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Secessonism as a United States
Foreign Policy Lever:
Tibet in Context
Barry Sautman
Associate Professor
Hong Kong University
The United States leverages Tibet secessionism against China through political and financial support for open and masked pro-independence Tibetan
émigré and Tibet support forces. The separatism of the Dalai Lama and the Tibet
Government-in-Exile (TGIE) is evident in officials’ statements that indicate their
unwillingness to accept that Tibet should be part of China and their preference
for secession when feasible. U.S. leveraging does not reflect international laws
or norms, but a global strategy of opposing secession in allied and client states
while supporting it in U.S.-proclaimed rogue states and perceived strategic
competitors. The association of the Tibetan émigré cause with U.S. power is
consequential, making it more difficult for Tibetans in China to achieve ethnic
minority self-representation and resolve the Tibet issue. Where a great power
backs secessionists, the affected state suspects political activity by even nonseparatist members of the relevant minority.
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Clear as Mud: The United States on Tibet Secessionism
When President Barack Obama, over China’s objections, met the fourteenth
Dalai Lama in 2014, he stated that “Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of
China” and “the United States does not support Tibetan independence.”1 U.S.
Barry Sautman is a political scientist and lawyer at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, whose
main research areas are ethnic politics in China and China-Africa links. Among his recent publications on
ethnic politics are “An India/US Model for China’s Ethnic Policies: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?”
in the University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Review; “Paved with Good Intentions: Proposals to Curb
Minority Rights and their Consequences for China,” in Modern China; and All
that Glitters is Not Gold: Tibet as a Pseudo-State (2009).
Copyright © 2014 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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officials had considered Tibet to be part of China throughout the late Qing
dynasty, the Republic of China, and the People’s Republic of China. Before
2011 however, top-level U.S. pronouncements said only that. Then, in a 2011
meeting with the Dalai Lama, Obama added that the United States “does not
support Tibet independence,” implying that the United States is not succoring
secessionism.2 That in turn caused a Hong Kong commentator to query, “How
much clearer can the American position be?”3 Yet the U.S. position could be
clearer: China has urged Obama to say that the United States “opposes Tibetan
independence.” Although President George W. Bush once averred, “I’m not a
nuance guy. ‘Do not support,’ ‘oppose.’ It’s the same to me,” U.S. officials know
that “does not support” is a vague pledge, while “opposes independence” implies
activity.4 They thus decline to do what several states and Taiwan have already
done and oppose Tibet independence.5
The U.S. position on Tibetan secession is unclear because it must fulfill
multiple goals served by U.S. involvement with the Tibet question. One goal is
to respond to U.S. Tibet supporters. These supporters may be no more than a
small section of civil society, with their influence declining as China’s grows, but
are active in electoral politics. 6 U.S. officials thus echo claims and assumptions of
the Tibet Lobby—for example, that China perpetrates cultural genocide in Tibet
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and that “The Dalai Lama’s [political] views...command the respect of the vast
majority of Tibetans.”7 U.S. involvement in the Tibet question is also intended
to boost the United States’ image as defender of freedom. Most importantly,
support for Tibet secessionists provides the United States a lever in pressuring
China and is thus a long-term asset in a perceived strategic competition in which
the United States seeks to maintain its global hegemony.
The leveraging of Tibetan sepaThe leveraging of Tibetan separatratism occurs in the context of a global
ism occurs in the context of a global U.S. stratagem, which uses secession
U.S. stratagem, which uses seces- as one approach to recalcitrant countries and what U.S. strategic planners
sion as one approach to recalcitrant term peer competitors. The United
countries and peer competitors. States often supports secessionism in
confronting an adversary—the term Obama has applied to China. The United
States sometimes prepares to support secession even while maintaining it does
not back it, but regarding Tibet, the United States presently backs forces that
favor secession. Officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties adhere
to the notion of a China threat and reflexively express support for Tibet in order
to embarrass and politically marginalize China. For example, Michael J. Green,
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George W. Bush’s special assistant for national security affairs, has said, “it’s
strategically important for the United States to ensure as much international
support for [the Dalai Lama] as possible.”8 Richard Holbrooke, President Bill
Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations and lead foreign policy advisor to
Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, told Students for a Free Tibet
protestors who disrupted a speech by a Chinese Ambassador, “You guys did an
excellent job….The Chinese Ambassador was visibly agitated.”9 Congress has
not renounced its resolutions from the 1990s and 2000s backing Tibet independence and seeking U.S. diplomatic recognition of the TGIE.10 U.S. political
elites have thus indicated that whatever the official position may be on Tibet,
they back pro-secession forces.
What the U.S. leverage is about is indeed secessionism. Statements by the
Dalai Lama and TGIE can plausibly be construed as unwillingness to accept
that Tibet should be part of China and a preference for secession when feasible.
U.S. leveraging is not a function of international laws or norms, but a global
stratagem to oppose secession in allied and client states, while supporting it in
U.S.-proclaimed rogue states and strategic competitors. Further, the United
States fosters Tibetan separatism and creates what Chinese leaders consider a
containment policy. However, there are consequences of associating the Tibet
secessionism with U.S. power.
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Tibetan Émigré Secessionism: What Is Said and Unsaid
Tibetan émigrés and U.S. politicians assert that the Dalai Lama and TGIE adhere
to a Middle Way Approach—seeking only genuine autonomy within China and
rejecting separatism. Their pronouncements belie such an approach, however.
Eighteen years after he supposedly renounced independence, the Dalai Lama,
during a 1992 statement of his plans for a free Tibet, said “Tibet and China
are two completely separate entities” and Tibet is a colony under occupation.11
More recently, the Dalai Lama and his representatives have stated that Tibet
was always independent, China occupies Tibet, “not a single Tibetan considers themselves as Chinese,” Tibetans in Tibet want independence and have a
right to it, and Rangzenpa (émigré forces that favor complete independence)
are growing and “we cannot blame them for this.”12 A leading émigré journal,
The Tibetan Review, has said, “The Dalai Lama has never recognized Chinese
sovereignty over Tibet. He has always maintained that Tibet has been a fully
independent country.”13
The contradiction between the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way Approach and
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his secessionism is related not to his sincerity, but rather to his active political
preferences and his position vis-à-vis patrons. The Dalai Lama’s statements
indicate preferences not to regard Tibet as a legitimate part of China and favor
Tibetan independence when feasible. He also knows that self-professed Tibet
supporters, who connect him to elite patrons, would not likely be stirred to
action if the goal of free Tibet were taken off the table.
Pro-independence activist Jamyang Norbu notes that many émigré leaders
“claim to have given up the goal of Tibetan independence, yet go around declaring that they have ‘Rangzen [independence] in their hearts,’ and furthermore that
the Dalai Lama does as well.”14 Such leaders prefer independence, but profess
to support the Middle Way Approach. That provides plausible deniability for
countries like the United States, which in practice backs Tibet secessionists. It
also “allows the Dalai Lama to appear moderate by comparison” to Rangzenpa,
just as in Taiwan, where statements by provocative pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party head and former Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian
(2000-2008) made the DPP’s 2008 presidential candidate Frank Hsieh “appear
moderate by comparison.”15
The Dalai Lama has also not repudiated his view that “Chinese and Tibetans
are very fundamentally different peoples….We speak different languages; are of
different civilizations, have different customs; our religion and culture, and even
our written languages are completely different.”16 This view implies an ethnic
irreconcilability that is hardly compatible with the idea that Tibet should be or
even could be part of China.
