They are both extremely knowledgeable and serious scholars so I think it’s an argument that other people have to take seriously. They are not polemicists by any means. I am not entirely persuaded by their argument, but I guess the word that caught my attention is “disproportionately.” I don’t know how you judge that. I mean U.S. foreign policy is in every area impacted by ethnic groups of one sort or another as well as economic groups and regional groups. There has been an Irish lobby that has impacted U.S. foreign policy for a century and a half, and at times made our relations with Great Britain very difficult. Other comparable lobbies exist. So I don’t think that the Israeli lobby is unique. It may differ from the others in the extent by which it is focused on just one issue, which is the survival of Israel, which is understandable, and promoting Israeli development and aid to Israel, and so forth and so on.

There have been many diplomats, scholars, and even human rights activists who all argue that if the tension between Israel and Palestine were resolved, there would be a more stable and peaceful Middle East. Do you believe that the reason for instability is directly and primarily linked to this tension between Israelis and Palestinians?

I don’t know what they are referring to when they talk of instability. Obviously there have been and still are fault lines of conflict in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians, but most of them, of course, have previously been between Israel and Egypt, the struggles between various religious factions in Lebanon, differences between Baathist regimes that exist and opposition movements and so forth. There are lots of conflicts going on in the Middle East. It is unclear as to which country will emerge, if any, as the dominant or hegemonic power in the Middle East.

In South America we have Brazil; in Africa we have South Africa; in Central Africa we have Nigeria; in East Asia we have China and Japan; South Asia, India. Now what is the comparable power in the Middle East? Israel has military capabilities including nuclear weapons, far surpassing any other power in the Middle East, but it’s a small country. The rest of the Middle Eastern peoples are Muslim and Israelis are not, so it is hardly in any position to become the leading power. I mentioned Iran as a possibility. Iran of course is Shiite, while the bulk of the Arabs are Sunni, that is a problem or could be a problem.

Also, there is the simple fact that Iran is non-Arab and most of the Muslims in the Middle East are Arab.  Then there is the question of Turkey, which is an important state, but again it’s not Arab and it has very concrete interests in the oil and gas in northern Iraq and in securing borders against secessionist movements. What are the prospects for an Arab state serving a leading role comparable to the role that other states place in other regions? There is no obvious candidate. Saudi Arabia has the money but a relatively small population. Iraq was a great potential leader, as a sizable country with great oil resources and a highly educated population, but it went off in the wrong direction. Maybe Iraq will come back and become the dominant power among Arab countries. That seems to me as conceivable.

How about Turkey? As you mentioned, they see themselves as a bridge between the Western world and the Muslim world.

I wouldn’t put a great deal of emphasis on that. Turkey has its own interests and historically, Turkey conquered most of the Arab world, and the Arabs had to fight wars of liberation to free themselves from the Turks. That’s in the past and that doesn’t necessarily shape what is going on but it’s there and it’s there in people’s memories. The Turks, as I said, seem to have very specific interests, particularly in those portions of those Arab countries that border Turkey.

Do you think it’s in the interest of U.S. foreign policy to ensure that no hegemonic, at least regionally hegemonic, leader does arise in that region?

That all depends on who that hegemonic leader is. I think in theory, the United States finds it much easier to deal with situations where there is a leading country. You can go to the leaders of that country and say, for example, to India, “There are all these problems in Bangladesh, we really have to do something about it, what do you suggest we can do to work out a common policy?” But when you don’t have the equivalent of India, you have to go capital to capital trying to put together a coalition, which is extraordinarily difficult, especially in the Arab world, because of the historic rivalries and branches of Islam.

If you were to write this thesis 100 years from now, would you still argue that there is a clash of civilizations between the Western and Islamic world?

I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen 100 years from now.