Almost 50 years have passed since Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye’s groundbreaking book Transnational Relations and World Politics (1970) challenged the state-centrism that dominated mainstream international relations scholarship. Since then, political scientists have paid increasing attention to a wide variety of nonstate actors involved in global politics, among them diaspora groups, ethnic groups, and religious communities, who often engage in transnational activism on behalf of their ethnic kin or coreligionists. While recent technological developments and globalization have greatly facilitated such transnational activism, making it much easier for members of communities dispersed across the world to maintain ties, regularly interact, and politically mobilize, it is by no means a new phenomenon. In fact, it has been occurring for well over a century, as exemplified in the case of Jews, whose transnational activism dates back to at least the middle of the nineteenth century.

As a traditionally stateless and dispersed diaspora, living as a vulnerable and often persecuted minority, Jews have had to frequently engage in international diplomacy, advocacy, and philanthropy on behalf of themselves and Jewish communities in other countries, in order to ensure their security and survival. Jewish transnational activism has often aroused the suspicions of non-Jews and been the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (put forward most notoriously in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in 1903). Myths about international Jewish conspiracies and plots are, sadly, still common today. But as Michael Barnett writes in his engaging new book, The Star and The Stripes: “There is nothing insidious about a political community organizing to protect itself to advance its interests in the world. It is quite normal” (p. 38). When a political community (such as a national, ethnic, or religious group) does this, it develops a foreign policy, just as states do.

What determines a political community’s foreign policy? How does it relate to those outside the community? Is it only geared toward defending or advancing the community’s narrow self-interests, or can it also take on a broader ethical commitment to others? In his book, Barnett explores these questions through a historical case study of the American Jewish community, by far the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful Jewish community outside of Israel. He offers an “interpretive history” (p. 11) of how American Jews have understood the world and their role in it, how this has shaped their engagement with the world, and their responses to major international events and developments (most notably, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, and the rise of globalization in the post–Cold War period). The book surveys the foreign policies of American Jews from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, and is organized chronologically, with chapters covering five distinct periods (roughly, 1840–1914, 1914–45, 1945–67, 1967–90, 1990–today).

Barnett is not a historian, and his book is not based upon any new archival research. Instead, he skillfully synthesizes the abundant scholarly literature on American Jewish history, as well as the smaller but growing body of research on “Jewish internationalism” and “Jewish foreign policy.” (For example, on “Jewish internationalism,” see Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France, 2006; on “Jewish foreign policy” see Dov Waxman and Scott Lasensky, “Jewish Foreign Policy: Israel, World Jewry, and the Defense of ‘Jewish Interests,’” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 12(2), 2013; Shmuel Sandler “Toward a Theory of World Jewish Politics and Jewish Foreign Policy,” Hebraic Political Studies 2(3), 2007.)

The historical narrative presented will be familiar to scholars of American Jewish history and politics, but will likely be of interest to a wider audience of political scientists and general readers. Some readers, for instance, might well be surprised to learn that American Jewish activism abroad has been concerned with much more than just Israel. Prominent and influential American Jews and Jewish organizations (most notably, the American Jewish Committee, established in 1906) were active in international affairs long before Israel’s founding, and even afterwards it took roughly two decades until support for Israel came to dominate the foreign policy agenda of the American Jewish community (largely in response to the 1967 war, which had a profound impact on American Jewry’s attitudes toward Israel and the wider world [p. 159]). Nowadays, although Israel continues to be the focus of American Jewish foreign policy activism, it is not the only issue that mobilizes American Jews. Many young American Jews are more interested in international humanitarianism and social justice activism—expressed through the fashionable Jewish concept of tikkun olam (“to repair the world”)—than they are in advocating for Israel. Barnett, whose previous work has focused on international humanitarianism (e.g., his 2011 book Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism), offers a particularly insightful analysis of the current popularity of humanitarianism among young Jews, linking it to the ambivalence or even alienation that many feel toward Israel, and to broader political and cultural trends associated with contemporary globalization.

