This is Different.

Now the Chinese are griping because the U.S. wants to give the Dalai Lama a medal. Again, Bush is trying to be diplomatic about this, insisting that the Tibetan is being honored purely as a spiritual leader. As far as the Chinese are concerned, "the Dalai" is nothing but a separatist, and any honors accorded him only endorse separatism. On this one I'm going to defend the U.S. First, we are not strategically dependent on China in the same way that we depend on Turkey, so it's simply not as great an imperative not to offend China. Second, to the extent that Tibet was a sovereign country before China swallowed it up in 1950, the Dalai Lama has every right to be a separatist, and people around the world have a right to advocate Tibetan separatism. The U.S. government doesn't have to endorse Tibetan independence explicitly in any honors granted the Lama, but if the Chinese want to infer that, it must be a guilty conscience talking. By my own standards, I'd concede that Tibet will inevitably remain within a Chinese sphere of influence until a world revolution makes such spheres obsolete, but being stuck in a sphere of influence shouldn't mean you lose your national sovereignty altogether. From what I know about Tibetan history, the Dalai Lama's predecessors were pretty much feudal overlords who oppressed the peasantry, but that no more gave the Chinese the right to intervene to modernize or reform the place than Saddam Hussein's practices entitled the U.S. to topple his government. Anyone who wants the U.S. out of Iraq should also want China out of Tibet.