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MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: ELLEN BORK, Deputy Director
SUBJECT: U.S. Policy on Tibet
Over the past several years, Tibet has received greater and higher level attention from the United States than in the past. A special position for Tibetan affairs was created within the State Department under the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration filled the job with the highest ranking official yet. Nevertheless, U.S. policy has not progressed beyond a mantra-like expression of support for “the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity,” the “human rights of all Tibetans” and “substantive dialogue” between China and the Dalai Lama.
Of course, Tibetans cannot achieve these goals without political rights. Nor can they resist the threat from Beijing’s population transfers of ethnic Chinese, economic marginalization of Tibetans, extensive environmental degradation and the militarization of the Tibetan plateau. These problems will only be intensified by Beijing’s Western development initiative that includes a railroad connecting Lhasa with Qinghai province.
Confining U.S. policy to questions of “identity” and “dialogue” also neglects the geostrategic implications of China’s subjugation of Tibet and the rest of China’s far West. Recently, China has begun trying to restore its influence in Central Asia which waned in the aftermath of September 11. Access to Central Asian oil is increasingly important to China. To the South, it is cultivating India, Nepal and Burma, through which it seeks access to the Indian Ocean.
A U.S. policy on Tibet that does not address these issues and fails to exert pressure on China to allow true autonomy and self-rule for Tibetans is nothing more than photo-op diplomacy.
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