By BBGWatcher | November 11, 2011 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) announced that Jianglin Li, a scholar of Tibetan history, joined its Advisory Board.
Jianglin Li is a researcher and writer, focusing exclusively on the history of Tibet after 1950. She has conducted research in Tibetan refugee camps in India and Nepal and interviewed hundreds of refugees. Since 2004, Jianglin Li has met regularly with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and interviewed him many times. She is the first Chinese-speaking writer born in mainland China to be his authorized biographer. She has published more than 30 articles on Tibet and a book on the 1959 Lhasa event. She is currently writing a book on the secret war in Tibet from 1956-1962.
The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting said it will benefit from Jianglin Li’s scholarship and her knowledge of Tibet and China. CUSIB works to expand the flow of uncensored news and information from the United States to countries without free media.
En ce moment, il n’y a plus de pilote dans l’avion. [At the moment, there is no longer a pilot on the plane.] — A European comment on President Obama as a leader of the Free World.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, USA, January 03, 2011 — Who is the leader of the Free World when democracy is under threat? Read more…
En ce moment, il n’y a plus de pilote dans l’avion. [At the moment, there is no longer a pilot on the plane.] — A European comment on President Obama as a leader of the Free World.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, USA, January 03, 2011 — Who is the leader of the Free World when democracy is under threat?
For a moment on New Year’s Eve 2010, I thought the leader of the free world was still George W. Bush. The President of the United States reads a message of solidarity with the people of Belarus, whose rights and freedoms have been once again trampled by an authoritarian ruler. Except that those reading the message were a former U.S President and a former U.S. Secretary of State, both Republicans. They were joined other world leaders, former statesmen, and human rights activists — courageous individuals like former Czech President Vaclav Havel, human rights activist Yelena Bonner, the widow of Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, and many others.
Former President Bush read the names of five Belarusian presidential candidates still being held in a KGB prison. The other participants read the names of other political prisoners in Belarus. But there was no high-ranking member of the Obama administration among the participants in the “Voices of Solidarity” project.
Most Americans and millions in the rest of the world expect the President of the United States to speak up forcefully when democracy abroad is under major attack. When shortly before Christmas 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law in Poland, there was not a slightest doubt that President Reagan would appear in front of television cameras to express the support of the American people for the Polish independent trade union movement Solidarity and its imprisoned leader Lech Walesa. In the last weeks of 2010, few expected President Obama to act forcefully and effectively in face of yet another attack against freedom and democracy in Belarus.
Both attacks on democracy supporters happened during a holiday season. President Reagan, who was in 1981 much older than President Obama is now, had showed remarkable energy, determination, and leadership in letting the world know what the United States thought about a communist dictator like General Jaruzelski. Much younger Barack Obama left Washington for a family vacation in Hawaii.
If you do not see the video of President Reagan’s Christmas address to the American people in 1981, try this link.
When elections in Belarus were stolen and democracy supporters beaten and imprisoned just before Christmas 2010, the White House issued a short written statement. Granted, the severity of repression in Belarus now has not reached the same level as in Poland in 1981, but presidential leadership in the U.S. was still woefully and significantly inadequate. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton issued a statement on the post-presidential elections situation in Belarus. It was short and, as the title suggests, without much bite. Again, it does not compare in any way to President Reagan’s numerous statements and speeches after the imposition of martial law in Poland.
If you cannot see the video of President Obama’s Christmas 2010 address, click here.
President Reagan with Pope John Paul II in Fairbanks, Alaska, 1984. In his numerous efforts to help Solidarity, President Ronald Reagan consulted with Pope John Paul II.
One could presume it was yet another of President Obama’s public diplomacy blunders, but unfortunately it is much more than that. This and other acts and omissions reflect his deliberate decision, taken at the outset of his presidency, to give up for all practical purposes the role of the leader of the Free World.
After two years, it is now obvious that President Obama assumed the office determined not to upset totalitarian dictators. Operating under the illusion that by avoiding an overly confrontational posture he’ll be able to negotiate concessions and help them to reform later, he has emboldened dictators and insulted numerous loyal U.S. allies.
Former Solidarity Leader, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former Polish President Lech Walesa.
Many, especially those who had lived or still live under communist and other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, knew perfectly well that this approach would result in a retreat for democracy. Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, and other leaders in East-Central Europe even sent a warning letter to the White House early into the Obama presidency. Still some pro-democracy and human rights activists, especially in Western Europe, were initially impressed with his soft power diplomacy as a welcome alternative to military interventionism of George W. Bush. Granted, President Obama has not started any new costly and unnecessary wars, but a series of public diplomacy disasters over the last two years, culminating in his weak response to repression in Belarus just before Christmas 2010, have exposed him at home and abroad as an ineffective U.S leader.
President Obama’s public diplomacy strategy stems from his view of America as a threatening power, a popular theme among his left-wing friends and among revisionist academics who became his advisers on Russia and the Middle East. I became concerned that U.S. public diplomacy under his presidency was in crisis when not a single U.S. diplomat or any other official was able to advise him that announcing his unilateral decision to end George Bush’s anti-missile program in Central Europe on the day of the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland would be received by the Poles as an ultimate insult.
The answer to wielding influence abroad in defense of democracy is not blind, uninformed military interventionism of George W. Bush being pushed into war by advisers with a hidden agenda, but neither is it “resetting” of relations with ex-KGB spies and other opponents of democracy. President Obama could learn a lot from the leadership style of Ronald Reagan, who knew what he stood for and knew how to select and control his advisers and communicate his message to the American people and the world. But to be like Reagan, President Obama would have to first change his political philosophy and his vision of America. I don’t think that is likely to happen.