The Dalai Lama and TGIE moreover cultivate pro-Tibetan independence
politicians wherever they find them. In his Indian refuge for example, the Dalai
Lama strongly praises and is praised by right wing, bitterly anti-China Hindutva
(Hindu nationalist) forces. These forces include the now-ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which many Tibetan émigrés support, the anti-Muslim, Indian
diaspora-oriented Vishva Hindu Parishad, the anti-immigrant Shiv Sena, and the
five-million strong, fascistic, ur-Hindutva organization Rashtryria Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS), all of which criticize the Indian government for not supporting
Tibetan independence. The Dalai Lama also interacts with U.S. Chinese dissidents, some of whom are enthusiasts of Tibetan independence.17
In 2008, the previous TGIE Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister) Samdhong
Rinpoche said that Tibet would only become a legitimate part of China when
“Tibetans have voluntarily decided to remain as part of the [People’s Republic
of China].”18 He also told a strategy conference: “If the outcome of the present
meeting is that we should switch over…to independence, we will gladly follow
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that.”19 Current TGIE Sikyong (political leader) Lobsang Sangay, when asked in
2003 whether he would choose an independent Tibet or an autonomous Tibet
within China, replied, “That’s like asking whether I would prefer a Rolls-Royce
or a Honda.”20 During his 2011 election campaign, Sangay advanced the concept of U-rang, an amalgam of the Dalai Lama’s putative ume-lam (Middle Way
Approach) and Rangzen.21 He also said “it is important that we explore ways to
have the Tibetan government in exile be formally recognized,” that is, receive
diplomatic recognition as the legitimate government of Tibet.22
Losbsang Sangay continues to say China practices colonialism and occupies
Tibet, on which the TGIE blames Tibetan self-immolations.23 In 2013, he stated
that “India faces a grave threat from China and it is in its interests to have a free
and independent Tibet as an ally.”24 Sangay has “likened the Tibetan struggle to
those of the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the Cold
War . . . that eventually led to their independence.”25 In 2013, he met with U.S.
Under Secretary of State Maria Otero, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and
Representative Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
among other U.S. officials.
Émigré leaders claim that Tibet was invaded, occupied, and colonized;
affirm its continuing right to independence; and assume that most Tibetans
want independence. Tibetans thus may reasonably be regarded as wanting
independence themselves despite their claim to adhere to the Middle Way
Approach. U.S. history is instructive in that regard. Almost up to the day the
Civil War (1861–1865) began, Senator from Mississippi Jefferson Davis assured
Northern audiences he opposed secession, but affirmed the South’s right to independence. Davis stood by Mississippi when it seceded and became president
of the Confederate States of America (CSA). After the Civil War, CSA leaders
still defended the legal right of secession. Other Southern politicians had also
upheld the Union and then pushed for secession. Like Tibetan émigrés leaders,
Southern secessionists cast “the Union in the unsavory role of the tyrannical
foreign power imposing its will against self-rule of an alienated minority.”26
What the Dalai Lama and TGIE decline to say also matters. They refuse
China’s main precondition for negotiations, which is for the Dalai Lama to
publicly state that “Tibet is an inalienable part of China,” in other words,
Tibet should not be severed from China. The Dalai Lama, asked whether he
is willing to state that Tibet is an integral part of China, responded “Not that
one sentence,” because he construes it as recognition that Tibet was part of
China before 1951.27 Yet, a U.S. scholar who supports Tibetan independence
has concluded that “the idea that Tibet was always independent does not hold
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up,” because Tibet “was a constituent part of the empire” that existed before
the Republic of China was founded in 1911, while a U.S. court has determined
that the People’s Republic of China is the successor state to the Republic of
China, which was the successor to imperial China.28 Moreover, whether Tibet
is now an inalienable or integral part of China is not even strictly determined by
whether it was part of it in the past. In any case, when still in Tibet, the Dalai
Lama seemingly did regard Tibet as part of China. He recalled that in 1951,
when his negotiators adopted Mao Zedong’s proposed 17-Point Agreement to
restore Chinese central government authority in Tibet, “All those conducting
the negotiations and myself were overjoyed.”29 He would not have been joyful
had he then thought it illegitimate for Tibet to be part of China, a view that
likely formed later, when he realized that framing the issue as Chinese occupation would help gain external support for a Free Tibet.
Samdhong Rinpoche has also indicated that the Dalai Lama and TGIE
want the world to believe that Tibet is not legitimately part of China. “We are
ready to acknowledge that Tibet is now part of China. But we will not say that
it was historically part of China. That is what China wants the Dalai Lama to
say. We will not do it as it will legitimize their occupation of Tibet.30”
Absent his acknowledgement that Tibet is inalienably part of China,
the Dalai Lama can reasonably be seen as unwilling to relinquish secession. A
Rangzenpa has discerned the link between denying inalienability and affirming
independence:
By stating that Tibet is an inalienable part of China, His Holiness and
the TGIE could be relinquishing all claims to asserting independence
for Tibet, either presently or in the future. Future generations of
Tibetans would be hard-pressed to seek independence if the TGIE
officially recognizes Tibet as an inalienable part of China [as] an
inalienable part of China would have no right of secession.31
Considered as a totality then statements by the Dalai Lama and TGIE
leaders plus their refusal to avow that Tibet is an inalienable part of China
indicate that they hold it legitimate to separate Tibet from China. In backing
émigré leaders who support either complete independence or the Middle Way
Approach, the U.S. government thus in practice leverages secessionism, because
both factions of the émigré cause prefer Tibet to secede from China.
Secessionism under International Law and International Political Norms
Melvyn Goldstein, a renowned United States–Tibet specialist, has observed that
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Secessionism as a United States Foreign Policy Lever
though the United States has strategically endorsed the position that Tibet is part
of China, tactically it “has been opportunistic in its dealings with Tibet.”32 That
opportunism includes support for Tibetan secessionist forces that contravenes
international legal principles and political norms to which the United States
nominally adheres, including the right of states to be free of secession-promoting
intervention by other states.
The unilateral withdrawal of territory from a parent state is one option
within the right to self-determination. That right however “applies to the whole
population within boundaries of preexisting non self-governing territories [and]
excludes the separate ethnic or religious groups.” Existing borders and territorial integrity thus “are granted priority when they conflict with the ‘secessionist’
face of self-determination in contemporary international law.”33 As the leading
specialist of the law of self-determination has adumbrated,
Current international law is blind to the demands of ethnic groups,
and national, religious, cultural, or linguistic minorities. Not only
does international law refrain from granting any right of internal or
external self-determination to these groups, but it also fails to provide
any alternative remedy to . . . them.34
International law thus accords with an international relations norm
“limiting any claimed right to secession and independence to only the most
extreme cases of massive and discriminatory violations of human rights.”35 Even
a pro-separatism scholar has noted that “the family of nations has continued to
acknowledge that Tibet is part of China [and] geopolitical leaders have agreed
that the Tibetans are not eligible for self-determination.”36
If there is generally no right of self-determination for ethnic groups, they
still have less of a right of secession or independence:
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Despite continued claims to a “right” of secession . . . no such right
has yet been recognized by the international community. International
law does not prohibit secession, whether voluntary or violent, but it
has neither recognized a right to secede nor identified even tentatively
the conditions that might give rise to such a right in the future.37
A right of secession would allow minorities to distort political processes
by threatening to secede if their views do not prevail and secessionism now
already produces the most violent conflicts.38 It is thus recognized, by Canada’s
Supreme Court for example, that subordinate parts of states have no legal right
to unilaterally secede unless colonization is at issue. A territory is not a colony
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or under alien occupation if its government represents the whole people of
the territory without distinctions, and Tibetans have the same rights as other
citizens and benefit from affirmative action. Neither the United Nations nor
any state proclaims Tibet a colony or recognizes it as sovereign. This situation
is not merely due to China’s recent rise, since in preceding periods of modern
China’s weakness that held true for state-based organizations like the League of
Nations and United Nations and for all recognized states.
