The Illusion

Pravin Sawhney

On 19 June 2024, a bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers led by the US Chair on foreign affairs committee, Michael McCaul and including former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi met the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala to present him a copy of the recently passed ‘Resolution to Tibet China Dispute Act’ commonly referred to as the ‘Resolve Tibet Act.’ The Act passed on June 12 by both the Senate and the House now awaits the President’s clearance to become, what is easily the most contentious piece of legislation between the US and China since the US, in 2020, declared China in its National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, as its biggest (global geopolitical) competitor and the ‘pacing threat’ in this century.

Equally significant are two other issues concerning the Act. The US lawmakers chose to travel to Dharamshala to present the bill from India soil, even as the Dalai Lama was scheduled to travel on June 21 to the US for medical treatment. And, by welcoming the US delegation at the highest level—Prime Minister Modi met them—, India signaled to China that the US bill had its total support and encouragement.

By its act, the US lawmakers unequivocally indicated to China that a new security competition front against China, from Indian soil, had been opened. By the same logic, China would have assessed that the Modi government too (believing that it is in competition with China in regional geopolitics) had opened a security competition front against the Xi Jinping regime. While the US, as a great power competing with another great power China will get away with its provocation, India as a medium power might end up regretting its hollow bravado.

From the US perspective, security competition relates to use of military power in grey zone operations. Since, between two peer military competitors, the line between security competition, conflict, and war is thin, it is important for both sides to maintain strategic and military communications to keep unintended escalation in check. This explains why the US military had been asking China to keep open lines of communications since Washington started severe security competition in Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea (SCS). To recall, it was US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022 (which China strongly objected to) that opened a severe security competition there. And, with the creation of the military alliance called SQUAD (consisting of the US, Japan, Australia and Philippines) in May 2024, the US had opened the second security competition front in SCS against China. The purpose of the security fronts in Taiwan and SCS is to contain the PLA in the first island chain, while the purpose of the front from the India soil in to put pressure on the PLA tasked with safeguarding Chinese commercial ships traversing through the 3,000 nautical miles in the Indian Ocean region.

Coming to the Resolve Tibet Act, it has two objectives. The first is to provide funds to the US state department to facilitate the US special representative for Tibet affairs to counter Chinese disinformation on Tibet always being a part of China. And the second objective is to nudge China to start negotiations without any preconditions with the Dalai Lama or his representative (Central Tibetan Administration [CTA] or the government-in-exile based in Dharamshala) for the status and governance of Tibet. This objective is unrealizable since the Tibet sought by the Dalai Lama does not exist any longer, and the US lawmakers, India and the world knows this.

The Dalai Lama announced his vision for Tibet on 15 July 1988 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Called the ‘Middle Way Approach’ or the ‘Middle Path’, it sought genuine autonomy for Tibet within China. While the Dalai Lama did not seek independence from China, Beijing, on hearing his Strasbourg speech labelled him a ‘splittist’, one determines to unravel China’s political map. There were two irreversible issues with the Dalai Lama’s demands.

The first one is that the Tibet (or greater Tibet) that the Dalai Lama wants had not existed since the 18^th century, when the Qing dynasty of