Here is a great TNR article on how quickly the relationship is descending into our subservience.

That's a strange takeaway from the article, Saladin. My impression was that a complex and enormously important economic relationship with a government representing a quarter of the world's people is being well-managed, and that the administration has grown-up priorities.

This is just the latest example of what our 30 year 'engagement' policy vis a vis China has wrought. See my comment:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/trblmkr/2009/09/the-biggest-political-blunder.php

As to the fate of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans, they are just a somewhat starker example of the fate that awaits all of us. Nmaely, whatever global corporations want it to be.

This is a judgment call, but I agree with others above that Obama probably made the right call in postponing a meeting with the Dalai Lama (he is not canceling it), so that it does not coincide with the upcoming visit of Hu Jintao.

The Chinese ultimately do what's in their self interest, but they take offense at public gestures that they consider interference in their affairs, and the result is usually a temporary slowing of progress on issues of mutual concern. Given that these areas currently include North Korea, Iran, and global warming, it would require considerable benefit to ensue from offending them to offset the downside.

What benefit would be obtained by the symbolism of meeting with the Dalai Lama right before Hu Jintao's visit? The public rebuke would be unlikely to move the Chinese in the desired direction - none of the previous meetings has done that. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has reiterated strong statements she and others have made on behalf of the Administration in favor of Tibetan self-determination, and so there is no doubt where the Administration stands, but as she has pointed out, Chinese rejection of these positions is unchanging and predictable.

One can argue that a symbolic rebuke to the Chinese, deliberately chosen to coincide with their visit, will ultimately have moral power in the long run. It's impossible to completely refute that argument, but history has not yet made a strong case for it on this issue. Rather, it seems more likely that Tibet will ultimately benefit more from a U.S./China relationship in which each side is willing to make concessions to the other when the benefits outweigh the costs, combined with private rather than public diplomacy to push the Chinese toward recognition of the legitimate aspirations of the Tibetan people.

The only other benefit of meeting now instead of later would be to appease the rabid right wing critics of the President, as well as some on the extreme left as well, who see "in your face" confrontations as synonymous with strength. However, Obama has probably decided that attempts to restrain their denunciations would be as unsuccessful as attempts to change China through public symbolic gestures. He has wisely, I believe, decided instead to focus his attention on efforts that have some possibility of succeeding.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for taking up this issue. Please find below my comment reframed from my posting of 6 October 2009.

To placate the Chinese government, President Obama's meeting this week with his holiness the Dalai Lama, was postponed until after his trip to China.

One of the reasons given for postponing this meeting was that the Obama administration is implementing a new policy towards China, referred to as 'strategic reassurance.' In this new policy, human rights abuses are to be placed on the back burner, along with China's financial dealings. Why? Because the former issues might affect Chinese cooperation when dealing with the global economic crisis, global climate change, and global security issues, specifically nuclear weapon proliferation in North Korea and Iran.

Last week, and again yesterday, the Obama administration aided in suppressing the Goldstone report which identified War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity committed by Hamas and the Israeli military. The US Ambassador to the UN has openly stated she did not accept the findings of the report but, took said stand only with regards to Israel. Why? Because the US and Israel said discussions of the Goldstone report, either within the UN security council or within UN Human Right Commission, would diminish any prospects for peace.

I would beg to differ. I believe the moral high ground is the greatest strength any nation can bring to the negotiating table. America was always held in the highest regard , not because of its wealth or military power, but because it was a shining beacon of hope for the worlds oppressed, embodied in the words of Emma Lazarus "...Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp...give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door...'

We have been slowly but surely surrendering our moral clarity, with each rendition carried out, with each person tortured, with each War Criminal our leaders allow into this country, with each unjustified war we embrace, with each person we imprison and deny legal representation to, with each treaty/protocol of the Geneva Conventions we fail to live up to.

The US should not stand on the side of the oppressor. Rather it should take a stand as a staunch defender of victims of human rights abuses. The US should take a stand as a staunch defender of prosecuting any and all persons or nations who have committed War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity.

Human rights are not something to be swept aside. They should be defended at all costs. If we fail to defend the very principles on which this nation was founded, we would have already lost.

