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Dalai Lama offends China - should the world compromise?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Oct 17, 2007

I love the idea of global interdependence. It’s long been my belief that our challenge today is not to decide who owns what identity but to decide what we all owe each other.

That’s why, as a best-selling author who lives in an open society, I’ve used my privileges to post free translations of my book on this website for those who don’t have access to it because of censorship.

But interdependence is not a panacea. It generates problems of its own. Put simply, the more interdependent countries are, the more offense they take at statements about the need for human rights.

Case in point: China’s reaction to the fact the Dalai Lama has just received the Congressional Gold Medal. Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader couldn’t have been more humble or conciliatory in his acceptance speech — but that’s not going to stop China from threatening retaliation.

Hints abound that Beijing will undermine US-EU efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Or that it will sabotage peace talks in Darfur. (Like we could ever count on Chinese leaders to support real peace in oil-rich Sudan. Please.)

As I write this, another case of offense is Turkey’s response to the Armenian genocide bill introduced in the US Congress. Turkey has lobbied feverishly against American legislation that declares the early 20th-century slaughter of Armenians to be a genocide.

More than merely protest with words, Turkey is promising to block its borders to US war planners, who desperately need Ankara onboard so they can move troops and equipment in and out of Iraq.

Not only has the Bush administration sided with Turkey (surprise!), but key Democrats in Congress are also withdrawing their support for the anti-genocide bill. “Too inflammatory to the Muslim world at this fragile time,” they now say. Odd. These same lawmakers didn’t think so a week ago. What changed?

Nothing more than Turkey’s outrage — and in an interdependent world, that translates into the need for self-censorship for the sake of conserving your allies.

Normally, I’d understand the strategic value of restraint. But on matters of basic human rights, no way. A genocide is a genocide is a genocide. End of story.

President Bush didn’t let China’s fuming stop him from attending today’s ceremony for the Dalai Lama. Why, then, should Democrats be bullied into conformity by furious Turkey or an enfeebled White House? I know: Iraq. But as House speaker Nancy Pelosi has argued on ABC News, “Some of what harms our troops relate to values — Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture. Our troops are well-served when we declare who we are as a country, and we declare it to the rest of the world.”

Global interdependence is great. Until it becomes an excuse for cow-towing to cowards.