For a territory to be deemed a state, it must minimally have a permanent
population, a defined territory, a government, and capacity to enter into relations
with the other states: “A state does not emerge automatically and self-evidently
when [these] criteria are met. If states could emerge automatically, independence
would need to be an entitlement under international law. Outside of colonialism,
this is not the case.”39 What secures statehood for a territory claiming to be a state
is its recognition as such by key recognized states and state-based international
organizations. Without recognition, a territory generally lacks the capacity to
enter into many significant relations with existing states. Even when the Republic of China’s presence was largely absent from Tibet (1913–1949), the latter
lacked the capacity to enter into relations with states and was not recognized by
any recognized state.40 There is thus no right to revive a formerly independent
Tibet, because Tibet remained part of China even when the Republic of China
was wracked by civil war and invasion and too weak to operate in remote Tibet.
The Chinese state had the right to reassert its sovereignty in Tibet when it was
able, because when a state’s central authority is absent from part of its territory
due to civil war or invasion, it is legally entitled to recover the territory.41 That
was the case, for example, for China in taking back three northeast provinces
separated from it by Japan from 1931 to 1945.
The Context: U.S. Support for Secessionism
The U.S. State Department’s deputy legal adviser stated at a 1995 symposium
that the United States “has not recognized the right to secession for portions of
established countries.” A high-level U.S. diplomat added that “secession has not
been identified as an international right” and the United States “should make
clear to those seeking independence that they cannot object to the violence waged
against them by claiming they were simply attempting to exercise their ‘right’ to
secession.” However Hurst Hannum, a scholar of self-determination, noted that
the United States has yet to declare there is no right to secession while another
senior State Department official explained that “the right to secession cannot
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always be excluded as a matter of principle . . . it is the means and not the aim of
self-determination movements that should be of concern to the United States.”42
It seems U.S. officials know that there is no right to secession and that
states are entitled to act against secessionists, but hold that the U.S. government can allow itself to back secession provided the means to achieve it are not
genocidal or terroristic. As a Kosovo specialist put it, the U.S. approach is that
“self-determination is acceptable in areas of their strategic interest and that the
sanctity of sovereign borders must be upheld where it is not.”43 That approach
comports with a study that shows that groups seeking independence prevail only
when they receive the support of great powers, which determine the outcome
of purported self-determination struggles “through their military, political, financial, and economic dominance, exercised in international organizations and
directly through concepts such as humanitarian intervention and involuntary
sovereignty waiver.”44
The United States “quite often will explicitly support new political arrangements from greater sub-national autonomy to outright secession.”45 Famous early
examples include aiding the secession of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in
1836, which led to the U.S. annexation of Texas, and separating Panama from
Colombia in 1903 to carve out a U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone. As a
global hegemon, the United States has supported state breakups of and territorial separations from states deemed its antagonists, including Kosovo’s 2008
secession from Serbia, a country that had residual aspects of socialism and was
allied with Russia when U.S.-led NATO warred against it in the late 1990s. The
United States was also the prime backer of oil-rich South Sudan’s 2011 secession
from Islamist Sudan, as U.S. policymakers put it.
At the same time, the United States has opposed secession from allies,
clients, and of course itself.46 This caused a Canadian observer to quip:
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Let’s see, the United States government supports Kosovo’s break
from Serbia, but opposes South Ossetia’s break from Georgia.
Political translation: If you’re against the U.S., the Americans
will back those who want to break up your country, but if you’re
pro-U.S., they’ll rally to keep you united.47
Despite the principle that no territory can secede from a state without
its consent, 27 new countries—one-seventh of the world’s 193 states—have
emerged since 1990 from breakups and secessions, almost half of them violent.
The United States actively supported separations from states it perceived as resis-
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tant to U.S. hegemony, such as Sudan and Iraq, or breakups of those presenting
a presumed alternative ideology, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The
United States is said to presently support ethnic separatists in Iran and regional
and ethnic separatists in Bolivia and elsewhere, mainly through political guidance and financial aid.
The United States in some cases says it opposes independence, but then
comes out in support of it. It claimed to oppose a Soviet breakup—in part because
nuclear weapons were scattered about the Soviet Union—until those worries
were assuaged. The United States then stated it would recognize constituent
parts of the Soviet Union that wanted to secede, such as the Baltic Republics and
Ukraine.48 When U.S. leaders perceived that a NATO protectorate had ripened
conditions for Kosovo’s separation from Serbia, the United States changed its
position from opposing to supporting secession.49
Political sociologist James Petras has analyzed U.S. use of secessionism
against states it deems problematic, especially in places where it lacks national
level clients and its influence is limited to locally concentrated ethnic elites. He
argues that U.S. support for separatism is based on identity politics, in which
elites invoke historical events that reference ethnic identities, to carry out mass
mobilization. Invocations of Baltic Republic independence from 1919 to 1940
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were thus part of the strategy’s greatest triumph—the Soviet collapse. The
United States furthered its strategy with propaganda about ethnic solidarity,
Despite the principle that no ter- cultivation of pro-Western intellectuals, importuning of local Communist
ritory can secede from a state Party leaders to secede and partner
without its consent, 27 new coun- with Western entities, and cultivation
tries have emerged since 1990 of “fanatical religious fundamentalists,
gangster-politicians, Western-trained
from breakups and secessions. liberal economists [and] ambitious
upwardly mobile warlords.” The United States first supported anyone seeking
a Soviet break-up and then underwrote color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine,
and Kyrgyzstan, which brought to power pro-NATO free market liberals.
Petras also points out that U.S.-backed separatists usually follow a stepby-step process, starting with calls for greater autonomy and decentralizations.
They seek to acquire local resources, oust local allies of the affected state, and
mobilize global media to deplore repression against their “‘peaceful national
movements’ merely ‘exercising their right to self-determination.’” They enlist
the support of non-governmental organizations to attack the affected national
government for seeking to maintain a stable unified state and use Western fi-
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nancial support for their autonomous region to strengthen its de facto existence
as a putative state. Finally, they declare independence. For the most part, the
resulting secession-born regimes are nondemocratic and their policies increase
social inequality, emigration, and criminality and lead to educational decline.
In some cases, they produce subnational movements that aim in turn to secede
from the state that the separatists created.50
Movements to breakup or secede from states typically claim to prefer democratic and nonviolent means, but often fail in that regard, producing instead
small, dependent states with regressing living standards and strongmen.51 The
autocratic regimes that took power after U.S. midwifing of the violent secessions
in Kosovo and South Sudan led to falling living standards and failing security.52
Yet neither the cost in lives and property nor frequent nondemocratic outcomes
deter the United States from backing state breakups and secessionist movements.
U.S. Leveraging of Tibetan Secessionism: From Pressure
Catastrophe in China
to
Political
U.S. leveraging of Tibet secession began with urging the Dalai Lama to leave
Tibet in the 1950s and was soon followed by CIA funding for him and the
TGIE after he did leave in 1959. The CIA and U.S. military organized and
armed Tibetan separatist guerrillas from the mid-1950s to early 1970s. Congress
issued resolutions supporting Tibetan independence and the émigré cause from
the 1980s onward. Of those enacted by the mid-1990s, United States–China
specialist, diplomat, and defense official Charles Freeman has stated:
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When the U.S. Congress proposes, as it currently does, to force the
President to recognize Tibet as a sovereign independent nation and
dispatch an ambassador to the Dalai Lama, it is engaging in an act
which in earlier times would have certainly led to a declaration of war
by the country subjected to that insult.53
Congress is not the only part of the U.S. government that appears to view
the TGIE as Tibet’s legitimate government. In 2012, when Chinese officials
refused to meet with counterparts connected with the Dalai Lama and TGIE,
U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke responded: “We implore the Chinese to
really meet with the representatives of the Tibetan people,” thus implying that
it is the Dalai Lama and TGIE, not organs of governance in the Tibetan areas
of China, that are legitimate.54
The U.S. Congress frequently holds hearings on Tibet, which only include
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testimony from émigrés and supporters of an independent Tibet.55 For example,
in 2012, Buchung Tsering, vice president of the International Campaign for
Tibet (ICT), gave testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee entitled
“Investigating the Chinese Threat.” He differentiated Tibet from China and
urged Congress to restrict the entry of “Chinese delegations from or about Tibet”
into the United States and “devote oversight to [the] Confucius Institutes” that
China sponsors at U.S. universities, thus seeking to get Congress to restrain the
expression of antiseparatist views in the United States.56
Due to Congressional efforts, since 1994 the State Department has had to
list Tibet separately from China in human rights reports. Since 1997, a senior
State Department official has served as Special Coordinator for Tibet to oversee
U.S. support for the Tibetan émigrés and shift onto China the entire blame for
the lack of progress in resolving the Tibet question. The Special Coordinator was
institutionalized in the Tibet Policy Act of 2002, which also requires the U.S.
