Getting Uncle Sam’s Ear: Will Ethnic Lobbies Cramp America’s Foreign Policy Style

 From the Brookings Institute, another interesting take on ethnic lobbies and when they are successful:

"For a country that draws its citizens literally from around the globe, the United States is host to remarkably few ethnic foreign policy lobbies. One looks in vain, for example, for Dutch, French Canadian, Italian, or Norwegian lobbies. And their absence cannot be explained by size or geographic dispersion. Each of these immigrant communities is far larger than those from, say, Greece or Cuba and is, like them, concentrated in a few U.S. states where they could make their electoral clout felt.

The truth is that ethnic groups weigh in on foreign policy matters only when conditions are right. Immigrants who came to the United States as political exiles (think Cubans) are much more likely to try to influence policy toward their ancestral homeland than those who came to find a better life (think French Canadians or Italians). Ethnics whose real or symbolic ancestral homelands are threatened by their neighbors (think Armenia, Greece, or Israel) are also more likely to lobby than those who come from countries that are secure (think Norway or Portugal). And it is no coincidence that prominent lobbies like Armenian Americans, Cuban Americans, Greek Americans, and Jewish Americans represent the most economically successful American ethnic groups. Impoverished ethnic groups are usually too focused on their own plight to worry about those they have left behind."

Similarly to McCormick, Lindsay writes:

"So when are ethnic lobbies likely to get their way? That depends on both the characteristics of the lobby itself and the broader political context in which it operates. On the internal side of the ledger what matters is a community’s size, commitment, unity, resources, and most important, its political skill or ability to make effective use of the first four qualities... The broader political factors that influence an ethnic lobby’s effectiveness begin with whether it wants to preserve or to overturn the status quo. Preserving it is far easier—a lobby prevails if it wins at any step of the political process...A second broad political factor is whether other powerful interests support or oppose an ethnic lobby’s aims. "

Looking at the big picture:

"Still, concerns that ethnic lobbies sacrifice U.S. interests can easily be overblown and usually are. To begin with, policies that benefit other countries do not necessarily harm the United States and may even help it...

Finally, the focus on where the loyalties of ethnic lobbies lie misses the contributions that they make to U.S. foreign policy. The transmission belt that enables ethnic lobbies to inject foreign perspectives into American politics also operates, perhaps even more strongly, in the opposite direction. As the political scientist Yossi Shain argues in Marketing the American Creed Abroad, ethnic lobbies are instrumental in disseminating American values and interests in their ancestral homelands. They frequently press ancestral governments to accommodate themselves to American political realities and hold them to American standards on everything from human rights to good governmental practices to economic policy. For that reason the consequence of America’s growing Latino community may be as much the “Americanization” of Latin America (or parts of it) as it is the “Latinization” of America. Likewise, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans may play a crucial role in blunting anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic worlds...

As a result, the appearance of new ethnic lobbies will undoubtedly change some policies; but, in the main, the end result of ethnic lobbying will be not so much to capture American foreign policy as to enrich it."