Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
On one of the most polarizing questions in American foreign policy—U.S. support for Israel— historian and geopolitical expert Walter Russell Mead argues that nearly everyone has the story wrong.
The standard explanations focus on lobbying power, campaign donations, and media influence. But, as Mead explains, this ignores the fact that American interest in a Jewish return to the Holy Land far predates modern Zionism. It is rooted not in Jewish political organization but in Protestant theological traditions. By the 19th century, prominent Americans were advocating for a Jewish state well before it had widespread support among Jews themselves.
This overlooked history is the foundation of Mead’s book The Arc of a Covenant, and it sets up our conversation this week. We begin with the influential Israel Lobby thesis of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which argues that domestic lobbying distorts American policy. Mead critiques that theory, both as history and as social science.
From there, the conversation turns to antisemitism: its origins, its persistence across centuries, and the way the same psychological pattern that produced European Jew hatred keeps getting replicated in different forms across different cultures.
I also ask Mead about the America First movement, what it gets right about the failures of liberal internationalism, and where its logic breaks down. Mead argues that foreign policy must serve American interests, but that disengagement carries costs its advocates don’t reckon with. I ask him what serious, clear-eyed American statecraft should actually look like in today’s world.
On one of the most polarizing questions in American foreign policy—U.S. support for Israel— historian and geopolitical expert Walter Russell Mead argues that nearly everyone has the story wrong.
The standard explanations focus on lobbying power, campaign donations, and media influence. But, as Mead explains, this ignores the fact that American interest in a Jewish return to the Holy Land far predates modern Zionism. It is rooted not in Jewish political organization but in Protestant theological traditions. By the 19th century, prominent Americans were advocating for a Jewish state well before it had widespread support among Jews themselves.
This overlooked history is the foundation of Mead’s book The Arc of a Covenant, and it sets up our conversation this week. We begin with the influential Israel Lobby thesis of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which argues that domestic lobbying distorts American policy. Mead critiques that theory, both as history and as social science.
From there, the conversation turns to antisemitism: its origins, its persistence across centuries, and the way the same psychological pattern that produced European Jew hatred keeps getting replicated in different forms across different cultures.
I also ask Mead about the America First movement, what it gets right about the failures of liberal internationalism, and where its logic breaks down. Mead argues that foreign policy must serve American interests, but that disengagement carries costs its advocates don’t reckon with. I ask him what serious, clear-eyed American statecraft should actually look like in today’s world.