government to subsidize émigré institutions at $5 million a year as of 2009 and
raise with China the issues of political prisoners and religious freedom in Tibet.57
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government
subsidiary, funds TGIE-affiliated and other Tibet support groups, including the
ICT and the pro-independence SFT.58 Awards have also been given, such as the
Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 to the Dalai Lama (given in President Bush’s
presence), a U.S. Senate Resolution in 2012 honoring the Dalai Lama’s Special
Envoy in the United States, NED’s “30 Under 30” award in 2013 to SFT head
Tenzin Dolkar, and a State Department prize in 2013 to Beijing-based author
and Dalai Lama political supporter Tsering Woeser. Tibetan émigré activists
control the Tibetan language services of the Voice of America and Radio Free
Asia. The latter is said by its chief backer, ultraconservative member of Congress Dana Rohrabacher, to be “a refuge, development assistance and support
to the Tibetan people struggling against the Chinese communist regime” and
by Jamyang Norbu to be “the most effective source of news and information
for people throughout occupied Tibet.”59
The U.S. government has special programs that allow Tibetans émigrés to
study in the United States or migrate there as refugees, even though many are
already firmly resettled elsewhere and not in need of U.S. refuge. The colony
of 150,000 Tibetans in India “is the West’s favorite group of refugees.”60 As the
head of the United States–Tibet Committee has noted: “People who are fleeing
from Nepal, India, and Tibet prefer to go to the U.S. because here they are welcome. The U.S. Congress gives them grants to come to the U.S. It is quite easy
for them to get asylum status...because the judges are very sensitive to them.61”
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Such political favoritism reinforces the symbiosis between émigré leaders and
U.S. elites, by allowing the former access to a growing diaspora community
used to mobilize the latter.
It is hard to gauge how much U.S. leveraging of Tibetan secessionism affects Chinese leaders, especially compared to other pressures the United States
brings to bear on China. However, since the United States is the global hegemon and chief third-party state organizer for the émigrés, it certainly is not
trivial or ignored. In the international human rights discourse, for example, the
United States focuses on Tibet far out of proportion to the magnitude of rights
violations there and to the proportion that the six million Tibetans are among
the world’s seven billion people. Chinese leaders consider such U.S. actions as
harming China’s relations with other states and demand that the United States
stop supporting pro-Tibet independence forces.
The U.S. role in pressuring China over the Tibet issue remains strong in
part because the Dalai Lama and TGIE’s diminishing access to non-U.S. political
elites makes them more motivated to ensure U.S. support.62 When the Dalai
Lama visits the United States, he often praises its political system, something
he does rarely outside of India. He has also said that he has “developed more
respect for capitalism,” a prerequisite to strengthening ties with U.S. elites, and
his political views have now even been compared to those of ultraconservative
icon Ayn Rand.63 The United States–Tibet émigré connection has also become
tighter because the TGIE Sikyong and recent presidents of the pro-independence
Tibet Youth Congress—the largest émigré organization—were politically formed
in the United States.64
China’s rise may have moved some countries away from overtly supporting
Tibet separatism and China does accommodate the United States on a range
of other issues, but the U.S. government stays in lockstep with émigré leaders.
U.S. political elites see only benefit in supporting the émigré cause: it is a way to
secure votes among Americans and garner prestige among Western liberals, but
most of all to embarrass and politically marginalize China. A segment of U.S.
elites may also project eventual use of secessionism to affect a post-Soviet-type
diminution of China’s global position.
While the United States is the émigrés’ bedrock, political elites know that
Tibetan independence has been unattainable through political, financial or military means and that regime change is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition
for altering Tibet’s political status. There can hardly be another reality-based view.
Unlike other targets of the U.S. secession stratagem, such as Sudan or Serbia,
China is a large country with coherent governance and prospects for improved
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living standards for at least its better-off citizens. Despite problematic authoritarian rule and the unpopular adoption of quasi-neoliberal capitalism, the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) government, for better or worse, enjoys high regime
legitimacy, a key factor in whether a regime abides.65 This legitimacy cannot be
assumed to be forced, since in 2008 China’s central government enjoyed a peak
trust of 58 percent of Hong Kong residents who certainly were not compelled to
trust it.66 U.S. elites thus realize—even if many Tibet supporters do not—that
China’s rise may have moved China is invulnerable to separatism
so long as its government retains its
some countries away from overt- coherence and opposes secession.
All this is not to say that U.S.
ly supporting Tibet separatism,
pressure has had no effect. It likely
but the U.S. government stays played a role in inducing the Chinese
in lockstep with émigré cause. government to hold 10 rounds of
“talks about talks” from 2002 to 2010 with the Dalai Lama’s representatives.
Their staging boosted the émigrés’ international profile. The talks, however, were
not fruitful, because émigré leaders were not willing to accept that Tibet should
be part of China. As a result, émigré leaders could not test whether China’s leaders would keep a pledge to negotiate when their preconditions are met. This
192
unwillingness likely reflects émigré leaders’ preference for secession and their
desire to avoid both criticisms from Rangzenpa and the evisceration of the Free
Tibet movement, whose participants often see their cause in Manichean terms.
Many émigré leaders and supporters have taken themselves out of the
reality-based community that George W. Bush’s political impresario Karl Rove
once disparaged in favor of the United States creating its own reality as an empire.
Without any basis in social scientific understandings of how regimes collapse,
émigré leaders have convinced themselves and seek to convince others that the
CCP will soon fall from power and China will break up. U.S. foreign policy
elites who seek the collapse of China may also imagine that leveraging Tibet
will contribute to rolling back China when a Soviet or Yugoslav-style endgame
opportunity presents itself.
China’s leaders have had two decades to discern reasons for the Soviet
breakup and take steps to avoid a similar fate for China.67 Yet, the Dalai Lama
and top TGIE officials have predicted and welcomed a breakup of China, a view
widespread among émigré leaders and Tibet supporters.68 For example, in 2013
the International Campaign for Tibet hosted Gordon Chang, a journalist for
the U.S. business magazine Forbes. His 2001 bestseller, The Coming Collapse of
China, had been a laundry list of everything wrong with China. Ignoring social
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science theories of state collapse and not heeding the wisdom of the aphoristic
jest that “it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future,” Chang
forecast China’s collapse by 2011. When 2011 came and went, he was not deterred by his failure and postponed the collapse to 2012.69 Chang was invited
to a TGIE seminar in the émigré capital of Dharamsala, India and to a meeting
with the Dalai Lama. He told an interviewer:
[A]s the problems in China grow more evident, we’re going to see the
Chinese occupiers leave Tibet. I think that there will be a vacuum
that will last months, a year at the most, where the Chinese are not
effectively governing Tibet. And that is an opportunity for the [TGIE]
to return to Tibet . . . to re-establish a sovereign state.70
In 2013, Chang informed the ICT that “within a short period, the modern
Chinese state will fail . . . The Chinese occupiers will leave Tibet.”71 By then he
was claiming that China would collapse because “most Chinese do not believe
that a one-party system is appropriate for their modernizing country.”72 Yet, a
2008 random sample survey found that a vast majority of Chinese supports the
one-party regime. This was the result even though less than half of those polled
indicated agreement with their government’s view that a multiparty system would
bring chaos. Analysts of the survey result concluded that it “gives credence to
the argument that even if Chinese citizens were to adopt more pro-democratic
attitudes…rejection of the current one-party rule would not necessarily follow.”73 In other words, many Chinese like democracy, but do not associate it
with multiparty elections. There is thus no reason to suppose that they will rise
in favor of liberal democracy.
