Lew Rockwell: ‘Primacists,’ Not Neo-Cons Dominate U.S. Foreign Policy

After Israel’s military campaign in Gaza escalated into genocide, coupled with aggressive U.S.-backed escalations in the Middle East and Ukraine, public awareness has surged regarding the profound Jewish-Israeli influence on American foreign policy. This influence operates through a web of proxies, including Zionists, neoconservatives (neocons), and even elements of the neoliberal establishment.

The awakening spans the political spectrum. On the right, MAGA figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene have joined forces with leftist outlets such as The Young Turks (TYT) in joint YouTube discussions critiquing Jewish warmongers and the Israel Lobby.

In academia, professor John Mearsheimer has revealed the power of the Israel Lobby. First mercilessly attacked, his message is now finally getting through. Especially among the young—both progressive and conservative—support for Israel’s actions has plummeted, with polls showing a historic reversal in generational attitudes toward the country’s warmongering.

One notable outlier persists: the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s chairman, Lew Rockwell is now suddenly downplaying the power of the pro-Israel neocons. This is all the more surprising given Rockwell’s leadership of the conservative libertarian (paleolibertarian) movement, rooted in the staunchly anti-Zionist legacy of Murray Rothbard, who unequivocally blamed the Zionists.

Also, Rockwell’s personal website, LewRockwell.com, has long published unflinching critiques of Zionism. Yet last week, Rockwell stunned observers by publishing in Mises Review an article “Why I Won’t Be Mourning Dick Cheney,” where he downplayed the influence of the neocons.

In his article Lew Rockwell cited Paul Dragu, the senior editor of The New American, the magazine of the John Birch Society (JBS). Dragu claims that Cheney and primacists—not the Jewish-led neocons—were the prime instigators and propagators for the Iraq Wars.

Dragu downplaying Jewish power is not surprising. JBS is known for its extensive conspiracy theories that accuse everybody from communists to Rockefellers to globalists except the warmongering Jews and Israel Lobby for conspiring for war and big government. In fact, for decades JBS has been known for refusing to touch the Jewish issue. Obviously, being senior writer for JBS also Paul Dragu has to tread carefully. For example, after two years of genocide, Paul Dragu is still not quite sure if genocide is taking place in Gaza.

Image by Grok: John Birch Society.

In his article, Lew Rockwell also cited Mike Rozeff: “… Cheney and Rumsfeld as the key instigators of the Iraq War aggression. It suggests their motives were to strengthen the power of the presidency and build up the U.S. military.”

Mike Rozeff is a long-standing contributor to LewRockwell.com where he has for decades argued that warmongering Jews and the Israel Lobby do not dominate American foreign policy but the abstract forces of American imperialism. Rozeff explicated this theory in his book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination when explaining the American invasion of Iraq:

We are in Iraq because of empire. We have armed forces in Iraq because of error. We have empire because we have a runaway state. In the long run, which sometimes is not that long, empire is seen to be an error. … America and Americans have hubris and hamartia. We need humility. We can’t avoid future Iraqs, future losses, and the fall of the American empire until we rein in the American state. We can’t rein in the American state until we rein in ourselves. (Michael S. Rozeff. Essays on American Empire. Liberty vs. Domination. p. 287. Emphasis added.)[1]

Lew Rockwell and Rozeff both cite Edward C. Duggan’s theory where the neocons are not the main culprits but the “primacists.”

In my dissertation I argue that the invasion of Iraq was a part of a larger project by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to reestablish the unconstrained use of U.S. military power after the defeat of Vietnam. The study presents the best evidence against the alternative explanations that the invasion of Iraq was the result of an overreaction to 9/11, the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, a plan to spread democracy in the Middle East, a desire to protect Israel or a plan to profit from Iraqi oil.

The study also challenges the leading explanation among academics that emphasizes the role of the neoconservatives in the decision to invade. These academics argue that neoconservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, successfully persuaded the American President, George W. Bush, and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, of the necessity to eliminate Saddam Hussein by winning an internal policy battle over realists, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell.

I demonstrate that it was the primacists, not the neoconservatives, who persuaded the President to go to war with Iraq.[2]

What accounts for Lew Rockwell’s shift? Why is he now suddenly helping to downplay the warmongering power of the neocons and Israel lobby? In the past Rockwell understandably sidestepped the Jewish issue so as to be able to lead in peace the Ludwig von Mises Institute and advance Austrian economics. Why now start downplaying or even denying the dominance of the neocons over American foreign policy? And why do it in the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s publication, Mises Review??

