a glorious one in the annals of Governance. So there's a clear, it's unmistakable that the United States is both an actor that is not as wise as many might hope, not as steady, and seems eager to reduce its position in the Middle East. Now, I think that may be, the reality may be changing, and that there may be a renewed sense in Washington that the Middle East does actually matter. But it will take some time for that perception to sort of work its way through both the government and the political systems. Okay, so now your most recent book, The Ark of a Covenant,

why... I know you've been working on this book for a while. Why did you, and you set up in the book a sort of test for why a book needs to be written or not, which I presume by virtue of working through this very ambitious and very impressive project, you concluded that it was worth writing. But just can you explain to us here why you thought this book was important to contribute? Well, I felt, you know, even at the beginning of the project, and I started working on this just about 12 years ago, began some of the research,

that it looked to me that Americans were deeply engaged with Israel, but that people didn't have very clear ideas about what our policy was, what was working, what was not working, what the political forces were in the U.S. that were driving our policies, and indeed, what the history of the relationship was. If you talk to most people under 50, it's hard to find someone who knows that for the first year, decades of Israel's independence, support for Israel in the United States was a left-wing cause. And the democratic socialists of America used to, for them, Israel was like their poster child. It was proof that socialism could work,

and that a socialist country could be democratic, and a socialist government could carry out an effective, strong foreign policy. And Stalin actually did more to promote Israeli independence than Harry Truman, if you really get into the weeds of what happened, which I try to do in the book. So people simply don't understand the history. In the same way, you know, I think people grossly overestimate America's negotiating ability with Israel. There's a sort of an assumption that poor little Israel really has only been able to succeed because America has constantly supported it. And many people would say, well, America's constantly supported it because the all-powerful American Jewish community has, you know, forced that support onto the American political system. And so Israel has not become a successful country

by doing things that countries do, building a strong military, building a strong economy, managing its foreign policy wisely, developing an effective state. None of those things. It's done it by, quote, Jewish skills, like secretly manipulating politics from behind, using Jewish money and Jewish influence battling to achieve these results. It's, you know, this verge is, you know, in its darker forms, this is a purely anti-Semitic kind of motif. And yet, again, if you look at the record, when Israel really needed an American alliance, the United States wasn't there. In the 1940s and 50s, when Israel was poor, full of refugees, surrounded by enemies, the United States was actually busy trying to make Nasser the center of our Middle East policy, not Israel. We actually worked, we're talking with the British about detaching the Negev from Israel in order to pacify Arabs. In 1956, at the Suez crisis, the U.S. sided with Egypt against Israel. Even going back to Israeli independence,

the last thing the Israeli cabinet did before declaring independence was voting to disregard, to turn down Harry Truman's plea that they delay independence so that he could still try to find some country willing to assume responsibility for the UN mandate to find a peaceful solution to the war. So Israel begins by disregarding American advice, and it becomes strong and acquires nuclear weapons against the very determined efforts of John F. Kennedy to stop the Israeli nuclear program. And it does this as a very small, weak, isolated country. If people think that now that it's a regional superpower with a world-class tech sector, much stronger economy than ever in the past, it's somehow going to drastically alter

its policy because somebody in the United States, you know, doesn't like something that Israel just did. That's crazy. And yet that's the sort of default mentality that people often approach this relationship with. Israel is a dependent of the United States. Israel is therefore a creature of the United States. And if Israel isn't behaving the way I would like it to, it's because the president of the United States isn't being firm enough, tough enough with Israel. These thoughts mean that all kinds of people who think they are following this issue carefully and who care about it a lot actually have no idea what's really going on. Okay, so there's a lot here, a lot you just said that I want to get to. First question, it seemed to me in this book, you, you,

you write a lot about the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship. It's fascinating tidbits that, then threads you can pull on as a reader about American politics and the history of American politics and history of different political movements in the U.S. that shaped the U.S.-Israel relationship, but you also seem to be writing about the history of U.S., that shaped the U.S.-Israel relationship, but you also seem to be writing about the history of U.S. foreign policy, almost like through the lens of the U.S.-Israel relationship. So what is your, if you had to summarize, what is your overarching view on the history of U.S. foreign policy that is captured through the U.S.-Israel relationship as a proxy for that history? Well, I'd say this, that if you really want to understand the relationship of the United States