A 2012 report by a body that comprises all U.S. intelligence agencies
stated, “In an extreme case, China would collapse with deep divisions opening
up between rich coastal areas and the impoverished interior and also growing
separatism in China’s far-flung areas of Tibet and Xinjiang.”74 However, a collapse is not regarded as an extreme case by some U.S. elites. There are those who
anticipate and desire political catastrophe for the CCP, a term the editor of the
National Endowment for Democracy’s journal has used to voice his preferred
result.75 Conservative U.S.-based analyst Ethan Gutmann stated, “Just as the
Vikings eventually receded, the CCP’s power may wane too. The Tibetans must
exploit the opening when it comes.”76
Regardless of their official stances, many Western politicians in fact seek
China’s break up. Germany, for instance, officially does not support Tibetan
independence and respects China’s territorial integrity.77 When Chinese émigré
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poet Liao Yiwu was awarded the 2012 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade,
he proclaimed six times in a speech: “Dieses Imperium muss verschwinden” (“this
empire must break apart”). Liao pronounced that China is an “‘infinitely huge
heap of rubbish—a dictatorial…great empire,’ in which ‘many regions and
peoples are forcibly chained together.’ It must be dismembered into numerous
small countries…A situation should be sought, in which Tibet, for example,
is a “free country.””78 Germany’s President Joachim Gauck, the President of
Germany’s parliament, its Minister of Education, and other prominent officials
attending the ceremony gave the speech rapturous applause. Gauck had tears
in his eyes and said Liao’s speech was especially touching.79
U.S. leveraging of Tibetan secessionism is thus about more than quotidian
pressure. For the majority of émigré leaders and Tibet supporters who prefer
Tibetan independence and for those U.S. political elites who want to contain
their Chinese adversary, leveraging is also about collapse. Even if collapse per
se is not yet mainstream in U.S. political circles, its euphemisms, such as the
unsustainability of authoritarianism and the inexorable decline of China as the
last old empire, are mainstream. The existence of this discourse internationally creates the ultimate pressure from leveraging Tibetan separatism. Chinese
leaders themselves, in mobilizing their ranks to maintain coherent governance,
feel compelled to dwell on the puissance of the threats they perceive, including
those from U.S. support for Tibetan secession.80
Conclusion: Consequences of Leveraging Tibetan Secessionism
U.S. leveraging of Tibetan secessionism has consequences. It allows U.S. elites
to appear proactive against the “China Threat” and rhetorically stand for freedom by responding to but also generating two common U.S. views: mistrust of
China and support for an independent Tibet. A 2014 poll showed two-thirds of
Americans do not trust China and think it is a U.S. competitor.81 A 2010 poll
found three-fourths of Americans think Tibet should be independent—although
many respondents may have believed Tibet was already free.82
Because the Tibetan émigré cause enjoys approval in the United States,
leveraging it also allows political elites to reinforce the idea that the United States
is entitled to sponsor separatists regardless of international law and political
norms. By invoking the Middle Way Approach, U.S. officials can claim that the
Dalai Lama and TGIE seek only modest, China-preserving change, although
they likely know that émigré leaders’ statements indicate otherwise. The State
Department and Congress can give direct political and financial aid to the
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Middle Way Approach-advocating TGIE, while the U.S. government subsidiary
National Endowment for Democracy does the same with organizations that
include Rangzenpas (the ICT) or are explicitly pro-independence (the SFT).
That allows the United States to build a network of open and veiled Tibetan
secessionists, to further U.S. efforts to embarrass and politically marginalize
China, and to have a larger function if prospects of China’s collapse ever loom.
U.S. leveraging of Tibetan separatism also has other consequences, especially for Tibetans in Tibet and for the resolution of the Tibetan question. While
challenging China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, émigré leaders associate
their cause with U.S. power. That fuels Chinese leaders’ distrust of Tibetan émigrés, beyond the wariness that already results from Chinese leaders’ perception
that émigré leaders have “Rangzen in their hearts.” Mistrust runs deeper still.
The claim by the Dalai Lama and TGIE to represent and enjoy the political
loyalty of Tibetans in Tibet, coupled with U.S. government affirmation of that
loyalty, damages Chinese leaders’ trust of Tibetans in Tibet as well. Where a
great power backs secessionists, the affected state can be expected to be wary
of political activity by members of the minority in question, even by many of
those who are not separatists.
By diminishing Chinese state political trust in Tibetans, U.S. leveraging
makes it harder for Tibetans in Tibet to seek self-representation without being
suspected of pursuing secession. Self-representation, distinct from self-determination, is the right of minorities to represent their own culture and history and
seek to ameliorate discrimination and inequalities.83 Because the Dalai Lama
affirms that preserving Tibet’s culture is vital and that mitigating inequalities is
desirable, self-representation could be the émigrés’ focus—if they were not so
caught up in cultivating support for altering Tibet’s political status.
The United States’ Tibetan secessionist lever also makes it harder to resolve
the Tibetan question. As for secession, “to the extent that the presence of third
parties shifts the balance of relative power toward one party and away from the
other, any model that ignores this shift will inaccurately evaluate the game being played and misjudge the outcome.”84 Studies have found that increases in
external support increase secessionism in the short and medium term.85 Where
separatists receive external support, they step up demands, even in places where
the host government is willing to protect minority rights. When external support
is absent, separatists accommodate the host state, even if it engages in significant
repression.86 External support can also create a moral hazard for separatists: they
may escalate secessionist action to bring on repression, attract external support,
and claim a right to remedial secession.87 This may be the case even when they
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know that the outside supporter “want[s] to harm the target state more than
help the minority,” which was what the Dalai Lama concluded about U.S. backing of Tibetan separatist guerrillas in the 1960s.88 External support is in short a
reason why émigré leaders have not accommodated China’s demand that they
term Tibet an inalienable part of China and credibly abandon independence
by urging their supporters to oppose it.
Finally, the least likely consequence of leveraging Tibetan secessionism is
China changing the political status of Tibet. A study of irredentism—in which
a state seeks to annex territory of another state on ethnic or historical grounds,
usually by supporting secessionists—is relevant. The study found that external
powers’ threats and benefits offered do not result in altering target states’ territories.89 Outside support for secessionists may make states give more favorable
treatment to minorities, but short of an (improbable) armed conflict, neither
support for secessionists, nor anything the United States offers China on other
issues, will likely induce China to materially alter Tibet’s political status, especially after the Soviet and Yugoslav debacles.
U.S. leveraging instead makes it difficult for the Chinese government to
broaden the autonomy of China’s Tibetan areas. That is a loss for Tibetans in
Tibet and for the Chinese government. A study that used modeling under experimental conditions found that increasing representativeness encourages public
participation by potentially secessionist, regionally concentrated minorities and
it decreases secessionist activity, especially where semiautonomous governing
structures are created.90 China’s government may yet see it that way and broaden
autonomy for Tibetans, but that can only occur if U.S. leveraging of secession
ceases to impinge on the Tibet question. WA
Notes
1. “Readout of the President’s Meeting with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama,” The White House,
February 21, 2014.
