THE WEEKLY STANDARD Blog reported this three weeks ago, but today we read in the Washington Post that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been unceremoniously barred from the White House until President Obama travels to China in November. Sinophiles in the White House are in Nirvana having successfully tossed overboard criticial bilateral concerns such as forced abortions, human rights, the treatment of political prisoners, and Chinese aggression against unarmed U.S. naval vessels in the Western Pacific — all this under the definition of “Strategic Reassurance,” the new euphemism for the United States doing a diplomatic bend-over and ankle grab (BOAAG). The Post‘s John Pomfret writes: “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. ” So…what has this appeasement and “strategic reassurance” earned the United States in the way of Chinese cooperation on critical issues? A bellwether can be found at the U.N. where, last Friday, China killed any attempt by the U.S. and France to put Burma’s military junta on the UNSC schedule by demanding that deaths in Afghanistan by U.S. and NATO forces also be discussed. You might recall Burma’s military junta is one of the most brutal in the world and a source for regional problems such as refugees, drugs, and the spread of infectious diseases among others. “We are not focused on that,” China’s Deputy Ambassador Liu Zhenmin said according to a Bloomberg report, but civilian casualties in Afghanistan was a “good subject” for the UN’s top body to discuss. It’s bad enough that the Chinese would draw a moral equivalency between civilian deaths in Afghanistan — where U.S. and NATO forces are fighting a war and taking unprecedented precautions to protect civilians and build a democratic society — and civilian deaths in Burma, where the junta targets civilians for murder and worse on a massive scale. That the White House, State, or Ambassador Rice issued nary a tweet of protest at this outrage is a good gauge at just how far we will go to avoid provoking Red China. And for what? Nobody believes the Chinese will consent to serious sanctions on Iran, or will bring the North Koreans to heel (Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is right now wrapping up a three day visit to North Korea where he is celebrating “good-neighborliness and generation-after-generation friendship between the two countries”). No one believes that the Chinese will cooperate on global warming. Or is the administration so deluded that they think such cooperation is possible? Is Valerie Jarrett telling the administration that, just like the IOC, the Chinese are ready to see the light with just a few more concessions and a little more direct, presidential diplomacy?
