You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero podcast. You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hi, Steve.

Hey, Bob.

Nice to see you.

Nice to see you.

Thanks for taking the time to join us.

Let me introduce us.

I'm Robert Wright, publisher

of the non-zero newsletter. This is a non-zero podcast. I encourage people to subscribe to both.

You are Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, also author

of the hell of good intentions about America's foreign policy elite and why, in your view, they don't

deserve their job. They keep making mistakes. You're also fairly famously co-authored with

John Meersheimer of the 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. foreign policy will have occasion to get into that.

But I wanted to start out by talking about a piece you recently wrote for foreign policy where you're a columnist called the dangerous decline in Israeli strategy.

The subhead is for decades, the Zionist project has been getting

worse at defending itself. There's a few places we could start with this. We could start at the

beginning where you think Israel first started making strategic mistakes of some magnitude about

60 years ago. But there's a kind of a

pretty topical issue that intersects with your argument at a different point. So a couple of

days ago, Israel launched a big area assault on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Israel said it was to

preempt a big Hezbollah strike. In any event, Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Israel said it was to preempt a big Hezbollah strike.

In any event, Hezbollah responded with hundreds of rockets.

...