The World

Who knew that the US had such a powerful Armenian community? Nobody doubts it now – after the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee voted to label the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The vote has already caused a minor diplomatic crisis – with potentially serious implications.

But it also underlines something really important about US foreign policy – the extent to which it is driven by ethnic lobbies. The most famous is the Jewish lobby – call it the Israel lobby, if you want to be more precise and less controversial.

But the Jews are not the only group who know how to make their influence felt. Off the top of my head, I can think of several other cases. Black America mobilised very effectively over South Africa in the 1980s and played a vital role in pushing sanctions through. They have now gone a bit quiet on foreign policy – although Black America is still an important voice on issues like Darfur and Haiti.

Cuban-Americans are another obvious case – making sure with their voting power in Florida, money and nuisance value that the US maintains a really hard line against Cuba. Irish-Americans were vital in making sure that the US played an active role in the Northern Ireland peace process – and in pushing the British to talk to the IRA, against our better judgement. Galling as it is to admit it – in retrospect, the Irish-Americans were probably right. Now we have the Armenians. And in future, I would look out for the power of Indian-Americans. They have numbers, money and ties to the old country – so could be expected to play a powerful role in American foreign policy.

But not all hyphenated Americans are this effective. It is difficult to think of a discernible impact of Chinese-Americans on US foreign policy. And while it has long been predicted that Arab-Americans might become a more effective counterweight to the Israel lobby, so far it hasn’t happened.

So I have a few questions. Have I missed out any other obvious examples of hyphenated-Americans influencing US foreign policy? Second, why are some groups so effective and others so quiet? Is this kind of lobbying a bad thing or just a regular part of democratic politics? I ask this last question with a certain amount of foreboding, since I do not particularly want to spark off another round of the "Israel lobby" debate. Can we talk about the Cubans and the Armenians for a change?