A Study Of US’s Tibet Policy In The Early Cold War(1947-1973)

The US’s Tibet Policy began to face various of challenges and step back from her traditional position of supporting China’s sovereignty over Tibet after the breakout of the Cold War. In addition to supporting the armed rebellion, The US began to support Tibet in UN, and openly supported the rights to self-determination owned by Tibetan and admitted Tibet was a self-governing country after Tibet revolt in1959. These actions almost negated China’s sovereignty over Tibet. However, the change of US’s policy could not overstepped the bottom line of respecting China’s sovereignty. In order to getting intelligence of China, The US’s support to Dalai clique only limited from protecting Tibetan human rights to funding rebels. The thaw in the Sino-American relations signaled the complete failure of those policies according to the changes of worldwide situations in late1960s. For the Nixon administration,there’s no other choice except stopping convert policy in Tibet.The shifting of US’s Tibet policy came from the need of Cold War. The unification and consolidation of China, the friendly policy to India and India’s support, together with the objection of“ROC”(Taiwan) made US’s policy unchangeable. The following huge changes of international situation directly lead to the return to its traditional policy.