to any of the countries that we're deeply engaged with, you actually have to understand American foreign policy as a whole. Because we don't, as a country, we're a generalist, we're a globalist. America is always thinking about the balance of power in Asia, the balance of power in Europe. It's thinking about, you know, energy policy. It never, with the U.S. relationship with Israel is never a relationship that exists apart from the U.S. regional policy in the Middle East. And regional policy in the Middle East is always related to some vision of American global policy. So during the Cold War era, the Cold War was the center of everything. And when the U.S. looked at the Middle East and when it looked at Israel, it was looking at it as how can this help or hurt our overall Cold War

effort. So you can't, you know, this is, I think, as somebody who's a generalist and who didn't come up through this sort of, you know, very siloing process of studying, you know, becoming a specialist, area specialist in a PhD program or something like that, what I find is very often people get sucked into, you know, writing, constantly studying the U.S.-Israel relationship as if the U.S. and Israel were almost the only two people in a room. But if we think about, say, Harry Truman and the movement for Jewish statehood after World War II, the world is in flames. People are starving around the world.

Communism is sweeping through Europe. The European colonial empires are collapsing, and nobody knows whether the new governments will be pro-communist or pro-American or what. All right, how much time does he have to think about this little problem? And when he thinks about it, it's inevitably through his perceptions of these larger questions. So if you write to write a history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, or for that matter, the U.S.-British relationship, the U.S.-Chinese relationship, what have you, that doesn't present a vision of American foreign policy as a whole, you're actually not doing your job. At least that's how I felt. Now, I could have written such a history about U.S. policy toward Britain. Someday I might even do that. It's a very interesting topic.

But Israel as a country, it seemed to me, is a great lens to work on because the relationship touches on so many different constituencies in the United States. So many different issues come up. I actually think a deep study of this relationship is a great introduction to American foreign policy. Okay, so I want to, you mentioned Truman's decision to recognize Israel's independence in 1948. There is a story that I have been raised on, which you kind of knocked down in this book. The story I've been raised on is that Truman is sitting there deciding what to do.

The Soviets make the first move. They're going to recognize Israel's right to exist. Truman's deciding what to do. The Soviets make the first move. They're going to recognize Israel's right to exist. Truman's deciding what to do. And on the one hand, he has people like Clark Clifford who are pushing him to recognize Israel's right to exist. And then you have people like Secretary of State Marshall who are not only saying he shouldn't do it, but that they are threatening to resign if he does recognize Israel's right to exist. And then who tips the balance but Eddie Jacobson, his old buddy from Missouri, Truman's old childhood buddy from Missouri, who persuades Truman to meet, I think, with Chaim Weizmann, who wound up becoming Israel's first president, and Weizmann couldn't get a hearing in the White House with President Truman, and his old buddy, a Jewish childhood friend, persuades him to see Weizmann, and

Weizmann prevails upon Truman, and that's what tipped the balance. Right. And you say that's, at best, highly... It's a very beautiful story. It is. It's sort of... It's the American... As a pro-Israel activist, by the way, it's like the greatest story, because it's like

what you want to believe. I know, the littlest Jew in a little city can... Your little effort can push the whole... You're right. Right. No, actually, again, pro-Israel people and anti-Israel people love this story. Because for anti-Israel people, it's like, proof, the Jewish lobby controlled Truman. Right.

And made Truman, instead of listening to the wise counsel of the State Department advisors, George Marshall, George Kennan, he listens to the slimy domestic lobbyists like Clark Clifford. Right. So everybody likes this story. Everybody wins. Yeah, it's true. And that's actually one of the things that makes the received wisdom of history, a story that has something for everybody. The only problem is there just isn't much evidence that this is what was happening.

In fact, there's a lot of evidence that it was moving in a very different way. Eddie Jacobson did go see Truman, and just like Queen Esther in the Bible, he persuaded Harry Truman, the moody Gentile ruler, to listen to Chaim Weizmann, and he did. We don't have any record of what happened, but what we know is that American policy did not change after that meeting. Truman does not then begin to fight back against the State Department. In fact, he embraces the State Department's shift to fight, to try to delay partition. By the way, the question was not Israel's right to exist. The question was whether to recognize the declaration, the state. At this point, I think, thanks to the UN resolution, in the US, people generally thought,

well, it has a legal right to exist because the UN partition resolution calls the U.S. people generally thought, well, it has a legal right to exist because the U.N. partition resolution calls for that. But the thing is that, again, Truman was in a trap of his own making. He never really wanted, I mean, he did not want to make Israel, Palestine, a major element in American policy. The reason is after World War II, the U.S. has only one strong ally left against the Soviet Union, and that's Britain. And the British realize in the summer of 1945 that if there's going to be any hope of maintaining their living standards and maintaining Britain as a world power, they're going to have to keep the Arab oil companies in at least the informal British empire and keep them in the sterling zone. They also understand that the state of Arab opinion about Zionism is such that if the British can't deliver on this, it will radicalize Arab opinion.