2. “Statement from the Press Secretary on the President’s Meeting with His Holiness the XIV Dalai
Lama,” The White House, July 16, 2011.
3. Frank Ching, “A Less Blinkered View of the Dalai Lama,” Japan Times, August 1, 2011.
4. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 268.
5. “Denmark Seeks to Pacify China over Tibet,” Agence France Press, December 7, 2009; “GuineaBissau’s New President Regards China as Major Partner,” Xinhua, September 12, 2009; “Common Vision
for Deepening China-Pakistan Cooperative Partnership, ” State News Service, July 5, 2013; “President
Releases Statement Commemorating Tiananmen,” Taiwan Today, June 4, 2009.
6. For quotes from U.K. Professor Dibyesh Anand, see: Saransh Sehgal, “West Silent on Tibet SelfImmolation,” Asia Times, March 17, 2012.
7. The deputy national security advisor said, “Government policies in Tibetan areas threaten the distinct
religious, cultural and linguistic identity of the Tibetan people.” See: “Remarks by Denis McDonough
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on International Religious Freedom,” The White House, September 12, 2012. For a critique, see: Barry
Sautman, “Tibet and the (Mis-) Representation of Cultural Genocide,” in ed. Barry Sautman, Cultural
Genocide and Asian State Peripheries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 165–279. Also see: Maria
Otero, “The Dalai Lama: What He Means for Tibetans Today,” Federal News Service, July 13, 2011. A
Tibet specialist anthropologist has found, however, that “what [the Dalai Lama] and the broader Tibetan
diaspora think and do is very distanced indeed from how Tibetans in Tibet act and think.” See: Carlos
Mondragon, “Not only Freedom: the Dark Ethnic Side to the Tibetan Buddhist Revolt,” Anthropology
beyond Good and Evil, April 28, 2008.
8. Daniel Allen, “Lost Horizon,” Accuracy in Media, April 1, 2009.
9. “Tibetans Stage Surprise Protest against Chinese Ambassador,” Canada Tibet Committee, September
23, 2005.
10. Congressional Concurrent Resolution 257 (1991) stated that Tibet “is an occupied country...whose
true representatives are the Dalai Lama and the [TGIE].” U.S. House Resolution 357 (2002) called on
the President to recognize the TGIE as Tibet’s legitimate government if the Chinese government did not
“provide for the political autonomy of Tibet” within three years.
11. Dalai Lama, “Guideline for Future Tibet’s Polity and Basic Features of Its Constitution,” Central
Tibetan Administration: Restoring Freedom for Tibetans, February 26, 1992. The Dalai Lama is understood
to hold that Tibet is a colony. See: “Australia Presses China for Tibet Visit,” Voice of America, February
19, 2013; “Tutu Outrage as Dalai Lama Denied Visa for SA Peace Meeting,” Deutsche Presse Agentur,
March 22, 2009; “The Middle Way,” The Times (London), November 15, 2008. His Taiwan representative
has said as much. “Chinese Activists Banned from Hong Kong say Olympics ‘Human Rights Disaster,’”
Central News Agency, August 9, 2008.
12. “N.Y. Governor Sets March 10th as States’ ‘Tibetan Day,’” Central News Agency, March 11, 2001
(Dalai Lama: “Tibet has always been an independent political entity”); “Dalai Lama’s Envoy in Russia
Urges Opposition to Beijing’s Olympic Bid,” Ekho Moskvy Radio, July 11, 2001, in BBC, July 14, 2001;
“Dalai Lama Seeks Probe,” State News Service, January 7, 2013; “Tibetans Open to Talks with China,”
Agence Free Press, November 17, 2009; “Independence on the Agenda for Tibet Talks,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, November 20, 2008. Also see: “Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the
Forty-Second Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day.” A Tibet Parliament in Exile “survey”
in Tibet in 2008 showed 29 percent of 17,000 respondents want independence, 47 percent would “follow the Dalai Lama” and 15 percent want the status quo. “Tibetan Exiles Discuss Impasse with China,”
New York Times, November 17, 2008; “Visit to the Tibet Institute Rikon, and a Journey to Derry,” State
News Service, April 18, 2013; “His Holiness the Dalai Lama Tweets with the Chinese People,” Office
of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, August 8, 2010. In fact, explicitly pro-independence émigrés are being
challenged even within their own organizations. See: “Eight Regional Chapters Boycott TYC Meeting,”
Tibetan Sun, May 29, 2013.
13. “Chris Patten Wrong on Dalai Lama’s Position on Tibet’s Status,” Tibetan Review 43, no. 12 (2008):
20. The Dalai Lama said in 1987 and has not repudiated that “under international law, Tibet today is still
an independent state under illegal occupation.” See: Five Point Peace Plan,” Office of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama, September 21, 1987.
14. “Rangzen in Your Heart?” Shadow Tibet, June 6, 2013.
15. “The Demise of Rangzen: an Interview with Prof. Sperling,” Rangzen Voice (Spring–Summer 2006), 3.
16. “Statement by His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama on his Visit to the United States, September,
1995,” Central Tibetan Administration: Restoring Freedom for Tibetans. Yet, when appealing for support
from non-Tibetan Chinese, the Dalai Lama has affirmed, “The rich Tibetan Buddhist culture is part of
the larger cultural heritage of the People’s Republic of China.” See: “An Appeal to All Chinese Spiritual
Brothers and Sisters,” Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, April 24, 2008.
17. “Dalai Lama Pins Hope on Exiled Chinese,” Asia Times, May 21, 2009; “I Support Tibetan Effort
for Independence and Freedom: Harry Wu,” Tibet Sun, April 12, 2012; “CIA in Tibet: Wei Jingsheng
Interview,” YouTube, April 23, 2011.
18. “Kalon Tripa’s Statement on ‘Future Prospects for Tibet,” Tibetan Bulletin 12, no. 4 (2008): 15–20.
19. “Tibetan Exiles Debate Pushing for Independence,” Associated Press, November 19, 2008. Asked
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198
in 2001 about the demands of exiles supporting independence, Samdhong Rinpoche responded, “We
are not opposing their stand.” See: “Tibet: the Second Generation of the Freedom Struggle,” Press Trust
of India, October 21, 2001.
20. “Resolution to Tibet Issue Unlikely, Panelists Say,” Harvard Crimson, November 24, 2003.
21. Norbu, “Rangzen in Your Heart?”
22. Lobsang Sangay, “Kalon Tripa for Tibet,” 2011.
23. Peter Lloyd, “New Leader Replaces Dalai Lama, PM (Australian Broadcasting Co.), August 12,
2011; “CTA Expresses Concern over Mass Chinese Migration to Tibet,” Plus Media Solutions, December
12, 2013.
24. “Tibetan PM-in-Exile Seeks India’s Support,” Times of India, August 2, 2013.
25. Gardiner Harris, “The Tibetan Cause is not Hopeless, Leader Says,” India Ink (blog), November
30, 2012.
26. Don Doyle, “An Attempt at Secession from an Early Nation-State: the Confederate States of
America,” in Aleksandar Pavkovic and Peter Radan, The Ashgate Research Companion to Secession (Surrey:
Ashgate, 2011), 111.
27. “His Holiness the Dalai Lama Explains his Position on China’s Preconditions,” Tibetan Bulletin
7, no. 4 (2003): 25.
28. For a quote of Professor Eliot Sperling, see: “Historians Keep Tibet Debate Raging,” South China
Morning Post, March 10, 2009. For claims that China asserts that Tibet was always part of it are in error, see: “Xizangzigu shi zhongguode yibufen [Tibet has been part of China since ancient times],” China
Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, April 23, 2013; Jackson v. People’s Republic
of China, 550 F. Supp. 869, 871–72 (N.D. Ala. 1982) (PRC liable as successor government for bonds
issued by Imperial Chinese government in 1911), affirmed on other grounds, 794 F.2d 1490 (11th Cir.
