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My Dinner with Fidel

In an exclusive excerpt from Power Rules, Leslie H. Gelb examines how lobbyists influence foreign policy, starting with some provocative insight from one of America’s favorite foes—Fidel Castro.

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To comprehend the power of [lobbies], take a fanatical member of an NGO—a global warming diehard, for example—and cube his passion, and you will get a Cuban-American, an Israeli-American, the old Greek-American, and now the new Indian-American lobbyist. They have passion, and passion produces power.

My job at the State Department gave me the lead position on arms sales, and for a variety of strategic reasons, I pushed very hard to approve a wide range of arms sales to Israel. Hearing from their inside sources that I had been opposing these sales, the various groups in the Israel lobby struck hard at me. One of the many attacks was one I learned of from my own mother. She phoned from her nursing home in tears. “It says here in The Jerusalem Post that you’re a cold Jew, and you won’t help Israel.”

“So, you admit you don’t have a democracy.” Castro moved in for the kill: “Rule by minorities is no kind of democracy.”

In 1996, my wife, Judy, and I dined with Fidel Castro and a handful of his aides in Havana. Castro launched into his familiar rant against the Cuban American National Foundation, America’s formidable anti-Castro lobby. “Jorge Mas Canosa [its leader] runs U.S. policy on Cuba; he’s the one stopping trade and better Cuban-American relations against the wishes of most Americans,” Castro thundered.

To his surprise, I conceded, “You’re right. Interested and powerful minorities in my country, in almost every country, generally carry the day on their issues. Senior citizens control Medicare, the gun lobby on guns, teachers on education, American Jews on Israel, and yes, the Cuban American National Foundation on Cuba.”

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“So, you admit you don’t have a democracy.” Castro moved in for the kill: “Rule by minorities is no kind of democracy.”

“But we in the United States have the right and opportunity to change the dominant minorities by democratic means . . . unlike Cubans. And the president can still defeat these lobbies if he’s prepared to fight,” I countered. He who had never lost an argument was unimpressed.

The fact was that the Cuban American National Foundation had been running U.S. policy toward Cuba. Because of the passions of many Cuban exiles in America, their voting power in Florida and New Jersey, and their funding of political allies, few Democrats or Republicans wished to wrestle with them. But by the same token, no president thought that the issue of establishing better relations with Castro was worth a political brawl with the exiles. In the constellation of American national interests and threats to American vital interests, Castro’s Cuba did not rank high in any White House. When the time comes and a president decides that the exiles have lost their clout, especially now that Castro is out of power, the president will establish new and friendly relations with Cuba. Until then, it is easier for occupants of the White House to let the exiles shape the policy. Cuba isn’t that important.

However, it is also the case that various presidents have secretly kept in direct contact with high-level Cuban officials. Flying to Havana and holding meetings with Castro have been a favorite pastime of senators for decades. And when push came to shove, Bill Clinton did send Elián González back to Cuba, against the fervent wishes of Cuban-Americans.

As a rule, however, presidents don’t want these unbridled passions to organize against them politically. Lobbies do make an enormous amount of noise and receive a great deal of attention. Thus, in general, presidents let these lobbies have their way—until a president decides that the issue at hand is sufficiently important to take a lobby on. When that moment comes, presidents do confront the lobbies and override their wishes.

The China lobby prevented Washington from having high-level contact with communist China from 1949 until Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in July 1971. At that point, Nixon and Kissinger concluded that they could maneuver China into their diplomacy as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, and that ties with China were of supreme importance to that goal. Kissinger met with the Chinese secretly to avoid counterpressure from the China lobby, and then publicly announced contacts and future ties with the mainland. With that one stroke, Nixon instantly halved the power of the China lobby. Of course, it greatly helped that he was a card-carrying conservative anticommunist. All the lobby could do from then on was to help make it impossible for Washington to abandon Taiwan to China, something no president would have done anyway.

As for the vaunted Israel lobby, it has been very successful at maintaining high levels of economic and military aid for Israel and at reinforcing America’s support for Israel’s security. But for all its political pull, the Israel lobby could not prevent U.S. arms sales to key Arab countries; nor could it stop administrations from endorsing, first privately and then publicly, a Palestinian state carved from Israeli-occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank.

These lobbies pop up regularly. Most recently, Indian-American business leaders have joined to create a pro-India lobby and helped gain Congressional backing for a controversial nuclear agreement between India and the United States. American business leaders have effective lobbies to protect their economic interests with China. But if China starts to lob missiles at Taiwan or to confront Japan over oil in the East China Sea, those potent lobbies will immediately retreat.

Presidents generally give the lobbies a wide berth. They watch the power of lobbies wax and wane, and when it is waxing, presidents fear them. Fighting them is generally too costl—unless the White House feels that a vital national interest is at stake. When that happens, presidents do fight and win, and the lobbies lose.

Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of the forthcoming HarperCollins book Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Excerpted from Power Rules by Leslie H. Gelb © 2009 with permission from the publisher Harper.

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