It'll endanger all the monarchies, at this time Iraq and Egypt and Libya and Jordan all have pro-British monarchs, who in many cases are rather unpopular with many of their subjects. And so either the pro-British governments will be overthrown, or they'll be forced, or in self-defense, these regimes will have to become anti-British and, you know, run to get to the head of the nationalist parade. So the British need to find a way to stop, you know, to make it look as if they're effectively acting for the Arabs. And the question then comes up, you have hundreds of thousands, in the beginning the estimate is about 100,000, of displaced Jewish survivors of World War II, many living in camps, some of them actually

in the same concentration camps physically, where they were under the Germans, who want to go to Palestine. And David Ben-Gurion says, I need 100,000 visas. Truman kind of takes that, this is my deliverable. And if I can get the 100,000 visas, then the Zionists will shut up and stop bothering me because they'll have gotten what they want. And furthermore, the British can give me that 100,000 visas

without it necessarily inflaming the whole Middle East. This is a concession I can get from the British, I can deliver to the Zionists, and then I'm done. My goal here is actually for the British power structure in the Middle East to stay there. British structure stays intact and the Jews leave me alone. That's right. And also, I don't look to too many people in America like I'm being too pro-British because the liberals at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt and a lot of others, think that America should not side with the evil imperialistic British after World War II, but work with the United Nations and find the way to earn Stalin's trust so that we can be part of a progressive alliance in the United Nations,

building a new world of peace and brotherhood. Sounds silly now, but a lot of very serious people believe it. By the way, one of the things you see if you really study foreign affairs is that the most idiotic ideas can become entrenched in conventional wisdom and shape policymaking in very important ways. So Truman knows that he can't really trust Stalin and that he needs to work with the British, but he also knows that public opinion in the Democratic Party is so anti-British, pro-Stalin, or at least pro-cooperation with Stalin, that he can't openly follow, you know, openly avow this policy. So the 100,000 visas look like they're going to

get it, but the British keep delaying. They really don't want to do it. Their position is, if you want us to do this, then you should pay the cost of doing it, and it's going to cost us a lot because we're going to have, a lot because we're going to have to send troops to Palestine, more troops to Palestine. We're going to have to try to figure ways to keep the Arabs happy. This is going to be a very expensive policy. And whatever else is happening, you don't get to pick the policy and then we pay the costs for imposing the policy. You have to help us here. Truman doesn't want to do this for all kinds of reasons. And then in 1947, it looks for a while like Truman's problem has been

solved because there's a huge winter freeze in England, in all of Western Europe, in fact, in the winter of 1947. And the British economy collapses. And the British government realizes it can't pursue its old imperial policy. That's when they decide that they're going to get out of Greece and Turkey, forcing Truman into what ultimately became the Marshall Plan. That's when they decide they're going to get out of India, whether or not there's a stable agreement. And it's also they're going to turn the whole Palestinian problem back to the United Nations, wash their hands of the whole mess. And this, again, for Truman, the decision on Palestine was the least interesting of these three for any serious observer of world politics.

The partition of India was a much bigger deal. But abandoning Greece and Turkey, that meant basically the U.S. would have to either see communism move further into Europe or undertake the defense almost on its own, and that directly leads to the Marshall Plan, which monopolized much more of Truman's attention and the State Department's attention than this sort of scramble for Palestine. All right, so now once the British throw the issue to the UN, you might think if Truman were either under the control of the Zionist lobby or an enthusiastic supporter of Israeli independence, he would now start doing what he could to push the UN toward a partition, toward an agreement on Israeli independence. He does the opposite. Oh my goodness, we can't interfere with the sacred United Nations. The big powers must stay out so that

the small and medium powers can reach a good decision. And that's just, you know, this just makes all the liberals and UN people purr with delight. It really annoys the Zionists, but they don't have the power to change the policy. And so Truman coasts along, and for a long time it looks like, you know, even if the UN vote decides, if the committee, UNSCOP, this committee looking into it, supports the idea of partition, it'll never get through the UN General Assembly. It can't go through the Security Council. The British would veto it. The Soviets might veto it. But then in the spring of 47, the Soviets let it be known that they might support partition. And then when the UN committee actually votes for partition, the Soviet Union announces that it will vote, it and its puppets and allies, will vote for partition. At which point, if partition fails, it'll be Truman's fault.