1986). The powers of the nineteenth century recognized the Qing Dynasty’s territory as China, not as
the “Manchu Empire.” See: Rune Svarverud, International Law as a World Order in Late Imperial China
(Hague: Brill, 2007): 27; Macabe Keliher, “Anglo-American Rivalry and the Origin of U.S. China Policy,”
Diplomatic History 31, no. 2 (2007): 227–56.
29. “Interview of the Week: Dalai Lama,” Organiser (India), April 3, 2005. The acceptance of the
17-Point Agreement constituted a declaration by the Dalai Lama’s government that Tibet is part of
China.”See: Robert Barnett, “Tibet: Secession Based on the Collapse of an Imperial Overlord,” in Pavkovic
and Radan, The Ashgate Research Companion to Secession (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011): 488. The UN map
of “The World in 1945” also shows Tibet as part of China. See: UN Department of Field Support and
Cartographic Section, “Map 4135.”
30. “Very Few Chances of Agreeing with China: Tibetan Leader,” Indo-Asian News Service, June 8, 2008.
31. Wangchuk Shakabpa, “Dalai Lama Preparing ‘Conciliatory’ Declaration on Tibet,” Rangzen Alliance, November 1, 1998.
32. Melvyn Goldstein, “The United States, Tibet, and the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 8,
no. 3 (2006): 145.
33. Jorge Martinez-Paoletti, “Rights and Duties of Minorities in the Context of Post-Colonial SelfDetermination: Basques and Catalans in Contemporary Spain,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review 15
(2009): 165.
34. Antonio Cassese, Self-Determination of Peoples: a Legal Re-appraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 328.
35. Dinah Shelton, “The ICJ’s Kosovo Advisory Opinion: Self-determination in Regional Human Rights
Law from Kosovo to Cameroon,” American Journal of International Law 105 (2011): 60–81.
36. Douglas Howland, “The Dialectics of Chauvinism: Minority Nationalities and Territorial Sovereignty
in Mao Zedong’s New Democracy,” Modern China 37 (2011): 170–201.
37. Hurst Hannum, “The Specter of Secession: Responding to Claims for Ethnic Self-Determination,”
Foreign Affairs 77, no. 2 (1998): 13, 17–18.
38. Ralph Janik, “The Responsibility to Protect as an Impetus for Secessionist Movements,” in ed. Matthias Kettemann, Grenzen im Völkerrecht [Limits in Public International Law] (Jan Sramek Verlag, 2013).
39. Jure Vidmar, “South Sudan and the International Legal Framework Governing the Emergence and
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Delimitation of New States,” Texas International Law Journal (2012): 543–44.
40. Barry Sautman, All that Glitters is Not Gold: Tibet as a Pseudo-State, Contemporary Asian Studies
Series no. 198 (Baltimore: University of Maryland Press, 2009).
41. David Harris, Cases and Materials on International Law (London: Sweet & Maxwell 1998): 104.
42. For the views of Jamison Borek, Max Kampelman, Hurst Hannum, and Alan Romberg, see: Patricia
Carley, Self-Determination: Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Right to Secession (Washington: United
States Institute of Peace, 1995): 10, 14, 17.
43. Michael Rossi, “Five Inconvenient Truths about Kosovo,” Transconflict, July 17, 2013.
44. Milena Sterio, “On the Right to External Self-Determination: Selfistans, Secession, and the Great
Powers’ Rule,” Minnesota Journal of International Law 19 (2010): 176.
45. G. Pascal Zachary, “The Will to Secede,” In These Times, December 17, 2012.
46. “Clinton in Talk to Canadians Opposes Quebec Independence,” New York Times, February 24,
1995; “As Others See Us: the View from the United States,” Herald Scotland, November 12, 2012; “Panetta: Jewish State ‘More Isolated,’” Washington Post, October 3, 2011; “Rising Kurdistan: the United
States should Accept the Inevitable,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 4, 2013; “Sri Lanka Peace Hopes
Falter after Talks Collapse,” Agence France Press, June 11, 2006; “Joint Statement between the United
States of America and Indonesia,” White House Press Releases, October 22, 2003; Yahia Zoubir, “The
Western Sahara Conflict: Regional and International Repercussions,” Concerned Africa Scholars Bulletin
85 (2010): 72–77; “United States Relations with Georgia,” U.S. State Department, January 28, 2014;
“Clinton Backs Unity, European Integration for Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Voice of America, February 24,
2010. The U.S. opposed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People because its “reference
to self-determination could be construed as a universal right to self-determination that would threaten the
political and territorial integrity of member states.” See: “U.S. Opposes Declaration on Rights,” Indian
Country, November 29, 2006.
47. Ben Godfrey “U.S. Hypocrisy,” Gazette (Montreal), August 12, 2008.
48. Olexiy Haran, Disintegration of the Soviet Union and the U.S. Position on the Independence of Ukraine,
Discussion Paper 95-09 (Belfer Center, 1995).
49. “Security Aide Opposes Kosovo’s Independence,” Washington Times, October 1, 1999; “U.S. Committed to Kosovo Independence,” AFX News, July 19, 2007.
50. James Petras, “Separatism and Empire Building in the Twenty-first Century,” Journal of Contemporary
Asia 39, no. 1 (2009): 116–26.
51. It is nearly impossible for Tibetan émigrés to criticize the Dalai Lama. The Tibet Parliament in Exile
has no opposition party. See: Tenpa Gashi, “I Solemnly Swear,” Phayul, October 4, 2013.
52. James Copnall, A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts: Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete
Divorce (London: Hurst 2014); “EU Backs IOM Kosovo Projects,” International Organization for Migration, February 4, 2014; “Kosovo PM is the Head of a Human Organ and Arms Ring,” Guardian (UK),
December 14, 2010.
53. “Clinton Policy ‘Sends Misleading Signals,’” South China Morning Post, May 26, 1995.
54. “US Ambassador Comments on China’s Tibetan Policies,” Voice of America, October 30, 2012.
55. Zhang Qi, “Meiguo waijiao juecede zhengzhi yu xizang zhengce [The politics of U.S. foreign policy
decision-making and the Tibet policy,” Shijiejingji yu zhengzhi taolun (2012): 68–80; Zhang Guang, et al.,
“Meiguo guohuiyiyuan shezang ti ‘an tanxi [Exploratory analysis of U.S. Congress members’ proposals on
Tibet],” Meiguo wenti yanjiu (2009): 72–96.
56. U.S. Congressional Documents and Publications, July 25, 2012.
57. Kerry Dumbaugh, “The Tibet Policy Act of 2002: Background and Implementation,” Congressional
Research Service, March 17, 2009. The total TGIE budget was about U.S. $22 million a year in 2012. See:
“Exiled Tibetan Government to Recruit Bureaucrats on IAS Pattern,” Financial Express (India), February
26, 2012. The total for all US government Tibet-related programs in 2011 exceeded $10 million. See:
“Tibet Funding,” International Campaign for Tibet, 2014.
58. “Tibet Funding,” National Endowment for Democracy; Michael Barker, “Democratic Imperialism:
Tibet, China and the National Endowment for Democracy,” Centre for Research on Globalization, August 13, 2007. Julia Taft, Special Coordinator for Tibet from 1999 to 2001, later served as an ICT board
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member. See: “Julia Taft: Crisis Manager Helped Resettle Refugees,” Washington Post, March 19, 2008.
59. “Uneasy Moments for Tibetans as Leading U.S. Supporter Alleges Misuse of Funds,” Times of India,
November 29, 2012; “Free Radio Free Asia,” Phayul, November 28, 2012.
