On May 2, U.S. law enforcement indicted Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) on charges of taking at least $360,000 in bribes from companies controlled by the government of Azerbaijan. In exchange for money, Cuellar would attempt to shape the U.S. foreign policy towards Azerbaijan by spreading narratives favorable to that nation’s interests through speeches and legislative measures.
While the challenge of undue foreign interference in U.S. politics is not new, the case of Azerbaijan highlights a particular vulnerability in U.S. foreign policy: Washington’s fixation on inflexible alliances and enmities provides a fertile ground for foreign actors to exploit it to promote their own parochial agendas that have little to do with U.S. interests.
Azerbaijan has been an adept player on the Washington scene since the early 1990s when the country’s abundant hydrocarbon riches boosted its claims to geostrategic relevance. As detailed in a Quincy Institute brief, since 2015 Azerbaijan spent over $7 million on lobbying efforts in Washington, according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records. And, as the indictment of Cuellar shows, that is likely only a tip of the iceberg: Azerbaijan has a long track record of illicit influence operations known as “caviar diplomacy” consisting of bribing politicians in the U.S. and Europe to promote its interests. In fact, in January 2024 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted to suspend Azerbaijan’s membership due, in part, to those corrupt dealings.
Azerbaijan’s efforts have to be seen in the context of its decades-long conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh — a historically Armenian-majority region but within the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan. To garner U.S. and EU support, Baku’s lobbying machine, including PR firms, friendly politicians, pundits, and think tanks pitched the country as the West’s geopolitical asset against Russia and Iran — Azerbaijan borders both. As a Washington insider, who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, familiar with Cuellar’s case and Baku’s broader lobbying schemes put it, playing up Russian and Iranian threats is an old trick used by Baku to “attract attention on the Hill.”
Hellbound and Down 