So he has to lean on American allies, you know, because it's our job now. Once the committee has spoken, he needs to support this UN consensus and get it enacted. And then once there is the resolution, liberals want him to enforce it. This is a big problem. Because the Arabs from the beginning reject the partition resolution. They walk out of the UN. And again, from their point of view, this is perfectly logical. They don't see the British as having a good legal title to Palestine in the first place. They stole it from the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War

I. The Palestinians were never asked, the residents, do you want to be part of a Jewish homeland? So they see this whole thing as not international law solving a difficult problem. They see it as Western and the liberal establishment, which featured prominently in Truman's calculations. There's one liberal that you referenced a little while ago that plays a very prominent role, which is Eleanor Roosevelt. Exactly. Who's the carrier of the flame of her husband's legacy. He's since passed away. And he's very important to Truman. As Truman runs for office in 1948, explain why Eleanor Roosevelt becomes so important.

There should probably be a statue to Eleanor Roosevelt somewhere in Israel, if there isn't one already. Because I think she played a, you know, certainly much more than her husband. She played, I think, a very powerful role in what happened. But yeah, she had two sort of things that were driving her. One was a deep sympathy for the plight of the survivors of the Holocaust. She actually, in I think 1946, she went over to Europe and visited the camps. Now, Eleanor, she's not only the widow of the most revered, powerful president in the history of the United States, she also had a newspaper, a nationally syndicated newspaper column that was read by like everybody. Truman, on the other hand, people did not think he was Roosevelt's legitimate heir. He'd sort of been forced on Roosevelt, people thought, by the party bosses in the summer of

1944 because Roosevelt's true choice, Henry Wallace, was too liberal. So he's got Henry Wallace in the cabinet and Eleanor Roosevelt, the joint holders of the sacred Roosevelt flame. And as far as everyone knew, Roosevelt's policy when he died was conciliate Stalin, support the UN. And so that policy then is, you know, that's sort of the true New Deal, the true Democrat, the true FDR policy. And Truman is trying to change that. Right, exactly. Truman said from very early on, Truman says Stalin is breaking all of his agreements. He cannot be trusted. Basically, Truman feels he needs to steer the United States toward what would become the Cold War, a real conflict.

And he needs to do that in a party where he's personally weak and unpopular. And he's running for election and he has a primary challenge. Right. And Roosevelt's two sons, Franklin Roosevelt's two sons, are part of a dump Truman campaign, and Henry Wallace is planning to run on a third-party ticket. Didn't they endorse him? Didn't Truman's kids endorse Wallace?

No, I think they were more, you know, I'd have to look at that one up again. They were actually supporting Eisenhower in the summer. Oh, wow. Okay. You know, there was a draft Eisenhower movement. Anyways, there were anyone but Truman was there. Right. And so Eleanor really becomes critical. And, you know, so Truman by supporting the UN, you know, wants to support the UN resolution for partition.

But when the Arabs walk out of the UN and the fighting begins in Palestine, there's several huge problems that develop. One is Israel doesn't have arms. The Arabs have a lot of arms. What's the U.S. going to do? Well, Truman actually puts an arms embargo on the region, which has the net effect of favoring the Arabs, because the British are arming the Arabs.

Right. And many people point this out. But he's unmoved on it. Then you have, again, suggesting that Truman was not a puppet of the Zionist lobby. He was very clearly puppet of the Zionist lobby. He was very clearly capable of imposing problems, policies that they saw as a mortal threat to Israel, to the Jewish cause. He was willing and able to do that. But then in the winter of 1948, the Jews are losing the war. And military experts, including General George Marshall

and Field Marshal Montgomery on the British side, are saying quite confidently that if a war breaks out, the Jews will lose. And so now the UN people, the people who want to support the partition plan, like Eleanor Roosevelt, are attacking Truman. Because shouldn't we be sending troops to enforce the partition resolution? Are we going to let a war break out? Maybe the Jews lose the war, so the UN's first great decision will become a complete mockery? That can't be allowed. But the generals say to Truman, we do not have the troops. Our position in Europe is weak. We've been demobilizing since World War II. We do not have any option militarily in Palestine. Well, the Roosevelt types, the Eleanor Roosevelt types are saying, well, I know we can have a UN peacekeeping mission, which means there'd be Soviet troops there.

