The sincerity of most Tibetan protestors is not in question but does not change the ulterior motives of many of the powers that support them. The white Russians who had fled to the West in the wake of the Soviet Bolshevik Revolution had very good reasons to accuse the Communist rulers and to support a “White Counter-Revolution” but Britain, France and the USA had nonetheless obvious geopolitical and capitalistic motives to back them up.
The USA is not worried about historical realities or treaties as it reserves the right to decide when a country deserves to remain whole and sovereign and when it should be carved up, depending upon its “human rights record” and America’s own perceived interests and preferences. In the early sixties the USA, inheriting British India’s policies saw Tibet as one square on the global checkerboard, like Palestine, Yemen, Katanga, Biafra, Indochina, Indonesia, South Africa or Kashmir, where it was backing its own pawns against what is perceived as Soviet or Chinese ones.
The Dalai Lama had been under virtual British tutelage since the Younghusband expedition of 1903 and in Dharamshala as in Lhasa (where the 1959 insurrection and the Tibetan Pontiff’s subsequent flight were made possible by the CIA’s support) he remained closely controlled by the US advisors who saw him as a precious flag-bearer for Buddhist Tibetan and possibly Pan-Asian resistance against Communism. In Asia and in Europe, the USA took over the anti-Bolshevik and anti-Russian strategy of the pre-World War II Triplice heralded by General Ungern von Sternberg in Central Asia in 1917.
The inevitable corollary of that policy was the USA, despite its claims to stand for freedom and democracy groomed, installed and supported military dictators and trained death squads in several countries. Unwittingly the Dalai Lama and his clerical advisors became tools and victims of that system which was financially generous to them but kept them in a kind of limbo for four decades. They found themselves in the company of the many reactionary US-funded or assisted unelected strongmen who were fighting socio-economic upheavals, in Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Indochina, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Greece and all over Africa and Latin America in the name of political neocolonial stability and liberal capitalism. Paradoxically, for Tibet in the name of freedom and democracy, America and its allies supported a theocratic and feudal regime that, despite all the spiritual and cultural merits of its Buddhist heritage, rested on serfdom and slavery. In 1957, the CIA flew Tibetans to Dhaka, then in Pakistan and started a guerilla training program in Camp Hale, Colorado while stockpiling arms and military supplies in Thailand in preparation for a Tibetan war of national liberation. From 1959, the American government provided 1,7 million Dollars in funding annually to the Tibetan refugee leadership and 180,000 to the Dalai Lama’s himself.
China’s policies in Tibet were often far from edifying and like the rest of the country, the roof of the world fell in the turmoil caused by Maoist policies, especially the cultural revolution which was no kinder to Tibet’s people and cultural heritage than to China’s own. While the Red Guard ruthlessly implemented the national programme launched by the Chinese to abolish all vestiges of feudalism and capitalism at immense human and economic costs, the more conservative pragmatic elements in the Communist Party engineered a counter-revolution afer the demise of the “great helsman” in 1976 and sought to reverse the damage done to their society. They freed the Tibetan feudal and religious leaders who had cooperated with Beijing’s rule after the flight of the Dalai Lama and restored them to prominent positions. Deng Xiao Ping, the new national ruler also started secret talks with the Dalai Lama’s entourage to explore the possibility of his return.
Lamaism was rehabilitated as a legitimate expression of Tibetan culture, naturally under tight Communist Party supervision but it is doubtful that the ultra-reactionary and isolationistic policies followed by the Tibetan clerical government in Lhasa before 1950 and by the semi-sovereign grand lamas and feudal lords were desirable. The fact that there probably are now some 45,000 monks in Tibet’s monasteries should give cause for reflection to those who allege that a “cultural genocide” is being committed there, unless they believe that those monks are not genuine unless they are under the authority of an “indigenous” Buddhist government. Those who hold that view may or may not be Buddhists themselves but they definitely should agree with the Catholics of the nineteenth century who held that the Pope’s absolute sovereign powers were sacred and that Italy had no right to become politically united by annexing the Church’s state and its capital, Rome.
It is interesting to point out that, while the promoters of Mao’s cultural revolution fought to “liberate” the Tibetan masses from their feudal rulers by marshalling them into self-ruled agrarian communes, the economically conservative reformers who arrested the Gang of Four and put an end to their policies were far more conciliatory to the traditional hierarchy and land owning classes of Tibet and sought to make them allies of their rule even while they took a rather conventional “colonial” approach to the social and economic problems of that backward region. The threat posed by massive ethnic Han immigration into Tibet stems from Deng Xiao Ping’s Reformist policies more than from Mao’s plans.
