Are we getting closer to or farther away from an Iran deal? Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal has been following developments closely. I wanted to check in with him. But I also wanted to talk to Walter about his big new and groundbreaking book, called “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.”

Walter has been immersed in writing this book for over a decade – it covers the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but it’s much more than that. It’s also a book about the history of US foreign policy.

What has been America’s calculation behind U.S. support for Israel? Is it based on shared values – a fellow democracy in a dangerous region, defending a country born out of the ashes of the Holocaust? Or has U.S. policy been based on realpolitik – because Israel advances U.S. geopolitical interests? Or is it a blend of all of the above? What role does U.S. domestic politics play in all of this, if at all?

Walter’s book frames our discussion not only about the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship, but the future of the relationship, and the future of U.S. foreign policy.


Walter is at the Hudson Institute, he is the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a professor at Bard College. He was previously the Henry Kissinger fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People: shorturl.at/bdhpz