This is just completely a non-starter for Truman. That's the problem that he's in. His chosen policy of supporting the partition resolution led to a war that the Jews seem to be losing and he doesn't know what to do about. The decision that had been, what happens then is that the State Department tells Truman, you got to get out of this. You're in a tight trap. There's no way out. You're going to have to, you're going to have to, we won't say get rid of partition completely, but say we need to postpone it.

We need to extend, the British mandate is ending in May. We need to extend that so that negotiations can continue and we can find some way out of that. And Truman is basically saying, yeah, that sounds great. I can't be the first one to say we're abandoning the UN plan, because then all the liberals will kill me for not sticking up. So what I need... And again, this is in the middle of Democratic primaries while he's trying to run for president, right? Yeah, it's just a nightmare situation. And he's got this pressure from the left in the Democratic Party. He also, on the day that the State Department sort of goes after him,

he has to make a big speech announcing that he's instituting a peacetime draft because the military is persuading the Cold War is getting so bad that's the only way we can hold on. A peacetime draft with inflation, labor strikes, none of this is what you want if you're president of the United States. So that's when you can imagine now why he was so disinclined to sit down and meet with whether it's American Zionists, why aren't you doing more? Or Israeli representatives, like he already knows what the darn problem is, right? There's nothing about this that he doesn't understand, he sees. But still,

after Jacobson, he sees Weizmann. The State Department totally pulls the rug out of Truman, under Truman, because they announced the change in U.S. policy before the U.N. has said, we need to reconsider. Because if he can get the U.N. to say that, then it looks like he's making a helpful suggestion to help the U.N. achieve its sacred message. But if he, like, himself, unilaterally says, ah, the U.N. thing isn't working, we have to change, now he's attacked the UN. The State Department, without really his full permission, does this to him in public. And now it's just a horrible mess. The liberals are mad at him. The State Department has contempt

for him because he's mishandling everything. And the Jews still seem to be losing the war. And the idea that you might see sort of Jews driven to the beaches of Palestine or whatever, it's just, what are you going to do? Now, what saves Truman here is our old friend Joseph Stalin. It's sort that Truman rescues the Jews in 1948. The Jews rescue Truman with an assist from Stalin. Because Stalin recognizes Israel's independence and it gives... No, no. It has nothing to do... Recognizing independence is just, who cares about that? That's symbolism. Again, that's one of the things, that's one of the ways people get confused is taking purely symbolic declarations, not totally empty, but not substance, recognize, don't recognize, no. What happens is that when the Israelis are looking around

desperately for weapons after the partition resolution, they one will sell them anything. This mysterious Romanian comes in and says, weapons, no problem at all, and shows them these catalogs of very high-tech weapons. And it turns out that the Czech arms factory, Skoda arms factory, has all these weapons that were originally made from the German Wehrmacht, but the Wehrmacht stopped taking deliveries in May of 1945 for some reason. So they have all of these huge stock of surplus weapons. And originally, the communists have not fully taken over Czechoslovakia yet. And Czechoslovakia is a very pro-Israel country, and so they're suggesting this, but even after the communist coup, the Stalin permits the Czechs to

sell a lot of high-quality German weapons to the Israelis for the hard cash that will actually allow the Czech communists to take control of the, you know, to cement their control of the country. Totally contrary to U.S. foreign policy, right, would have caused a huge firestorm in Washington if it had been known, but it wasn't known. And as far as we can tell, the sort of still quite embryonic American intelligence services did not know that this was happening. They thought something fishy was going on, but they didn't know what. And so the Soviets start making deliveries of weapons, smuggled weapons, to the Jews. And those are actually the weapons

that allow the offensive that reopens the lines to besiege Jerusalem in the spring of 1948, which really is one of the turning points in the war. And so again, without the Soviet weapons, I'm not sure that they would have been able to do that. And the largest Jewish community in Palestine was in Jerusalem and was literally being starved out at the time. Right. Totally isolated. Right. So they reopened communication and the Soviet weapons come in. That's what the Israelis know. That's what gives them the confidence to declare independence. That with these weapons, they actually think they can win. Right. So now what happens then for Truman is he's tried to negotiate an extension of the mandate,

get the Israelis to put off Declaration of Independence. It's failed. He's looked like an idiot. He's been a laughingstock because the Soviets, by the way, are saying, why don't you support the U.N. plan? We have a U.N. plan. You Americans, you voted for the plan. You supported the plan. But first sign of trouble, you turn and run. So he's getting hammered for his failure to uphold the sacred United Nations. That's when we have the famous conversation of Marshall, Clifford, and Truman in the White House. When Clifford is trying to get him to, says you should go ahead and recognize Israel, Marshall is saying I'll quit if you do. Marshall saying that is really of the opinion that the Jews are still losing the war, they're going to lose the war. And Truman, by recognizing them and encouraging them to fight,

is actually collaborating in their doom. For short-term political advantage, he is encouraging the Israelis down a course of action that will end in disaster. And damage America's standing in the process, according to Marshall. Right, exactly. Yeah. Global standing. And Clifford, you know, but Clifford's argument is really, look.

