When donations decide wars: How lobbyists sway US foreign policy

Three stories in recent American politics seem, at first glance, unrelated.

In Washington, Israeli leaders and pro-Israel advocacy networks have been pressing the US toward an uncompromising stance against Iran, framing confrontation as necessary for regional stability. In Florida, US policy toward Cuba and Venezuela remains strikingly rigid, shaped in part by the electoral influence of Cuban- and Venezuelan-American constituencies and lawmakers such as Marco Rubio. And in the realm of sports, when freestyle skier Eileen Gu chose to represent China rather than the US, public debate quickly escalated beyond athletic competition into questions of loyalty, identity and geopolitical symbolism.

These episodes span diverse topics ranging from security policy to regional diplomacy and sports culture. Yet they reveal a shared structural truth: American foreign policy is deeply entangled with immigration patterns, organised lobbying and campaign finance dynamics.

The US is a nation of immigrants, as recent New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani famously reclaims. Immigration introduces not only demographic change but also transnational political engagement. Diaspora communities maintain emotional, economic and political ties to ancestral homelands. Over time, these ties become organised advocacy networks.

In a pluralist democracy, such advocacy is not aberrational — it is protected and expected. Scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have documented the role of ethnic lobbying in shaping US foreign policy, particularly regarding Israel and other homeland-related issues. Whether one agrees with their full thesis or not, the structural mechanism they describe is undeniable: interest groups mobilise voters, fund campaigns, and shape congressional behaviour. 

Lobbying and campaign finance play central roles in the American political system. Political Action Committees (PACs) and Super PACs significantly influence electoral outcomes. Major donors such as Miriam Adelson publicly contribute enormous sums to presidential campaigns. Electoral dynamics in swing states further amplify diaspora political influence, as the Pew Research Center electoral analyses suggest. In such a system, foreign policy positions are never purely strategic calculations; they are also electoral calculations.

This structural dynamic produces what might be called “pendulum diplomacy”. One pole is high-commitment alliance politics. US security assistance to Israel, for example, has been consistently supported across administrations, climbing to unprecedented and extraordinarily costly levels. The other pole is persistent adversarial policy. The US embargo on Cuba has been in place for decades despite annual United Nations (UN) General Assembly votes condemning it. The recent US capture of Maduro in Venezuela has elevated the level of hostility to that of an enemy.

The pendulum dynamic becomes especially visible when geopolitical rivalry intersects with relatively weak lobbying influence. The debate surrounding Eileen Gu’s decision to compete for China generated extensive commentary on national loyalty from 2022 to the present. By contrast, Americans who serve in the Israel Defense Forces to massacre the Palestinians — often under dual citizenship — rarely generate comparable nationwide loyalty debates. Even Jonathan Pollard, one of the most damaging spies in US history, was released by the US government in 2015. Unbelievably, he later met US ambassador Mike Huckabee to “thank” him for his support. 

On the other hand, Trump’s China Initiative, launched in 2018, reflected the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforces the president’s overall national security strategy.  Similarly, there has been no political accusation or judicial prosecution of Israel’s lobbying organisations for controlling US politicians through political donations. Jewish Miriam Adelson reportedly gave US$100 million to Trump in 2024 and promised another US$250 million for a third term. By contrast, federal investigations into Chinese associates of former New York City mayor Eric Adams have targeted Chinese Americans, including Winnie Greco, as one example. It is lobbying and political donations that, to some extent, define “US interests” and “national security”. 

But the pendulum does not swing in only one direction. Foreign policy choices, especially disastrous ones, feed back into domestic politics. The war in Gaza, for example, intensified campus protests across American universities and revealed generational divides within the Democratic Party. Some analysts suggested that Middle East policy complicated coalition management among younger and progressive voters. Democrats working on a secret report found that Gaza cost Kamala Harris votes.

While elections are shaped by multiple factors — including economic conditions and inflation — foreign policy controversies and disasters increasingly spill into domestic electoral calculations. This feedback loop is crucial. Diaspora advocacy influences foreign policy. Foreign policy outcomes reshape electoral coalitions. Electoral shifts then recalibrate diplomatic posture. The pendulum swings again.

The US remains extraordinarily powerful: its military capabilities are unmatched, its alliance network spans continents, and its financial system anchors the global economy. Yet power does not automatically translate into strategic clarity. A coherent foreign policy requires insulation from narrow pressures that elevate ethnic or sectarian priorities above the broader national interest. Foreign policy-linked lobbying introduces precisely this risk, as seen in US-Middle East relations.

While advocacy is constitutionally protected and diaspora communities are legitimate participants in democratic life, highly organised and well-funded lobbying networks focused on specific foreign countries can exert disproportionate influence over congressional incentives and executive calculations. In such circumstances, policy can gradually shift from reflecting the aggregated interests of the American public to advancing the narrower objectives of the specific ethnicity or religion that lobbying networks implicitly or explicitly represent. 

The cumulative effect risks redefining the “national interest” through the lens of donor sensitivity and organised pressure rather than through a comprehensive assessment of what serves the US as a whole. The increased fiscal burdens, because of sending aid to countries that lobbyists work for, or as a result of fighting against the countries the lobbyists hate, are unethically shared by all American taxpayers without proportional gains in national security.

The result is a distortion of strategic judgment: when campaign contributions, access to policymakers and electoral leverage become tightly aligned with the priorities of foreign governments or transnational causes, the US risks deep divisions over foreign policy — divisions that may spill over to affect its allies.

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