You're writing about U.S.-Israel relations.

You wrote a very, very influential article in foreign affairs about Gentile Zionism.

What got you interested in this topic?

Hmm.

Well, you know, if you're interested in American foreign policy, the subject of Israel does come up from time to time.

And the Middle East, you know, every now and then, the Middle East raises it, rears its head.

So there's naturally an interest there.

But also, I suppose, you know, while I, you know, I'm kind of, I am somewhat ignorant in the world of political science and theory, but it's clear that the way I think about foreign policy doesn't mesh well with some sort of realist theory, especially so the idea of the state as a, you know, as a black box or a billiard billiard ball that is just

that internal political forces simply don't matter. And that's never something I believe.

It has always seemed to me that internal politics in all kinds of ways affects the foreign policy,

not just of this state, but of most states.

Even in non-democratic states, I think that's true.

And so in some ways, you know,

Mearsheimer's book is the sort of acme of this kind of thinking.

But America's Israel policy is a huge problem for realists like Meersheimer who think that, you know,

objectively speaking, there is no good rationale for the American

Israel Alliance. So how do you save realism while explaining Israel? That's, you know, that's

actually what led, I think, Mir Sharma and Walt to write that book.

And what they have to come to, to save realist theory, is to say, well, yes, in this one case, a lobby.

So they're forced to say the Israel lobby is different from all other lobbies, which is a very strange place to

very hard. And you can only defend that argument by saying that Jews are different from

other people, either in terms of their power or their focus or whatever it is.

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