Skip navigation
London Review of Books London Review Bookshop

Articles marked subscriber-only content are available to registered subscribers to the print edition of the London Review of Books. For information about subscribing to the LRB, click here. If you are already a subscriber and you wish to register for online access, click here.

John Mearsheimer

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Originally published 23 March 2006

The Israel Lobby

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides. [ read more . . . ]

Selected bibliography

  • The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (2007)  Buy this book
  • The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
  • Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988)
  • Nuclear Deterrence: Ethics and Strategy edited by Russell Hardin, John J. Mearsheimer, Gerald Dworkin and Robert Goodin (1985)
  • Conventional Deterrence (1983)

Search the web for John Mearsheimer: Google · Yahoo! · AltaVista · Wikipedia

In the LRB archive

The Lobby Falters · 26 March 2009

The Israel Lobby · 23 March 2006

From the LRB letters page