Wash Post: Obama postpones meeting with Dalai Lama to avoid upsetting Chinese

[stjaba]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/04/AR2009100403262.html

Excerpt:

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama's summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks...

The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China's human rights and financial policies as well as backing efforts to elevate China's position in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund. 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.

Before a visit to China in February, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said advocacy for human rights could not "interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security crisis" -- a statement that won her much goodwill in Beijing. U.S. Treasury officials have also stopped accusing China of artificially deflating the value of its currency to make its exports more attractive.

[Martinus]

Ok, is Obama just a bad President or simply the first post-cold-war President to acquiesce to the fact (about which so far the US administration had been in denial) that the American Hegemony is over?

[Kleves]

That's CdM's cue to start tell us how the Chicoms really arn't so bad after all.

[Berkut]

That's CdM's cue to start tell us how the Chicoms really arn't so bad after all.

Yeah, this should be interesting to see. How can Seedy reconcile his man-love for Obama with his infinite contempt for the Chi-coms?

[Martinus]

Incidentally, I read a very interesting interview with Emmanuel Todd in the Polish edition of Newsweek today. I hope I can get hold of an English or a French translation. Essentially, he is claiming we are seeing the fall of the American Empire and that the emergence of Iran as a major regional power (following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq) will be a final nail to its coffin.

[Berkut]

The great thing about predicting that something that doesn't exist is going to fall is that it becomes really easy to claim you were right.

[Martinus]

The great thing about predicting that something that doesn't exist is going to fall is that it becomes really easy to claim you were right.

America has been an empire since at least 1945, perhaps a bit earlier. It has dominated the world politically and economically ever since. Now, he blames the fall of the global markets and American dominance specifically on the negative effects of the second phase globalisation - i.e. that unlike previous developments of capitalism, this one is actually leading to the decrease (or at least not a sufficient increase) of the average wage (because companies move jobs to offshore locations or work to cut wages at home), which results in demand deficit, which in turn means that the only way the increasing supply can be met with demand is through increasing debt.

[Warspite]

It's a shame that many European commentators cannot tell the difference between a hegemon and an empire.

[Berkut]

The great thing about predicting that something that doesn't exist is going to fall is that it becomes really easy to claim you were right.

America has been an empire since at least 1945, perhaps a bit earlier. It has dominated the world politically and economically ever since.

That is an interesting definition of "empire".

[Faeelin]

That is an interesting definition of "empire".

Hey, I'm sure Europeans will help step up to defend the liberal, democratic vision of the world, right?

[Martinus]

That is an interesting definition of "empire".

Hey, I'm sure Europeans will help step up to defend the liberal, democratic vision of the world, right?

Are you implying that this is what America has been doing so far? 

[Faeelin]

Are you implying that this is what America has been doing so far? 

Not at all. Look at all the dictatorships we set up in Western Europe.

[The Minsky Moment]

Prioritizing the strategic relationship with China over human rights concerns has been US policy since Nixon.

[Berkut]

Prioritizing the strategic relationship with China over human rights concerns has been US policy since Nixon.

Of course - that doesn't mean we haven't simultaneously pressured China over human rights concerns. It's not like you can only do one or the other, although it seems like the Obama administration is clearly signalling that the pressure is off.

The sad thing is that it won't work. Of course, I am not sure the pressure ever worked either. They seem pretty impervious to that kind of thing.

What the point of coming right out and telling them we don't care anymore is rather beyond me. More of the careful and mature foreign relations we have come to expect, I imagine.

[Fate]

What does Obama gain by meeting with some two bit theocratic dictator for life?