60. Gordon G. Chang, The Coming Collapse of China (New York: Random House, 2001), 27.
61. For a quote from Wangchuk Shakaba, see: Kinga Brudzinska, “One Home, One Dream: Exploring
Tibetan Diaspora in New York City,” Humanity in Action, 2008.
62. Evan Osnos, “The Next Reincarnation,” New Yorker, October 4, 2010; Amy Kazmin, “An Exclusive
Interview with the Dalai Lama,” Financial Times Magazine, November 7, 2013; Edward Lucas, “The
Tibetan Test,” European Voice, May 16, 2013. Even Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and head of
its secessionist party, declined to meet the Dalai Lama in Scotland in 2012. See: “Alex Salmond’s Snub
Provoke a Dalai Lama Ding Dong,” Sunday Times (UK), March 10, 2013. The Dalai Lama has visited
Quebec several times after 2007, but his last meeting with the head of the ruling, separatist Bloc Quebcois
seems to have been then.
63. “The Dalai Lama Spent the Day with Hundreds of Conservatives in Washington and Everyone Got
Along,” Yahoo News, February 20, 2014.
64. Lobsang Sangay spent 16 years at Harvard University before becoming TGIE head in 2011. Lloyd,
New Leader. Tsewang Rigzin was active in Oregon and Tenzin Jigme in Minnesota before becoming TYC
presidents (2007–2013 and 2013–present, respectively). See: “TYC re-elects President Tsewang Rigzin,”
Phayul, August 8, 2010; “North American Regional Tibetan Youth Congress Members convene in San
Francisco for the 13th Annual Working Committee Meeting,” Tibetan Youth Congress, July 3, 2013.
65. Teresa Wright, Accepting Authoritarianism: State-Society Relations in China’s Reform Era (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2010).
66. “We do Love the Country, but we also Love our Money,” South China Morning Post, April 29, 2013.
67. Cary Huang, “Paranoia from Soviet Collapse haunts China’s Communist Party 22 Years On,”
South China Morning Post, November 18, 2013. A key reason for the Soviet collapse, the inducement of
Soviet leaders to break up the country so Russia could join a “common European home,” is inapplicable
to China. See: David Kotz and Fred Weir, Revolution from Above: the Demise of the Soviet Union (New
York: Routledge, 1997).
68. For relevant quotes, see: Sautman, All that Glitters is Not Gold: Tibet as a Pseudo-State (Baltimore:
University of Maryland Press, 2009): 4. Also see: Dechen Tsering, “An Open Letter to Sikyong Dr. Lobsang
Sangay,” Phayul, August 28, 2013. This pro-independence author also argues that Lobsang Sangay’s 2013
concession that the émigrés do not challenge the existing political system in Tibet is incompatible with
genuine autonomy and thus not credible.
69. Gordon Chang, “The Coming Collapse of China, 2012 Edition,” Foreign Policy, December 29, 2011.
70. Rebecca Novick, “Why is Beijing Leaking the Revolution?” Huffington Post, March 27, 2013.
71. “Will a China Collapse Bring Freedom to Tibet?” Radio Free Asia, March 19, 2013. For a comparison, see: Gabriel Rachman, “Politics Can’t Curb a Chinese Steamroller,” Financial Times, March 20, 2012.
A Tibetan émigré scholar in the United States has wondered whether it is the Tibetan exile cause, rather
than China, that will collapse. See: Tenzin Yeshi, “The Coming Collapse of Tibetan Freedom Movement?”
Journey of a Tibetan, December 13, 2013.
72. Gordon Chang, “China’s Leaders Ignore Dissent at their Peril,” World Affairs, September 25, 2013.
73. Robert Harmel and Alexander Tan, “One Party or Multi-Party Competition: Chinese Attitudes to
Party System Alternatives,” Party Politics 18, no. 3 (2012): 337–47.
74. National Intelligence Council, Global Trend 2030: Alternative World (2012): 78.
75. Larry Diamond, “China and East Asian Democracy: the Coming Wave,” Journal of Democracy (2012):
12. For a second to Diamond’s view, see: Carl Gershman, “China and Tibet: the Prospect for Democratic
Change,” remarks to 6th World Parliamentarians Convention on Tibet, April 27, 2012.
76. “Tibet’s End-Game,” National Review, April 4, 2011.
77. Gu Junli, “Review and Prospect of Sino-German Relations” (unpublished paper); “China, Germany
to Deepen Cooperation,” The DayAfter, June 1, 2013.
78. “Smash China II,” German-Foreign-Policy, October 16, 2012.
79. Ibid.; “A Loser at Home; a Winner in the Outside World,” Sampsonia Way Magazine, November 7,
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Secessionism as a United States Foreign Policy Lever
2012; Natalia Meden, “Who Feels that China is a Carthage to be Destroyed?” Strategic-Culture Foundation, October 22, 2012. Liao, who is financed by the governmental German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD), agrees violence may be needed to “split up [China] into many countries,” because “Every time
there is an overthrow of dynasty, there is blood that needs to be shed.” See: “Chinese Dissidents in Exile
Share Experiences in North Side Forum,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 9, 2013. Liao has met in Dharamsala
with Tibetan Buddhism’s “third-ranked” leader. See: “Rebellious Chinese Writer Meets the Gyalwang
Karmapa,” The Karmapa, September 8, 2012.
80. For Chinese Tibet specialists on the U.S. role in Tibet secessionism, see: “Zangxuezhuanjia Du
Yongbin tan Aobama shidai meiguode xizangzhengce [Tibet specialist Du Yongbin on Obama’s current
U.S. Tibet policy],” China Tibet Online, July 26, 2013; Guo Yonghu, Meiguoguohui yu zhongmeiguanxizhongde xizangwenti [The US Congress and the Tibet Question in China–US relations ](Beijing: Shijie zhishi
chubanshe, 2011).
81. “U.S.–China Relations: Key Points from Pew Research,” Pew Research, January 27, 2014.
82. “Most Americans say Tibet should be Independent,” CNN, February 18, 2010.
83. Barry Sautman, “Self-Representation and Ethnic Minority Rights in China,” Asian Ethnicity 15,
no. 2 (2014): 174–96.
84. David Siroky, “Explaining Secession” in ed. Pavkovic and Radan, Research companion to secession
(Ashgate Publishers, 2011), 61.
85. Jason Sorens, Secessionism: Identity, Interest and Strategy (Montreal: McGill University Press, 2012), 71.
86. Erin Jenne, et al., “Separatism as a Bargaining Posture: The Role of Leverage in Group Claimmaking,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 5 (2007): 537–56; Erin Jenne, “A Bargaining Theory of Minority
Demands: Explaining the Dog that Didn’t Bite in 1990s Yugoslavia,” International Studies Quarterly 48,
no. 4 (2004): 729–54.
87. Alan Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans,” International Studies
Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2008): 49–80; Valentin Robiliard, “The Darfurian Rebellion and the Moral Hazard
of Humanitarian Intervention,” McGill International Review 1, no. 1 (2011): 18–26; Ralph Janik, “The
Responsibility to Protect as an Impetus for Secessionist Movements,” in ed. Matthias Kettemann, Grenzen
im Völkerrecht [Limits in Public International Law] (Jan Sramek Verlag, 2013), 57–62.
88. Arman Grigoryan, “Third Party Intervention and the Escalation of State-Minority Conflicts,”
International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2010): 1166.
89. Stephen Saideman and R. William Ayres, For Kin and Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
90. Ian Lustick, et al., “Secessionism in Multicultural States: Does Power Sharing Prevent or Encourage
it?” American Political Science Review 98, no. 2 (2004): 223. Repression neither increases nor decreases
secessionist activity, but a small increase in representativeness of governing structures is as effective as a
large increase in repression in preventing secession.
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