Speculations abound ahead of Dalai Lama’s US visit

Although the Dalai Lama’s planned visit to the US sometime later this month after Jun 20 is stated to be to get his knee problem fixed, speculations abound as to whether political leaders, including especially President Joe Biden, will meet him during this contentious election year.

Joe Biden made a campaign promise to meet with the Dalai Lama, and with just months remaining in his first term, this might be the only good chance he gets, noted gzeromedia.com Jun 5.

However, this might be a problem, as the president is in the midst of a delicate stabilization process with China, which conquered Tibet in 1950 and forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India in 1959, the report continued.

Beijing has long considered the Dalai Lama a threat to the regime and has attempted to punish countries that give him an audience, the report added.

“A meeting between Biden and his Holiness, under any circumstance, would be seen as violating a diplomatic taboo by Beijing,” Dominic Chiu, senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, has said.

“The current communication channels and working groups established between Beijing and Washington to manage bilateral relations would be completely ineffective in managing such a scenario,” Chiu has warned.

However, this may be overstating the case for the US President avoiding a meeting with the Dalai Lama.

“While there is long-standing precedent for meetings between US officials and respected religious figures, including the Dalai Lama, we do not have anything to confirm at this time,” Reuters Jun 4 quoted a US State Department spokesperson as saying.

It added that the President’s National Security Council did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

However, stating the case for a meeting, the report noted that since taking office in 2021, Biden has yet to meet the Dalai Lama. As a candidate in 2020, Biden criticised Donald Trump for being the only US president in three decades who had not met or spoken to the Tibetan spiritual leader, calling this “disgraceful”. He promised to put values—values held in contempt, he argued, by the man he would go on to defeat—at the centre of American foreign policy, noted The Atlantic magazine (theatlantic.com) Jun 6.

“I’ll meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” it quoted Biden as saying in early Sep 2020.

The report went on: “The Dalai Lama is 88 years old and in declining health, and he seldom leaves his home in exile in Dharamsala, in the Himalayan foothills of India. But the Dalai Lama’s age now provides a path for Biden to keep his promise: The bodhisattva has bad knees and has decided, after much procrastination, to come to New York this summer to investigate the possibility of replacement.”

It said that a visit by Biden to the Dalai Lama’s hospital—or an after-surgery invitation to the White House—would signal continuing American concern over the oppression of Tibet and Tibetans, as well as support for one of the most heroic and pacific humanitarian leaders of our age.

The report also said the Dalai Lama’s visit to the US would follow one to Dharamsala to see the spiritual leader later this month by congresswoman and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as part of a congressional delegation. The Pelosi trip has not yet been announced due to security concerns, the report said.