Croatian Americans in the context of European American

The Croatian diaspora (Croatian: Hrvatsko iseljeništvo or Hrvatsko rasuće) consists of ethnic Croat people, their descendants, and Croatian citizens living outside of Croatia. An excess of four million people are part of the Croatian diaspora. The nationality laws of Croatia affords citizenship by birth, ancestry, and naturalization, growing the Croatian citizen population living abroad.

Estimates on its size are only approximate because of incomplete statistical records and naturalization, but upper-level estimates suggest that the Croatian diaspora numbers between a third and a half of the total number of Croats. Within neighboring Southeast Europe, the largest community are with the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the constituent nations of that country, amounting to about 545,000. Outside of these two regions, broader Europe is home to around one million Croatians, with 1.7 million living overseas. The largest diaspora community is in the United States at 1.2 million Croatian Americans, which significantly influence Croatia–United States relations. In Western Europe, the largest group is found in Germany with a reported 228,000 Croatian Germans as of 2006, with some estimates including naturalized citizens as high as 500,000. There are significant numbers of the diaspora in the Indo-Pacific, mainly in Australia (165,000) and New Zealand (up to 100,000).

The foreign, diplomatic, economic, and political relations between Croatia and the United States were established on April 7, 1992 following the independence of Croatia. By the late-1990s, the U.S. established Croatia as its strongest geopolitical connection to Southeast Europe. Modern relations are considered to be warm and friendly, with stalwart bilateral collaboration. The Croatian diaspora in the U.S. is the largest, estimated to be around 1.2 million which, in part, informs the foreign policy of Croatia. The two nations have strong connectivity through tourism, immigration, foreign aid, and economic mutualism.

Croatia and the U.S. are close military allies and share a robust bilateral defense industrial base. U.S. interests in Croatia are centered on the state's stabilizing influence in the region and extending the global reach of jointly-held Western ideals. The U.S. trained and equipped the Croatian Armed Forces in joint-initiation of Operation Storm during the Croatian War of Independence, helping to secure much of modern Croatian borders. Both are members of NATO. After the 2022 Tu-141 drone crash in Zagreb, the U.S. dispatched two F-16 fighter jets in a show of military strength for Croatia.

Austrian Americans (German: Österreichamerikaner, pronounced [ˈøːstɐraɪçameriˌkaːnɐ]) are Americans of Austrian descent, chiefly German-speaking Catholics and Jews. According to the 2000 U.S. census, there were 735,128 Americans of full or partial Austrian descent, accounting for 0.3% of the population. The states with the largest Austrian American populations are New York (93,083), California (84,959), Pennsylvania (58,002) (most of them in the Lehigh Valley), Florida (54,214), New Jersey (45,154), and Ohio (27,017).

This may be an undercount since many German Americans, Czech Americans, Polish Americans, Slovak Americans, Slovenian Americans, Croatian Americans, and Ukrainian Americans, and other Americans with Central European ancestry can trace their roots from the Habsburg territories of Austria, the Austrian Empire, or Cisleithania in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, regions which were major sources of immigrants to the United States before World War I, and whose inhabitants often assimilated into larger immigrant and ethnic communities throughout the United States.