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 ...
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
More from Foreign Policy


At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment
Keri Russell gets Drexel furniture but no Senate confirmation hearing.


How Macron Is Blocking EU Strategy on Russia and China
As a strategic consensus emerges in Europe, France is in the way.


What the Bush-Obama China Memos Reveal
Newly declassified documents contain important lessons for U.S. China policy.


Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust
Moscow’s arms exports have fallen to levels not seen since the Soviet Union’s collapse.