nterests, in the Nuechterlein grid or any comparable framework. The second and much more fundamental question regards the gulf between nations' interests and the policies they pursue.
The Thesis of this study is, briefly, that Mideast peace is in the U.S. national interest, and that achieving such a peace must depend on a just and realistic solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. This Thesis is hardly astonishing, obscure, or alien to broad American values. Indeed, it comes close to being a truism which is restated in most academic and journalistic discussions of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Why, then, does it have so little bearing on U.S. policy?
More broadly, granted that the Nuechterlein framework is a logical and useful way to analyse a nation's interests, why don't statesmen follow it, or something to the same effect? What factors cloud their judgements or perceptions, making actual policies so remote from logical policies?
The answer, in a word, is "politics." National leaders in the real wor
...