Because Truman, because Marshall's argument would be associated with a losing war, and we're going to alienate the Arab world. But also just, but yes, but also just as a moral person for, you know, this is like, that's why Marshall would have opposed it on political grounds. But the moral, the intensity, the threat to resign came out of his sense that you were gratuitously exposing these people to a losing war. You're enabling them. Yeah, right. For short-term political advantage. It's contemptible.

That was his view. Clifford's argument is essentially this. Look, if you now recognize the state, what you'll be doing is at long last, you'll actually be in compliance with the UN resolution. You will be on the side of the angels here. It's not glorious. Nothing is going to make the last nine months of your policy look glorious. But what's the State Department really got to say for you? There is no mandate. The war is happening. They've declared independence.

The Soviets are going to recognize them. There's a faction in the Israeli military that's very pro-Soviet. Do you really want to give style? People are thinking, look at the Spanish Civil War when the Soviets were able to work with one military faction among the Spanish Republicans and basically take the thing over. Do you really want to open us up to this. And so Clifford's argument is on the policy side, you know, why give the Soviets an opportunity when this doesn't really cost you anything to recognize them? And then on the political side, it's, and you'll be on the right side with the UN here. You'll have at the end of the day done the right thing. So he does it. And in fact, I mean, everybody is furious because it's so awkwardly done and the State Department sort

of sabotages him in its sort of classically passive-aggressive way. But in the end, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt coldly, reluctantly, and late endorses him for re-election, and Truman pulls off one of the major upsets of the century. Now, this is, you know, it's a master class, not in Zionist lobbying, but in an American president maneuvering in an incredibly difficult way to move the needle on foreign policy while, you know, working toward his own re-election. But because people see it, you know, through the lens of that beautiful story you started us off with, they miss this whole complex reality, which tells us a lot about American political history, the politics of American foreign policy. And of course, it just doesn't fit. To your point, it doesn't fit a lot

of narratives, one of which is, not only was it not Truman's political calculations were not being in response to a Jewish political constituency, but it was to be responsive to a left-wing constituency in his own party that wasn't Jewish. Yes. I mean, the ultimate irony given where the politics of the U.S.-Israel relationship is today. No, exactly. This is, you know, and this was, you know, as I also note in the book, this begins the period when American Jews were the most pro-Israel in history. Before 1940, the leadership of the American Jewish community was anti-Zionist. And today it's quite divided. I want to ask you about, you never mention in your book, I was struck by this, no matter how

hard I looked, I couldn't find the names John Mearsheimer or Stephen Walt, who, for our listeners, were co-authors of a book that was published in 2007 called The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Mearsheimer is a professor at the University of Chicago, and Walt is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. And they wrote this book that basically, and you alluded to it early on, Walter, that argued that U.S. foreign policy towards Israel is about domestic politics and being responsive to a disproportionately powerful, as they would put it, interest in the U.S. that was represented in organized politics, among donors in the Jewish community, in American politics, among the American media, which, you know, all the usual tropes, that this was why U.S., the United States, had been so pro-Israel in its foreign policy over the last number of

decades. And that, in fact, it operates this, the politics that are driving our foreign policy works against American interests in the region, and we the United States actually shouldn't be on Israel's side, the authors argue. It's actually in our interest to be on the Arab world's side, to the extent that the region was defined by an Arab-Israeli conflict for many decades. You never mention them by name,

although you do refer to, quote, I quote here, a rancid urban legend, which refers to this theory of U.S. foreign policy. So could you summarize, I mean, you sort of did earlier in the conversation, but just summarize briefly what their theory, what this rancid theory is, and why it's so wrong in your view. Well, first of all, I would say that Rancid Urban Legend was not, on my part, an intentional reference to that book. And I also didn't mention names because I think American political discourse is full of enough bitterness and animosity as it is. And one of the reasons I did write the book was I feel like this is an issue where there's a lot of cancellation going on. I refer to John Churchill's wife, the Duchess of Marlborough, she hated easily, she hated heartily, she hated implacably.

