Why Does Washington Love The Dalai Lama?
All Things Consider — By Daniel Strauss on February 10, 2010 at 11:32 am“Why Does Washington Love the Dalai Lama?” Obama has evidently decided to meet with the Dalai Lama this year (a meeting he declined last year). This is the kind of thing that really puzzles me. I love the Dalai Lama, but I do not understand what utility the US gains by maintaining connections with him and the Tibetan Government in Exile (GIE). After Nixon normalized relations with Communist China in the early ‘70s, Washington all but dropped relations with Tibet since it was no longer useful as a local bastion against Communism in China. But US presidents – particularly in recent times – continue to meet with the Dalai Lama. Hell, George Bush even gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Politicians play word games about this – saying they only meet with the Dalai Lama as a “religious and cultural leader,” as the article puts it, to assuage Beijing’s fears of anti-Chinese, pro-Tibetan conspiracy. But I find it highly unlikely that there isn’t some political talk happening at these get-togethers. So what’s going on here?
An easy response would be to acknowledge that the US and China are far from perfect allies. We’ve certainly done enough to tick them off these days, and the Dalai Lama meeting tops it all off. You could say that maintaining ties with the Dalai and his “clique” (as China is so fond of calling the GIE) is a way to latently maintain an ally against China just in case things get really ugly.
This is good as far as it goes, but politically and militarily, the GIE is the weakest of the weak. It certainly could never be a substantive US ally. On the other hand, I feel like an interesting parallel can be drawn between Tibet and Israel. Many Jews were for centuries a dislocated people, and the institution (or reinstitution, depending on your viewpoint) of Israel in the Middle East is a fact to be fiercely protected. The US takes advantage of this, funneling Israel tons of military support and using it as its local headquarters and nexus of force in the region. Might the US see Tibet as a potential future Israel in South Asia? The Tibetans, too, are a displaced people, and were they ever to reclaim territorial Tibet they could be an invaluable US ally in the region, not only with regard to China but also India (at best a distant US ally) and Pakistan. Maybe that’s a stretch. What do you all think?
–Aaron Bekemeyer
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2 Comments
The US didn’t give Israel any military aid until 1973, a full 25 years after Israel declared its independence. Also, if you think having a Middle Eastern military headquarters is the only reason for our strong relationship with Israel, you’re missing most of the picture. Business partnerships help boost our economy and Israeli military technology saves countless US soldiers’ lives on the battlefield.
Basically, Israel was built without US aid, and only after it became a strong force in the region did the United States become a strong ally. I’d consider the comparison between Israel and Tibet a weak one at best.
Certainly the US-Israeli relationships hasn’t always been the way it is now (though, interestingly, the US was the first government to grant Israel de facto diplomatic recognition), but I think the timing you point out is interesting. America’s full-fledged military support for the country came in the early 70s, but this was following Eisenhower’s failure to woo Egypt in the 50s and Washington’s pleasure on seeing Israel, a liberal, democratic state, militarily hold it ground against Soviet-backed nations like Egypt.
My main point was to highlight the geopolitical nature of America’s alliance with Israel and wonder if it had some parallels with the Tibet situation. You’re right to point out the economic connections, and the US notably lacks both important military and economic connections with Tibet. So _what_ is it, then, that Washington values in its relationship with the Dalai Lama? I can only think that geopolitical considerations must play a huge role.