John McCain unleashed a salvo against Barack Obama during his speech yesterday at the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. He wasn't the first prominent Republican to use US-Israel relations as a stick to beat Obama with. Speaking from the Knesset, George W Bush attacked Obama's willingness to meet controversial leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as tantamount to "appeasement".
Yesterday at AIPAC, McCain laid into Obama, generally for urging diplomacy and specifically for voting against the decision to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation. "[Obama] is mistaken," McCain said. "Holding Iran's influence in check, and holding a terrorist organization accountable, sends exactly the right message -- to Iran, to the region and to the world." McCain's full address is here.
The Obama campaign struck back quickly: "Confronted with that reality, John McCain promises four more years of the same policies that have strengthened Iran, making the United States and Israel less safe. He promises to continue a war in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and strengthened its hand. He stubbornly reefuses to engage in aggressive diplomacy, ruling it out unconditionally as a tool of American power."
Tit for tat, then. Obama was right to oppose the branding of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation. It was an unprecedented move (the Guards, after all, are a state, not sub-state, organisation) that has done little to weaken Iran or turn its people against the governing regime, and much to strengthen the resolve of Iran's leaders. Moreover, according to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans favour Obama's diplomatic approach to McCain's blunt confrontation.
Again, however, Obama's campaign felt obliged to phrase their response to McCain through the prism of Israel's interests. This works rhetorically, but in the long run, does it translate into strategic policy? It speaks to the limited range of options US leaders let themselves choose from when dealing with west Asia. The debate unleashed by Walt and Mearsheimer may rage more in New York journals than in the halls of the Beltway. But can American foreign policy in the middle east really recover without a re-evaluation of the relationship with Israel?