Those who condemn Communism for the ills that the Chinese have inflicted on the Tibetans should realize that much of what is wrong with Tibet today comes from Beijing’s peculiar implementation of state capitalism on the roof of the world. The Americans who fostered and encouraged China’s evolution in that direction since the early seventies are hardly qualified to revile its effects.
That the Dalai Lama and the exiled leadership community did not accept the Chinese proposals to return home may be due to their legitimate suspicions of further possible reversals in the PRC’s policies and to their assessment that Beijing was not prepared to grant real autonomy to Tibet but it is clear that the Western backers of the Dalai Lama did not wish him to go back, as it would have been a tremendous ideological and diplomatic victory for China while the USA and its allies would have lost their leverage on him and on Beijing.
Washington wished to keep Tibet as another sword of Damocles on China’s head, along with Hong Kong and Taiwan which however turned out to be of more benefit to Beijing than to the USA in the long run once the PRC was able to integrate them into its economic sphere of influence. The dormant Tibetan issue is now being revived since the visit in November 2007 to the Dalai Lama by US Under-Secretary of State Paula Dobryanski, who played a role in other “coloured revolutions” backed by her country. She preceded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who came to Dharamshala in March 2008 and issued a bellicose message highly hostile to China.
Foreign visiting eye-witnesses to the Lhassa riots of last March have reported on the extreme violence used by the “demonstrators” who killed defenceless civilians and burned shops, venting their rage in particular at the Muslim commercial area of the city. The apologists for the Tibetans have conceded that unlawful acts were committed by the rioters but claim that they were inevitable or even legitimate reactions to foreign oppression. Accordingly Western powers pressured Beijing to open a dialogue with the Tibetan Government in exile, implying that more autonomy or even independence is on the cards.
The US, Britain and associated states are trying to build an Asian NATO on the four legs of a “democratic quartet” made up of Japan, South Korea, Australia and India primarily intended to contain China just as the European NATO is still intended to surround and eventually smother a recalcitrant Russia while occupied Middle Eastern states play the same role around Iran. All those plans for encirclement and conquest of countries that don’t accept submission to the “world’s only –but insolvent – superpower” are however fraught with uncertainty and doomed by the overreaching hubris of their authors. Bush’s schemes for a new American century and McCain’s vow for 100 years of US occupation in Iraq and equally endless colonial rule over Afghanistan and Pakistan sound like echoes of an earlier leader’s promise of a thousand year Reich. It is not surprising that the hegemonic successors of the German “Herrenvolk” are likewise guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, under the very terms defined at the Nuremberg Trial. END
April 2008
The USA is not worried about historical realities or treaties as it reserves the right to decide when a country deserves to remain whole and sovereign and when it should be carved up, depending upon its “human rights record” and America’s own perceived interests and preferences. In the early sixties the USA, inheriting British India’s policies saw Tibet as one square on the global checkerboard, like Palestine, Yemen, Katanga, Biafra, Indochina, Indonesia, South Africa or Kashmir, where it was backing its own pawns against what is perceived as Soviet or Chinese ones.
The Dalai Lama had been under virtual British tutelage since the Younghusband expedition of 1903 and in Dharamshala as in Lhasa (where the 1959 insurrection and the Tibetan Pontiff’s subsequent flight were made possible by the CIA’s support) he remained closely controlled by the US advisors who saw him as a precious flag-bearer for Buddhist Tibetan and possibly Pan-Asian resistance against Communism. In Asia and in Europe, the USA took over the anti-Bolshevik and anti-Russian strategy of the pre-World War II Triplice heralded by General Ungern von Sternberg in Central Asia in 1917.
The inevitable corollary of that policy was the USA, despite its claims to stand for freedom and democracy groomed, installed and supported military dictators and trained death squads in several countries. Unwittingly the Dalai Lama and his clerical advisors became tools and victims of that system which was financially generous to them but kept them in a kind of limbo for four decades. They found themselves in the company of the many reactionary US-funded or assisted unelected strongmen who were fighting socio-economic upheavals, in Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Indochina, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Greece and all over Africa and Latin America in the name of political neocolonial stability and liberal capitalism. Paradoxically, for Tibet in the name of freedom and democracy, America and its allies supported a theocratic and feudal regime that, despite all the spiritual and cultural merits of its Buddhist heritage, rested on serfdom and slavery. In 1957, the CIA flew Tibetans to Dhaka, then in Pakistan and started a guerilla training program in Camp Hale, Colorado while stockpiling arms and military supplies in Thailand in preparation for a Tibetan war of national liberation. From 1959, the American government provided 1,7 million Dollars in funding annually to the Tibetan refugee leadership and 180,000 to the Dalai Lama’s himself.