We have a lot of that running around in America, and I'm not trying to add to the sum of that. But when you disagree with a much of a role at all. That foreign policy is dictated by the realities of the international system. And so states just follow their interests, essentially, because they don't really have any choice. Like billiard balls on a pool table is sometimes an analogy that people use. But so if you believe this, and then you also believe that when the question of Israel comes up, the United States doesn't follow its national interest, but follows the dictates or demands or whatever of a domestic lobby,

you're saying this lobby is different from all others. You're saying the Cuban-American lobby can't really control our Cuba policy. The oil lobby doesn't really control our Saudi Arabia policy because it's the national interest. You see what I mean? But there's only one lobby, only one lobby. And why is this lobby different from all others? All right. Now,, again, you can believe this without being an anti-Semite. I mean, you know, this is, you know, it's an intellectual position that people can come to, but it's so closely linked to classical forms of anti-Semitism that I think it's very hard to separate them, really, when you look hard at it.

So I'm not going to say that X or Y is an anti-Semite, but I'm going to say this is an argument that is extremely difficult to distinguish from anti-Semitic, very dangerous, and very widespread anti-Semitic means. Okay. Today, one could argue, if much of the debate about Israel and the rationale for U.S. support for Israel over the last few decades has been at least partly articulated by shared values, right? And you talk about this in your book. Today, if you wanted to be a realist,

if you wanted to apply purely realpolitik to our foreign policy in the Middle East and actually not have values undergird our policy in any way, you could make the case for support for Israel very stronger than you may have ever been able to in the past, with a combination of gradual U.S. retrenchment or incompetence in the Middle East. And in Israel, you have an ally who doesn't rely on America to fight its wars. It's a country that defends itself. And yet at the same time, there's an

incredible source of intelligence for the United States and the region at a time when America's presence in the region is shrinking. And we can go on and on and on about all the military and intelligence benefits that the U.S. gets from Israel and incredible economic benefits. You know, one of the most important technology powers in the world that the U.S. economy is a beneficiary of. And then when you look at the intersection of those two, you just look at the cybersecurity sector alone, one-tenth of 1% of the global population is Israel, and yet something like 20% of the M&A and investments in cybersecurity enterprises

are happening in Israel, 20% globally of the global cybersecurity sector. You know, as my friend Ron Dermer often argues, you know, if the United States had to pick one ally, if it got to pick one ally into the future, you know, you could think of maybe two that made sense, which would be the UK and Israel, given all that the U.S. gets out of Israel. I don't know if you agree with that. But I guess my question is, there really is a real politik, just foreign policy based on naked American interests, argument for U.S. support for Israel today. And that's, I think, one of the points I try to make in the book, is that historically, real politik has actually played a larger role in the relationship than many people think. I mean, the president who really first forges the alignment between the U.S. and Israel is Richard Nixon.

Nixon, as we know from his private tapes, had all kinds of anti-Semitic attitudes and beliefs. And the American Jewish community as a whole was never fond of Richard Nixon. And actually the time when the alliance or the alignment was forged is October War of 73, where the American Jewish community is basically much more interested in Watergate than in anything else Richard Nixon could be doing. But Nixon made realpolitik calculations about the American interest in the Middle East, the need to block Soviet moves in the Cold War, and the potential for a new relationship with a post-Nasser Egypt. And out of those, a policy was born that I think has, you know, bore great fruit for many years. So that's the birth of the U.S.-Israel connection, alignment. It gets stronger after

1979 when the Shah of Iran falls. Up until then, Iran had been the Israel of American policy. It was our closest ally in the Middle East. It was far and away the greatest recipient of American military aid. But, you know, when Iran turns from reliable friend to bitter enemy, both Egypt and Israel become more important for American foreign policy, and our relationships with both of these countries grow, and our aid to both countries grows, and our relationship with both grows. So one thing, again, I think that a lot of people miss about this relationship is it's never been an either-or relationship between the Arabs and Israelis.

It's now much more obvious, thanks to the Abraham Accords, where some of the cooperation between the Gulf Arabs and Israel has come out of the closet, so to speak. But it's been going on. The Israelis helped the Saudis defeat Nasser's incursion into Yemen in the 1960s. There are all kinds of things that have been going on for quite some time. And the Arab rulers have had very pragmatic approaches on these matters. American presidents have never really been like you're either Israel's friends or you're the Arabs' friends. Think about it. The United States had the closest alliances in the Arab world of any external power during most of the Cold War, and we had the closest external relationship with Israel, especially after 1974. So this whole idea that there's some trade-off...

