Recently in International Relations Category

Afghanistan, the Olympics, the Dalai Lama...in a week when the President was domestically burdened by several international quagmiers or miscues, the Nobel Committee awards Barack Obama the Peace Prize.  According to the New York Times:

The Nobel Committee announced in Oslo that it has awarded the annual peace prize to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."  

The question that immediately must be asked is: How has the President "strengthened international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"?  The answer is exactly what hawkish conservatives deride him for - his speeches.  The committee especially cited the approach he has had to nuclear weapons as evidenced in the speech in Prague; and his willingness to directly engage the Muslim world in his brilliant speech in Cairo.  Anyone who domestically dismisses these efforts will have explain why America has risen in the past ten  months to be the most admired nation in the world after having fallen during President Bush's terms. 

The President's ability to communicate across divisiive liines (who can forget his race speech during the campaign) is laudable and extremely important in our globalized world.  Words do matter and people around the world are listening to our President. 

Ultimately, the President will have to make hard choices about Afghanistan, China, Israel and Palestine, and other issues that affect world peace.  Rhetoric will have to yield concrete action. 

But for today: congratulations Mr. President! You have made all Americans proud. 

Last summer a handful of students and I had the chance to meet with HH Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.  We spent an hour and a half listening, laughing and learning his views on inter-faith relations, the meaning of non-violent resistance and world events. One of the questions asked to HH was: "Will Tibet's future be changed by the election of Barack Obama?"  That question has been unfortunately answered with a resounding - no!  In fact, America's commitment to Tibet may be worse than under President Bush.  

Politico.com reported that President Obama snubbed HH Dalia Lama this week during the Dalai Lama's visit to Washington DC.  The only thing that can account for it is that this White House is so afraid of the Chinese and the debt the hold that they are now able to dictate American foreign policy: 

When it comes to the White House's decision not to have President Barack Obama meet with the Dalai Lama during his visit to Washington this week, some are seeing an $800 billion elephant in the room.

That, of course, is the amount of U.S. Treasury debt held by the Chinese government. That makes China the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, and the country's willingness to buy more is essential to the ability of the United States to finance its deficit spending.

And naturally, the Chinese do not want the new American president to meet with -- and lend credibility to -- the Dalai Lama, who is a longtime adversary of the Chinese government.
This week will mark the first time since 1991 that the Dalai Lama has come to Washington and not met with the U.S. president.
That leads one former Federal Reserve official to suspect that Chinese fiscal leverage over the American government is at the root of the decision. "Bottom line," says the official, "don't piss off your banker."

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a co-chairman of the Congressional Tibet Caucus, blasted "the administration's unwillingness to meet with an internationally respected human rights leader in order to placate Chinese tyrants."

Read how financial pressures forced Obama to snub HH the Dalai Lama

Towards the end of our time together HH asked a sincere question: Why will America not question China's treatment of Tibet and not being able to help myself I said: "Because we are intimidated!"  

Sad but true.  

The clerics of Iran are not of one mind on the recent Iranian election and voter fraud.  In fact they are deeply divided. The New York Times reported that in the religiously important town of Qum there is a group of clergy called the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum who issued a statement defying Ayatolla Ali Khamenei and his candidate Ahmadinejad.

"This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic," said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. "Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei."

This is good news for all of us who support the democratic process in Iran.  It is also good for those who question whether or not religious leaders of any type should exert influence in politics. 

Those who argue for a religious absence from politics come from two camps: one religious and one political.  The first is the religious people who contend that politics are too icky for the purity of the religious endeavor and that the two spheres of life - the religious and the political - should not touch lest the religious part be sullied.  This partition of life is not realistic. Any authentic religious practice involves more than the just the personal realm, it also is concerned with the social and how humans relate to one another (the love your neighbor is half of fhe two great commandments given by Jesus, the other half being love God.)  Keeping our religion free of politics leaves one with a small and self involved religious practice indeed.

The second objection comes from those in politics who lament that religious people desire to say something in the public square that stems out of their particular religious convictions.  This irks purely secular politicos because they are not sure that this is fair pool.  They don't know how to respond to someone who is making a religious claim in the public square.  But these objections are a historical - religious people have always made claims upon how we want our politics to work - the civil rights movement is one obvious example.  Religious people will make claims upon the political space - and that is a good thing.

The only exception to the positive blending of politics and religion is when the political and the religion become so intertwined as to be indistingushable one from another and where political and religious debate is curtailed.  This is called a theocracy and it is bad for both politics and religion - and until recently that was the situation in Iran.  Theocracies are hard to criticize or oppose because anyone who dares to do so is not only questioning the state, they are also said to be questioning God. 

The reality in Iran now is that dissenting voices from the clergy have seriously weakened the theocracy of Iran.  Let us pray that the clergy will be bold and that by displaying disagreement among religious people that the Iranian theocracy will fall and in its place will rise an Iranian democracy that welcomes poltical and religious participation from all its people. 

On July Fourth many of us attend parades that, in addition to the local chamber of commerce float, include men, boys and sometimes girls dressed in soldier costumes reminiscent of the war that brought the colonies independence from the British.  Reading about this war we know that it was brutal, horrifying and left serious deprivation for both sides but especially the nascent Americans.  On this July Fourth I am wondering what America as a nation might have become had we gained our independence from England through means of non-violent resistance instead of war?  

The question was brought home to me by my recent trip to India where ahimsa (the principle of no-harm) is honored in this country which gained its freedom from British rule not through war but through a popular uprising using the principles of non-violent resistance. 

This idea of a non-violent American revolution seems, at first blush, to be sentimental, academic or even heretical.   Yet the question of violent vs. non-violent revolutionary movements  is very real for those countries currently attempting to gain their freedom from oppressive occupying forces.  It is very real for the people of Tibet, for example.  Recently a group of students and I were able to meet with the Dailai Lama and with Prof. Rinpoche Sandhong, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan People in exile.  When we asked Prof. Rinpoche about Buddhism and the principle of Ahimsa he spoke of Gandhi.   "Gandhi did not invent non-violent resistance, but what he did was bring the principle of non-violence to an entire people to create change." 

Gandhi led the Indian people to a non-violent attainment of complete freedom from a much more powerful occupying force; Martin Luther King, Jr, was inspired to use these same techniques in the American civil rights movement; and Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu did the same in South Africa.  Today the people of Tibet, led by the Dalai Lama, have halted violent means of securing their freedom and in so doing have shown the Chinese invasion for the travesty that it is while providing spiritual inspiration for people of all nations.  

What if the practice of non-violence resistance had extended further back and had been employed in the Americas?  Would the French revolution have followed suit and been less bloody?  Would a non-violent  American revolution changed our understanding of conquest and freedom and altered our interactions with native American populations and with our neighbors to the south and north?

I am not a complete pacifist.  But the powerful freedom struggles of India and Tibet that did not rely on force but on spiritual principles have inspired me to re-consider our Independence day parades and to remember that there are other models of getting freedom in the world - ones that don't involve violence.  Let us celebrate our independence but reflect upon other means that true and lasting freedom are  attained.  Happy Fourth of July. 

On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Talmon.

No clearer statement could be made of Prime Minister Netanyahu's intent to fight President Obama's settlement policy. Netanyahu, in an effort to detract from the conversation, even went so far as to say: "I think that the more we spend time arguing about this, the more we waste time instead of moving towards peace." In his talks with Secretary of State Clinton, Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman said bluntly: "We cannot accept this vision absolutely, completely freezing these settlements. I think we must keep natural growth."