Lamaism was rehabilitated as a legitimate expression of Tibetan culture, naturally under tight Communist Party supervision but it is doubtful that the ultra-reactionary and isolationistic policies followed by the Tibetan clerical government in Lhasa before 1950 and by the semi-sovereign grand lamas and feudal lords were desirable. The fact that there probably are now some 45,000 monks in Tibet’s monasteries should give cause for reflection to those who allege that a “cultural genocide” is being committed there, unless they believe that those monks are not genuine unless they are under the authority of an “indigenous” Buddhist government. Those who hold that view may or may not be Buddhists themselves but they definitely should agree with the Catholics of the nineteenth century who held that the Pope’s absolute sovereign powers were sacred and that Italy had no right to become politically united by annexing the Church’s state and its capital, Rome.
It is interesting to point out that, while the promoters of Mao’s cultural revolution fought to “liberate” the Tibetan masses from their feudal rulers by marshalling them into self-ruled agrarian communes, the economically conservative reformers who arrested the Gang of Four and put an end to their policies were far more conciliatory to the traditional hierarchy and land owning classes of Tibet and sought to make them allies of their rule even while they took a rather conventional “colonial” approach to the social and economic problems of that backward region. The threat posed by massive ethnic Han immigration into Tibet stems from Deng Xiao Ping’s Reformist policies more than from Mao’s plans.
Those who condemn Communism for the ills that the Chinese have inflicted on the Tibetans should realize that much of what is wrong with Tibet today comes from Beijing’s peculiar implementation of state capitalism on the roof of the world. The Americans who fostered and encouraged China’s evolution in that direction since the early seventies are hardly qualified to revile its effects.
That the Dalai Lama and the exiled leadership community did not accept the Chinese proposals to return home may be due to their legitimate suspicions of further possible reversals in the PRC’s policies and to their assessment that Beijing was not prepared to grant real autonomy to Tibet but it is clear that the Western backers of the Dalai Lama did not wish him to go back, as it would have been a tremendous ideological and diplomatic victory for China while the USA and its allies would have lost their leverage on him and on Beijing.
Washington wished to keep Tibet as another sword of Damocles on China’s head, along with Hong Kong and Taiwan which however turned out to be of more benefit to Beijing than to the USA in the long run once the PRC was able to integrate them into its economic sphere of influence. The dormant Tibetan issue is now being revived since the visit in November 2007 to the Dalai Lama by US Under-Secretary of State Paula Dobryanski, who played a role in other “coloured revolutions” backed by her country. She preceded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who came to Dharamshala in March 2008 and issued a bellicose message highly hostile to China.
Foreign visiting eye-witnesses to the Lhassa riots of last March have reported on the extreme violence used by the “demonstrators” who killed defenceless civilians and burned shops, venting their rage in particular at the Muslim commercial area of the city. The apologists for the Tibetans have conceded that unlawful acts were committed by the rioters but claim that they were inevitable or even legitimate reactions to foreign oppression. Accordingly Western powers pressured Beijing to open a dialogue with the Tibetan Government in exile, implying that more autonomy or even independence is on the cards.
The US, Britain and associated states are trying to build an Asian NATO on the four legs of a “democratic quartet” made up of Japan, South Korea, Australia and India primarily intended to contain China just as the European NATO is still intended to surround and eventually smother a recalcitrant Russia while occupied Middle Eastern states play the same role around Iran. All those plans for encirclement and conquest of countries that don’t accept submission to the “world’s only –but insolvent – superpower” are however fraught with uncertainty and doomed by the overreaching hubris of their authors. Bush’s schemes for a new American century and McCain’s vow for 100 years of US occupation in Iraq and equally endless colonial rule over Afghanistan and Pakistan sound like echoes of an earlier leader’s promise of a thousand year Reich. It is not surprising that the hegemonic successors of the German “Herrenvolk” are likewise guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, under the very terms defined at the Nuremberg Trial. END
April 2008
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