No Obama photo-op for Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is in Washington this week, but he won’t be meeting with Obama. This will be the first presidential snub since 1991, and as the Washington Post reports: The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China … Obama administration officials have termed ...

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579979_091005_dalai2.jpg
(FILES) In this picture taken on September 11, 2009, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama gestures during a conference entitled " Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Asia? held under the auspices of former Czech president Vaclav Havel in Prague. Senior aides to US President Barack Obama held talks with the Dalai Lama September 14 ahead of the Tibetan leader's scheduled trip to the US next month, a Dalai Lama spokesman said. AFP PHOTO/MICHAL CIZEK (Photo credit should read MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images)

The Dalai Lama is in Washington this week, but he won’t be meeting with Obama. This will be the first presidential snub since 1991, and as the
Washington Post
reports:

The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China … Obama administration officials have termed the new policy “strategic reassurance,” which entails the U.S. government taking steps to convince China that it is not out to contain the emerging Asian power.”

Recently, FP contributor Wen Liao explained the thinking:

The pragmatism that is Obama’s diplomatic lodestar, it seems, comes at a price: Illusions must be abandoned. Publicly recognizing China’s territorial unity is the sin qua non for effective bilateral diplomatic relations, and Obama knows it.”

MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images

Christina Larson is an award-winning foreign correspondent and science journalist based in Beijing, and a former Foreign Policy editor. She has reported from nearly a dozen countries in Asia. Her features have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Science, Scientific American, the Atlantic, and other publications. In 2016, she won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Morton Frank Award for international magazine writing. Twitter: @larsonchristina

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