Leftists and critics of Israel are being led down a rather disreputable path by a failed theoretician.
11 November 2026
By Stephen Gowans
Many anti-imperialists and critics of Israel admire John Mearsheimer for the positions he has taken on Moscow’s war on Ukraine, Washington’s war on Iran, and Israel’s wars on the Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese, Syrians, and so on.
Few of them, however, have much understanding of the failure of Mearsheimer’s offensive realism to account for the conduct of the United States on the world stage, and nor do they seem to care. What’s more, many of them have uncritically accepted Mearsheimer’s thinking about the “Israel lobby.”
In the video below, Mearsheimer argues that the US ruling class (he calls it “the elite”) invents threats to US security in order to mobilize public support for wars against non-threats, like Iran. I agree with his point.
But does his point agree with his own theory? According to Mearsheimer’s offensive realism, states go to war with the aim of achieving security in an insecure international environment.
Despite this, Mearsheimer argues that recent and current US wars were undertaken against states that posed no security threat to the United States, and that the United States is supremely secure.
So, here’s the problem. If Washington’s wars are not driven by the aim of achieving security, what are they driven by? If the United States is supremely secure, why is it, with the exception of Israel, the most belligerent country on the planet?
Mearsheimer’s explanation is that the Israel lobby has hijacked US foreign policy and is driving Washington to pursue wars in pursuit of Israeli objectives.
The “Israel lobby” is Mearsheimer’s ceterum censio. The ancient Roman statesman Cato the Elder used to end his speeches in the Roman Senate with this: “Ceterum censio Carthaginem esse delendam.” (Furthermore, it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed.) A ceterum censio is a phrase or thought that one frequently repeats. Mearsheimer’s ceterum censio is “It’s the lobby”, his multipurpose explanation for US foreign policy.
In Mearsheimer’s very simple black-and-white view of the world, his ceterum censeo explains everything you need to know about why the US goes to war. The lobby is responsible.
But why has the Israel lobby pushed Washington to prosecute wars on Israel’s behalf?
Because, replies Mearsheimer, the lobby puts Israeli interests above US interests.
Why does the lobby put Israeli interests above US interests?
Because its members have greater loyalty to Israel than the United States.
And why do its members have greater loyalty to Israel than the United States?
Because they are, for the most parts, Jews, backed by fanatical Christian Zionists who put the Bible and “God’s word” above US interests.
In other words, Mearsheimer argues that the US state fails to act as his theory specifies because it has been taken over by Jews and their lunatic Christian Zionist friends.
There is a disturbing historical echo in this view. The Nazis explained Germany’s perceived failure to vigorously pursue what they understood to be Germany’s national interest by arguing that the German state had been hijacked by Jews and their fanatical Marxist allies who put Das Kapital and Marx’s word above the German national interest.
What Mearsheimer has done is resurrect a Nazi theory and apply it to the United States in order to rescue offensive realism from its inability to explain US conduct in inter-state affairs.
What this shows is that Mearsheimer has no credible explanation for why the US behaves as it does on the international stage. His offensive realism can’t explain it, and his “Israel lobby” explanation is nothing more than a rehashed Nazi conspiracy theory.
But how is it a conspiracy theory? An Israel lobby exists, does it not? Yes, but many lobbies exist. All the same, few people would argue that the existence of a gun lobby, or an oil company lobby, or a big pharma lobby, or a Canada lobby, mean that gun owners, or oil companies, or pharmaceutical companies, or Canada, have taken over the US state and are making it act in ways that are detrimental to US interests. Mearsheimer’s Israel lobby theory becomes a conspiracy theory when it moves from “the lobby exerts influence” (as many other lobbies do, sometimes in ways that oppose the Israel lobby and at other times in ways that complement it) to “Jews and their Christian Zionist allies are running the US state in Israel’s interests.”
What evidence has Mearsheimer that Jews and Christian Zionists are parasitizing the US state on behalf of Israel? As much as Hitler had that Jews and their Marxist allies were parasitizing the German state. The evidence both Mearsheimer and Hitler offer for their conspiracy theories are the same. The state doesn’t behave in a manner I consider to be in the state’s interest. It is, on the contrary, behaving in a manner I think is consistent with (in Mearsheimer’s case) the interest of Jews and their Christian Zionist allies and (in Hitler’s case) Jews and their Marxist allies. Therefore, the Jews and their allies have taken over the state. QED.
While Mearsheimer’s recycling of a Nazi view is disturbing, what’s equally disturbing is the fact that a number of people on the Left, including the Marxist Left, have lapped up this nonsense, and freely regurgitate it.
It should also be pointed out that Mearsheimer is not quite so radical on Israel as many may think. Blake Alcott recently undertook a detailed analysis of Mearsheimer’s Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy, which Mearsheimer wrote with Stephen Walt. Alcott shows the Mearsheimer-Walt argument amounts to a defense of Israel as a settler colonial state linked to US foreign policy ambitions. Those who chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” might reconsider their view that Mearsheimer is an ally.
In their book, Mearsheimer and Walt write that:
- “Israel has a right to exist,”
- the Jewish state is legitimate,
- expulsion of the Palestinians was necessary to create a Jewish state,
- the Palestinians must renounce the right of return,
- Hamas is a terrorist organization, and
- Israel’s well-being is a core US interest.
To sum up, Mearsheimer has no theory to account for why the United States wages wars of aggression. His offensive realism says that states pursue war with the aim of enhancing their security, but acknowledges that the United States enjoys virtually unimpeachable security but carries out war after war nonetheless.
To deal with this fatal theoretical flaw, he blames Jews and their Christian Zionist allies for taking over US foreign policy and subverting it on behalf of Israel, and in doing so resurrects what is essentially a “stab in the back” theory (the Nazi theory that Jews and Marxists, the “Judeo-Bolsheviks”, stabbed Germany in the back, which is why it surrendered in the first world war despite the fact that it had not been defeated on the battlefield.)
Where the Nazis accused the Jews and their Marxists allies of knifing Germany in the back on behalf of Jewish interests, Mearsheimer accuses the Jews and their Christian Zionist partners of stabbing Americans in the back on behalf of Israeli interests.
This is the kind of kindergarten-level sociology and reactionary hogwash the Nazis liked to peddle to galvanize popular support for their political aims. Mearsheimer peddles the same low-brow sociology to explain why the US state doesn’t behave the way he says it should.
Leftists and critics of Israel who swallow Mearsheimer’s dross are being led down a rather disreputable path by a failed theoretician. At the same time, his anti-imperialist admirers close their eyes to what the offensive realist believes the US state ought to be doing in place of fighting a proxy war in Ukraine, waging a direct war in West Asia, and furnishing Israel with weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic backing, namely, focusing its resources, assets, and energy on checking the rise of China so that the US empire remains forever supreme.
Not only is Mearsheimer not an anti-Zionist he is not an anti-imperialist either, however much anti-imperialists would like to believe he is. His criticisms of US imperialism in Ukraine and West Asia have nothing whatever to do with a principled opposition to imperialism and everything to do with his belief that Washington is failing to do what it needs to do to win the greatest imperialist contest of all: the one with China.