On a personal note I should say I had the great honor to hear The Dalai Lama speak, when attending graduate school at Cornell. This humble man spoke extemporaneously for 90 minutes about peace, love, forgiveness. About the humanity which resides in all of us. And the need for peaceful, non-violent resistance in the face of man's inhumanity to man. The need to look beyond ourselves and our needs, and to view ourselves as a citizen of one world. And to never compromise our inherent decency for materialism or personal gain, for if we do, we give up something of far greater value. We surrender, one grain at a time, our humanity.

Is it even possible that the White House might have reached out to the Dalai Lama before the postponement, and he gave his blessing to it?
I also got to hear him speak once in Boulder, CO many years ago. He was humorous, humble, and smoked like a chimney! He joked that smoking kept him on a more human plane...
I can imagine that he might have thought that for now a postponement might serve better long-term effects for the whole planet full of people.
Of what benefit was George Bush's meeting with his holiness?

I do wish that people would not call him 'Dolly Lama,' I'm pretty sure he pronounced it 'Dah-lie.'

The blue Root and maybe several others here appear to be somewhat stuck in the world as it was before Sept. 11, 2001, which pretty much accelerated the demise of America's unipolar moment.

It is a mistake to equate military strength with national power. Essentially and simply, national power is the ability to get other nations to do what you want them to do. There can't be anybody here that thinks the US still has that kind of power today.

Given the Chinese government's own editorial in the state paper late last month that not only flat out called for the US to leave Afghanistan but offered a road map on how the getting out should be done, it's a safe bet the subject will revolve much more around Afghanistan than Iran.

Among some of the highlights of the article, which was written by the deputy general of the China Council for National Security Policy Studies, Li Qinggong:

...Karzai has hammered home the perception that the US is not a reliable partner that can help end Afghanistan's current predicament. Talks, he thinks, is the only way out. The Afghan president is likely to open the process of tri-party peace talks with the Taliban and major warlords provided that the US ends its military action.

Germany, France and Britain have planned an international conference this year to discuss the gradual withdrawal of Afghanistan military deployment. International pressures may offer Obama another excuse to withdraw US troops.

Qinggong never mentions Pakistan and like most everybody except the neocons and some conservatives, doesn't buy the 'we have to win in Afghanistan to protect us from al Qaeda' theory of war justification.

He is absolutely right. There are no benefits for the US, either economically or security wise, to continue fighting this war. None. And it doesn't matter that the neo-conservatives will all scream that we will look weak. We already look weak and there is nothing we can do to change that perception. By leaving, we can at least try for looking belatedly smart.

All power has limits. We can look at Afghanistan as hitting our limit or we can look at getting out of there with the cooperation of China and Russia and the other members of the UNSC as a good reason to ask the Dali Lama to wait.

Better belated than never.

You know rootie, you're very guick to criticize, but slow to laud. I think that the appropriate term for that is "bitchy". Obama got handed this shitheap, and is doing his best to work his way out of it, as honorably as possible. Go stand outside Bush's house with a sign if you want to do that. Then you'll be blaming the asshole that's actually responsible for these circumstances.

"Mr. Rutabaga’s article only proves that he wisely chose a moniker that describes his intellectual capacity to properly research and then professionally communicate information about subjects that attract his fleeting attention."

Sorry, Root, but I'm pissing myself laughing about this last comment dropped on your Buffalo Jump blog. Sounds like someone at the HSIBJ Museum is... irked. When you can get museum staff and archaeologists irked, you know you're hitting the high notes on the "Irritating Blogger" scale. Oh those "fanatic adherents!" Next thing they'll be back with photos of that famous 50 FOOT CLIFF!

Rutabaga = description of intellectual capacity! That's a serious dissing, coming from people who work with the dead. We could take lessons.

P.S. Agree with today's blog. (But still laughing.)

How do you not meet with the Dalai Lama?

But I guess it sort of aligns thematically with not closing Gitmo.

http://lotsawahouse.org/yearningsong.html

"Alas! The force of negative actions is powerful indeed!

Yet do not faith, positive intentions, concern for others and the force of blessings

Also have their power? So help us now to create the right circumstances,

In which our virtues will swiftly bear their fruit and bring us the fulfilment of our wishes!"

Obama shuns the holy beggar at our peril.