Obama-Dalai Lama meeting mishandled

There should also be a moratorium on moral equivalence in talking about the situation in Tibet and Sino-Tibetan talks. When the president of the United States calls for dialogue “to resolve any concerns and differences the two sides may have”, it sounds like he is talking about a disputed soccer match rather than the occupation and brutalization of Tibet. Such “evenhandedness” lets the Chinese side off the hook and pressurizes the Dalai Lama in a way that is not conducive to a positive outcome. Last week’s White House statement supporting the “preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans” is an improvement, but is conspicuously silent on the locus of the threats to Tibetan identity or human rights.

Finally, there should be a more comprehensive and sustained effort to work with European and other allies—including India—on greater harmonization of policy, or at least messaging on Tibet. This was something that the Bush Administration made substantial progress on under the leadership of its Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Paula Dobriansky (disclosure: she is my former boss), and which the current administration has largely abandoned.

To be effective, these and other steps must be taken as part of a broader shift that recognizes the inherent constraints on a relationship between two countries with such divergent political systems, sources of legitimacy and world-views. This would go a long way toward demonstrating to both the American people and Beijing that this administration understands the U.S.-China relationship cannot move past the transactional state while the Chinese regime maintains its present authoritarian posture, including on Tibet.

Kelley Currie is a senior fellow with the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and served as a State Department official during the George W. Bush administration.