The Star and The Stripes contains many astute observations about the general foreign policy beliefs and attitudes of American Jews, especially as they pertain to Israel (although survey data—which Barnett eschews—contradicts his suggestion that American Jews have become less attached to Israel). The book does not, however, go into much detail about the specific views of American Jews. Although public opinion polls are far from perfect, he could have made use of them. Nor does the book disaggregate American Jewish opinion. Instead, it tends to make generalizations about American Jewish attitudes, while deliberately excluding the views of Orthodox American Jews (who currently make up about 10% of the American Jewish population).

The most original aspect of The Star and The Stripes, and its major scholarly contribution, is the excellent analytical framework that Barnett uses to identify the sources of American Jewish activism abroad, a framework that could also be applied in order to understand the foreign policies of other diasporic communities. He locates the sources of American Jewish foreign policy not in ancient Jewish texts but in the American Jewish historical experience and American Jewish identity. Without explicitly doing so, he draws upon constructivist IR theory (to which he was an early contributor) to argue that the foreign policy orientation of American Jews is fundamentally shaped by their American Jewish identity. Rejecting an essentialist conception of Jewish identity, he uses a relational approach to identity to argue that Jewish identity is shaped in relation to the wider, non-Jewish society. Thus, according to Barnett, “the external world of the Gentiles affects the identity of the Jews, and the identity of the Jews shapes their own beliefs toward the world outside their community” (p. 20). In the case of American Jews, the American domestic context has shaped their identity, values, and interests, which, in turn, shapes their foreign policies. The author claims that there is some path dependency in the way that American Jews see themselves and engage with the world—“the way history and culture lock in beliefs, habits, and interests” (p. 49)—but that external factors, specifically Israel, worldwide anti-Semitism, and the global climate of cosmopolitanism also influence the foreign policies of American Jews.

Barnett argues that the collective identity of American Jews has been shaped by their status as a minority, and by the fact that they have generally been accepted and integrated into American society, encountering less anti-Semitism than their counterparts in Europe. “The American experience explains why American Jews are different,” Barnett writes; “American Jews are different because America is different. And America is different because it did not treat its Jews as different” (p. 8). Although this may overstate American Jewish exceptionalism, he is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that the relatively benign historical experience of American Jewry has shaped American Jewish identity and fostered a distinctive American Judaism (characterized by the popularity of what Barnett calls “Prophetic Judaism”). Along with embracing a more universalistic and less insular and tribal conception of Judaism, American Jews have championed liberalism and pluralism domestically (the former to gain equality, the latter to resist assimilation), and have generally advocated liberal internationalism overseas (they have, for instance, actively lobbied for the creation of international organizations—the League of Nations and the United Nations—and for international laws to protect minorities and guarantee human rights). Hence, according to Barnett, American Jews have historically preferred a more cosmopolitan foreign policy orientation because of their own particular needs and identity.

Nevertheless, Barnett shows that the balance between cosmopolitanism (universalism) and tribalism (particularism) in the foreign policy orientation of American Jews has waxed and waned over time under changing historical circumstances, and particularly in response to major international events. He describes how American Jewry gradually became more particularistic and less universalistic in its foreign policies (as reflected, for instance, in its growing support for Zionism, which was initially viewed as a threat to American Jewish integration), but Barnett adds significant nuance to his account by showing how particularism can sometimes be expressed through universalism (as it is in the current work of the Jewish humanitarian aid organization, the American Jewish World Service), and how universalism can coexist, albeit uneasily, with particularism (as it has done in American Jewish attitudes toward Israel).

In sum, The Star and The Stripes is an invaluable guide to understanding how American Jews have historically engaged with the world, how this has changed over time, and what has influenced the nature of this engagement. As a guide to the current and future foreign policies of American Jews, however, the book falls short in its final chapters. Young, non-Orthodox American Jews might prefer humanitarianism and social justice activism, but the established leadership of the American Jewish community, and its major organizations, largely remains focused on, and fiercely committed to, uncritically supporting Israel and combating anti-Semitism. It is not so much the liberal, cosmopolitan beliefs and attitudes of most American Jews that is most reflected in the prevailing foreign policy orientation of the “American Jewish establishment” (p. 40) but the more conservative, particularistic, and hawkish views of a highly mobilized and outspoken minority (who tend to be older and more religious). What shapes American Jewish foreign policy, then, is not just the popular zeitgeist, but the powerful individuals and organizations that actually conduct this foreign policy, however unrepresentative they might be.