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Bret Stephens is a columnist and editor for the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a former staff editor of Commentary magazine, both key bastions of neoconservative opinion. An avid proponent of aggressive U.S. policies in the Middle East and militarist Israeli security policies, Stephens’ distinctions include being named a “Young Global Leader” in 2004 by the World Economic Forum, receiving the Navy League's 2007 Frank Knox Media Award for his “important contributions to the vital role of the media in national defense,” and being named editor of the rightwing Jerusalem Post at the age of 28.[1] Stephens appears regularly on Fox News.com’s “The Journal Editorial Report” and serves on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, where he is “primarily responsible for the unsigned editorials on foreign policy” that appear in the Journal’s neoconservative-dominated editorial page.[2]

Stephens’ writings during the Obama administration have often focused on what he regards as President Obama’s “anti-Israel” posture. When Obama endorsed Israel’s 1967 borders as a starting point for future discussions about the borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state—discussions that the president said should entail “mutually agreed [land] swaps”—he was explicitly acknowledging what had been long-standing U.S. policy. However, Stephens joined a host of other right-wing commentators in accusing the president of “chutzpah,” adding that Obama was “sandbagging [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] with an adversarial policy speech a day before” the latter’s visit to Washington. Accusing the president of avoiding thornier issues like the right of return for Palestinian refugees (Stephens would forbid it) and the role of Hamas in any future Palestinian government (Stephens would promise “hard and specific consequences”), Stephens concluded that the president’s remarks amounted to “a formula for war.”[3]

On U.S. military intervention abroad, Stephens generally argues for a hawkish line. In Libya, for example, Stephens pointed to the apparent groundswell of support in the Arab world for the opposition forces there to argue: “Could it be that deep within the breast of every Arab apparatchik there lies the warmly beating heart of an interventionist neoconservative?”[4] Obama, however, was not a neoconservative, wrote Stephens, who concluded: “Neoconservatism became a dirty word in much of the world in the last decade, albeit less for the conception of policy than for the execution. Yet in Libya its basic prescription—target Gadhafi—happens to be the only one that is effective, right and popular. The administration ought to consider it lest liberalism supplant it as the dirtiest word in the foreign policy lexicon.”[5]

On Afghanistan, Stephens criticized Obama’s plans for gradual withdrawal, arguing that “a nation that abandons to the Taliban those it was once committed to protect shows that it lacks power and principle alike.”[6]

Summing up his view of the president, Stephens wrote: “I just think the president isn't very bright. … Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.”[7]

On Mideast peace issues, Stephens’ views are largely in line with those held by Israel’s Likud Party, which opposes Palestinian statehood. In an interview with the conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Stephens described former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud leader Ariel Sharon as “the most significant prime minister Israel has had since the founder, David Ben-Gurion.” Stephens praised Sharon’s often militarist policies toward the Palestinians, arguing that he had “defeated the Palestinian intifada and proved, therefore, that there is a military solution in the face of suicide terrorism, or other kinds of terrorism.” Regarding the George W. Bush administration’s hawkish stance on Palestinian issues, Stephens said, “I think this administration has been head and shoulders above its predecessors in being shrewd about [Yasser] Arafat, shrewd about the Palestinians, shrewd about what needs to happen, in order for the Palestinians to present some kind of realistic … for there to be some kind of realistic prospect of peace between the Palestinians and Israel.”[8]

Stephens has criticized the use of rhetoric linking Israeli actions to the actions of Nazi Germany. For example, Stephens wrote that “Jose Saramago, Portugal’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, observed after a visit to Ramallah that the Israeli incursion into the city ‘is a crime that may be compared to Auschwitz.’ Never mind that the total number of Jews ‘dealt with’ in the Warsaw ghetto, according to Nazi commandant Jürgen Stroop, was 56,065, whereas the number of Palestinians killed in Jenin was no more than 60.”[9] Yet Stepzhens often employs similarly sensationalist language when describing Middle East issues. He has called Iran an “existential” threat to Israel and Iranian leader President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “Hitlerian figure.”[10]

Stephens believes that Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped, yet unlike many other conservative writers, he thinks this can be done “without firing a shot.” In a Journal op-ed, Stephens argued that the Bush administration’s approach to the problem had failed miserably: “For three years, the administration has deferred to European and U.N. diplomacy while seeking to build consensus around the idea that a nuclear-armed Iran poses unacceptable risks to global security. The result: Seven leading Muslim states, including Pakistan and Indonesia, have joined hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to affirm his right to develop ‘peaceful’ nuclear technology. China and Russia have again rejected calls for U.N. sanctions.”[11]

Stephens laid out four nonviolent ways the United States can deal with Iran: 1) Undertake a “diplomatic offensive” aimed at exploiting divisions among Iranian political elites, for example by having Bush write an open letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei about conditions for negotiations, thereby bypassing and theoretically humiliating Ahmadinejad; 2) target financial interests by applying U.S. terrorism-financing laws on transactions between Iran and foreign banks; 3) support the creation of an independent labor movement that could challenge government policies; and 4) “threaten Iran’s gasoline supply” by quarantining imports into the country. Regarding the last suggestion, Stephens raises a potential problem: “One objection: A gas quarantine may require the naval blockade of Iranian ports, which is legally tantamount to an act of war. Not a problem, says [Rep. Rob] Andrews [D-NJ]: ‘I think the development of a nuclear weapon in violation of an international treaty is an act of war, too.’”[12]

Stephens has targeted those who question the close U.S.-Israel relationship. In a May 2006 speech, titled “Meet the Israel Lobby,” at his alma mater the University of Chicago, Stephens took aim at noted international relations scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer for their controversial 2006 paper, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which argued that lobbyists who worked on Israel-related issues in the United States had undue influence over U.S. policy in the Middle East, to the detriment of the United States. Stephens said: “Let’s be clear: What professors Walt and Mearsheimer have produced under the guise of disinterested scholarship is a demagogic, disingenuous, distorted, bigoted, factually inaccurate, analytically flawed, and intellectually wretched piece of work.”[13]

According to Stephens, intellectuals who criticize Israel are not necessarily antisemitic but do help “pave the way” for growing antisemitism. He cites the case of Walt and Mearsheimer: “Professors Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, whose paper on ‘The Israel Lobby’ is now being turned into a book, have complained that ‘anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy ... stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-semite.’ Maybe. But earlier this week, former Klansman David Duke took the opportunity to tell CNN that he does not hate Jews but merely opposes Israel and Israel’s influence in U.S. politics. He even cited Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer in his defense. Would they exonerate him of being an anti-Semite?”[14]

According to Stephens, while it might be the case that some writers are unfairly tagged as antisemitic merely because they are critical of Israel, this does not mean their positions are defensible. He writes: “So let’s also concede that it is not anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. … Yet simply because opposition to Zionism ideologically or Israel politically isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic, it doesn’t therefore follow that being anti-Zionist or anti-Israel are morally acceptable positions.”^[15]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.