Or zero-sum, that it's zero-sum. Right. It's just not true. That's one of the many sort of myths that I think both pro-Zionists and anti-Zionists at various points have kind of jointly set up. But it's not the history. It's not the history. It's not the reality. So bringing this to where we are now, just wrapping up, you wrote a column earlier this summer where you looked at kind of where the turning point was in the Middle East, and you focused on 2014, the Gaza War in 2014, where you saw after, you know, eight years of the Obama administration, what you articulate as a number of missteps, and obviously missteps in the Bush administration,

in the region, and you had all these Arab governments watching what we did in Syria, on enforcing, not enforcing the red line, letting Russia establish itself in Syria, what we did in Libya, how we managed the Arab Spring and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood that came out of the Arab Spring in places like Egypt. And all these players in the region were rattled. And in the 2014 Gaza War, you said, you argued for the first time you saw the Saudis rooting for Israel. You saw the Egyptian government rooting for Israel. You even saw the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, in the West Bank rooting for Israel. Again, they all wanted Israel to just pummel Hamas. And you described it as like a turning point when the region really was transformed.

And I guess I assume you believe that's endured. And what does that mean now? Here we are assuming the powers that be reach some kind of accommodation with Iran for a new Iran deal. What does it mean for this Middle East transformed? Well, look, I think that the American interest in the Middle in terms of supporting American security, American national interests. There is simply no better course open to us than to do what we can to support this relationship and also to support them against Iran. It's interesting.

You will hear from all these people who want to less U.S. engagement in the Middle East that we should be an offshore balancer. I think there's some truth to that. We certainly don't need to be is to make sure that no single power can overturn the balance. There's only one country in the Middle East right now that has both the ability and the means to do that, and that's Iran. You look at it, it's Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and it's operating in other places. Also, look at the state of all of those countries. That's what Iranian power gives you, is, you know, just wretched immiseration, chaos, because it's not, it can't be stable. The Iranians are, you know, can't actually build a stable regional order. So in the interest of even the human rights of people in the Middle East, yes, their governments are not perfect as it is right now on human rights.

But human rights in Lebanon are not better after Hezbollah has wrecked the country than they were before. So to me, from every possible perspective, what we need to be doing is working with the Arab countries and with Israel to ensure that Iran does not overturn the Middle East balance. And the fact that, you know, and that's, you know, a balancing country supports the weaker countries in a region against the greater threat. Just as in Asia, we want to maintain the balance of power. We look to Japan and we look to Vietnam, we look to India and Australia. we don't say, oh, well, obviously the way to have stability in Asia is to like endorse China and say to China, take what you want. That's the route to peace. Neither do we do that with Russia in Eastern Europe. So the logic of American foreign policy, to me, clearly leads to balancing Iranian power.

That does not exclude nuclear negotiations with Iran. I supported the idea of original negotiations. I didn't think the deal was good. I thought Trump would have been wiser to stay in it and sort of work from within than pull out and work from without. But that's water under the bridge, all of it. But in order to really negotiate with Iran, what you have to be able to do is show, you can't just take the nuclear issue in isolation, which has been the core approach of the Obama and the Biden administrations. Let demons run wild across the Middle East and instability frolic and prosper

while you fund Iran or offer huge economic opportunities and gains for Iran without any constraints on its behavior just to get some kind of a nuclear deal. This telegraphs so much weakness to Iran. They're not going to give you a good nuclear deal. But if we were working with our partners to restore stability, to blunt Iranian power in Syria, in Lebanon, and I'm not talking about U.S. troops when I do this. We have allies, regional allies, work to build a stable Middle East that Iran can either join as one country and or sulk off to one side.

That's the American national interest as far as I can see it. And it's very much strategically aligned not only with Israel, but with the interests of the leading Arab countries. When history gives you an opportunity like this, you should take it. We will leave it there. Walter, thank you.

You've been very generous with your time. The book is The Ark of a Covenant. We will link to the book in our show notes. And this is a fabulous history lesson. The book is chock full of little history lessons, like lessons layered into lessons, layered into lessons. It's really fantastic stories and fantastic characters. So I really appreciate your, I appreciate the book. I appreciate you doing this, Walter, and we hope to have you back. Great. Thanks, Stan. That's our show for today. To keep up with Walter, you can follow him on Twitter at W.R. Mead, M-E-A-D. Of course, you can find his new book, The Ark of a Covenant, and his

past books at your favorite independent bookstore at barnesandnoble.com, or at that e-commerce site. I think they are calling Amazon. Call Me Back is produced by Alon Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.