Unlike, say, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans are a relatively small minority of the U.S. population. By no means are all of them ardent Zionists (indeed, some of the most religious American Jews are explicitly anti Zionist. Therefore, the role of the Israel lobby must be examined not only in terms of its ability to mobilize a "Jewish vote," but also to support its cause with financial, ideological, and alliance building power. As a counterpart to the Israel lobby, we must also examine the effectiveness or non effectiveness of an "Arab lobby" in American politics, and how both these groups of ethnic Americans influence, or fail to influence the shaping of U.S. policy towards the Middle East.
The literature dealing with various aspects of U.S. national interests in the Middle East is vast, and ranges from conceptual works about the nature of national interests, through historical studies of U.S. relations with the Middle East, to the U.S. relationship with Israel in particular, to examinations of domestic political factors and forces which influence U.S. policy towards the Middle East. The works discussed in the following paragraphs are a small selection which have proved to be particularly illuminating or provocative.
Donald E. Nuechterlein, National Interests and Presidential Leadership: The Setting of Priorities (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978) presents a framework for the understanding of national interests in general, and this framework has already been discussed at some length above.
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), is an examination of the economic limitations of military power; Kennedy's essential thesis is that the U.S. (like previous Great Powers from sixteenth century Spain to early twentieth century Britain) risks overstraining its economic through excessive international committments. As the U.S. enters on a new major committment in the A...