Speculation abounds, but a key clue lies in Rockwell’s longstanding reticence to extend his critique of Zionism to broader questions of Jewish ethnic interests. Rothbard and Rockwell targeted Zionist ideology and Israeli state foreign policy without hesitation, but they consistently avoided examining Jews as an ethnic group—particularly as a historically unassimilable minority whose collective interests might diverge from those of the host society. For instance, Rockwell has dismissed any significant Jewish role in the Bolshevik Revolution or the rise of communism, framing such claims as baseless nonsense not worth talking about. However, Rockwell and other libertarians readily acknowledge—and even criticise—the dominance of relatively high IQ minorities such as Spaniards over indigenous Indians in South America, overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, and Tutsis in Rwanda. Why, then, is it forbidden to ask whether Jews might constitute a similar high-IQ dominant minority in the West—particularly in immigrant-friendly America? What if their centuries-long dominance in banking enabled them to acquire outsized power in academia, media, and above all foreign policy, all in service of Jewish interests at home and abroad?

This blind spot aligns with a deeper pattern: the libertarian organizations never acknowledge potential conflicts between Jewish diaspora networks and the interests of Americans. Why? A plausible explanation is the heavy Jewish representation among leading libertarians and especially donors.[3]

This unspoken taboo effectively renders the ethnic dimension of warmongering Jewish networks invisible, granting them repeated, low-cost attempts to ignite major conflicts.[4] Freed from scrutiny of their dual-loyalty incentives, the same actors can push relentlessly for war with Iran, Russia, or China, gamble on “limited” nuclear exchanges that would cripple their historic rivals, and advance the long-term project of Greater Israel—all while the host population remains blind to the pattern and the libertarian “right” politely looks away.

A genuine libertarian analysis of state power cannot afford such self-imposed blind spots; to leave the “Jewish blanks” unfilled is to surrender the explanatory high ground to the warmongers who repeatedly try to start not only countless wars but even nuclear war itself.

Notes

[1] Rozeff: “The United States has significant and influential war lobbies, oil lobbies, construction lobbies, weapons lobbies, and Israel lobbies. The lobbyists influence Congress, which funds the wars through taxes, borrowing, and inflation.” (p. 31)

“On the benefit side, the war on terror provides important benefits to: 1. The state. … 2. The military-industrial complex. … 3. The state’s bureaucracies. … 4. The Israel lobby. This administration and both parties are larded with pro-Israel figures who had no little influence in instigating the war on terror.” … But I believe that the prime impelling motive or motives behind the war on terror are much deeper than any of the benefits listed above. The analysis of these motives is complex. They are summed up in one word: imperialism, a drive of one nation to expand and dominate other nations. Throughout history, again and again, political units seek to expand. It is almost as if their survival depended on it, that if they did not expand, then they were doomed to be subjugated by others.” (p. 128-129.)

“Wolfowitz’s public record exemplifies the surface reasons for why we are in Iraq. The main reason is a chimera known as secure oil. Since Franklin Roosevelt, this has meant protecting Saudi Arabia. At one time it meant installing the Shah of Iran. Later it meant stopping Iraq from going into Kuwait, a threat to Saudi Arabia. Still later, it has meant removing Saddam Hussein altogether for fear he would become a threat. A secondary or particularistic reason is Israeli security. An even less robust reason is to install democracies rather than authoritarian regimes, but Wolfowitz’s commitment to this has been variable as in the case of his tenure in Indonesia.” (p. 284)

“We are in Iraq because of empire. We have armed forces in Iraq because of error. We have empire because we have a runaway state. In the long run, which sometimes is not that long, empire is seen to be an error. … America and Americans have hubris and hamartia. We need humility. We can’t avoid future Iraqs, future losses, and the fall of the American empire until we rein in the American state. We can’t rein in the American state until we rein in ourselves.” (Michael S. Rozeff. Essays on American Empire. Liberty vs. Domination. p. 287. Emphasis added.)

[2] The quotation is from Lew Rockwell’s article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-i-wont-be-mourning-dick-cheney

[3] https://www.unz.com/article/did-milton-friedmans-libertarianism-seek-to-advance-jewish-interests/

[4] https://www.unz.com/article/libertarians-jewish-dilemma-fuels-genocide-and-nuclear-war/

https://www.unz.com/article/lew-rockwell-primacists-not-neocons-dominate-u-s-foreign-policy