It is fairly clear by now that the Free World will have to wait for a new leader until the end of President Obama’s presidency. That role cannot be assumed by George W. Bush or Senator John McCain. Only the President of the United States, as the elected leader of the most powerful nation in the world, can assume this role, but only if he wants to. It is now obvious that President Obama does not want that role. In fact, he is ashamed of it, as he has demonstrated many times, delighting dictators and instilling fear among U.S. allies.
Snapshot from RFE/RL Website, January 02, 2010.
It’s a shame that public diplomacy on behalf of the American people, American values, and America’s long-term interests around the world is now being conducted not by the administration but has to be pursued by former U.S. leaders like George W. Bush, who is not particularly popular abroad. But if President Obama won’t find time to become a public voice in support of freedom, at least the former president has shown what many Americans think and that demonstrated that they won’t be silent when democracy abroad is in danger even if the current occupant of the White House prefers to stay on the sidelines.
RFE/RL President Jeff Gedmin
Interestingly, the initiative of conducting U.S. public diplomacy in defense of freedom has been taken up also by the U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which had played a major role in helping to bring down the communist system. I have been in the past critical of RFE/RL, especially its treatment of its own journalists, but many of these policies had been imposed on the station by former members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the BBG’s executives in Washington, D.C. Under the leadership of Bush-era appointed president Jeff Gedmin, RFE/RL has been trying to fill the gap created by the lack of a long-term U.S. public diplomacy strategy in East-Central Europe. RFE/RL has been broadcasting messages of support for the people of Belarus and providing news about the struggle for democracy to a number of countries in Eurasia.
Unfortunately, without a high-profile support from the White House and the State Department, RFE/RL’s work will never have the same impact as it had during the Cold War. If anything, it further demonstrates the crisis of U.S. public diplomacy by sending a message that any change in American human rights policy and in relations with the countries of East-Central Europe will not come until the end of the Obama presidency. At least, RFE/RL is making it clear to its audiences that not all Americans agree with President Obama and his vision of America and the world.
Still it is unfortunate that practically the only voice on behalf of the majority of the American citizens who had voted against the Democratic Party in November 2010 and indirectly voiced their opposition not only to President Obama’s economic policies but also his foreign policy, is a radio station which is practically unknown to most Americans. Although it is funded by the U.S. Congress, RFE/RL is based in the Czech Republic and most of its employees are foreign journalists who have never been to the United States.
RFE/RL’s primary role has always been to serve as a surrogate domestic radio in the countries to which they broadcast. The role of explaining U.S. foreign policy and any opposition to it among Americans has always been assigned to the Voice of America, another U.S. government-funded international broadcaster which is based in Washington, D.C. and managed by the same U.S. Federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
Snapshot of VOA English Service Website on Jan. 02, 2011.
Yet it appears from a quick review of its English and Russian websites that the Voice of America did not even report on the RFE/RL’s Belarus initiative or the fact that George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice participated in it as the most prominent Americans. A search for “Bush, Belarus, and RFE/RL” on the VOA websites did not return any results.
If these two stations, working under the same BBG management, cannot consult with one another, it’s rather obvious that no one in Washington is in charge of coordinating public diplomacy and international broadcasting.
What a big difference compared to Christmas time in 1981 during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when I received numerous phone calls at home late at night from officials of the now defunct United States Information Agency (USIA) who wanted to know what kind of assistance the Voice of America’s Polish Service, where I was a managing editor, needed to expand immediately its medium wave and shortwave radio broadcasts to Poland.
The Voice of America has not had any programs in Belarusian. It used to broadcast, however, radio programs in Russian, a language which is widely understood in Belarus. What made VOA largely ineffective in East-Central Europe was the BBG ‘s decision to terminate Russian radio programs in 2008, just 12 days before the Russian military attack on Georgia. The BBG also ended all VOA programs in Central European languages.
The VOA English Service in the meantime has been broadcasting numerous news reports in support of President Obama’s “reset” policy with the Kremlin with very little balancing input from Republican lawmakers and other responsible critics of the administration — a legal requirement for VOA journalists under the VOA Charter approved by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Gerald Ford.
One particularly one-sided VOA English Service analysis of U.S.-Russian relations, which completely ignored any Congressional and other U.S. criticism of President Obama’s approach to managing relations with the Kremlin, was first broadcast in English and then translated and put on the VOA Russian website. It was also translated by other VOA language services which lack resources to originate their own, more balanced reporting.
And while democracy supporters in Belarus were still being rounded up and independent media outlets raided by the secret police, VOA and BBG officials issued a self-congratulatory press release bragging about VOA’s ability to communicate with the audience in Belarus through the Internet and social media. They failed to mention that social media sites were blocked in Belarus by the regime during the contested elections and the violence that followed. They also failed to note that Internet access in Belarus is still very limited, and that the number of visitors from Belarus to the VOA Russian Service website, if they even can be accurately counted, is statistically insignificant.
Only a few days after the issuing of the deceptive press release, there was nothing left on VOA Russian Service website home page Sunday to indicate that Belarus was still a significant U.S. foreign policy concern. In fact, there was not a single news item on Belarus. Neither VOA Russian or VOA English home page features any banners with a link to more coverage of dramatic events in Belarus — something human rights defenders would certainly welcome.
The State Department website, state.gov, when I checked it on Sunday, January 2, had nothing on its home page on Belarus. Another State Department website, America.gov, had on its home page only one link to the statement on presidential elections in Belarusdelivered by the charge d’affairs of the United States Mission to the OSCE. Again, it was short and without any bite: “The United States has made clear throughout its engagement with the government of Belarus that the government’s respect for human rights and the democratic process is at the center of our bilateral relations. The actions taken by Belarusian authorities following the elections represent a clear step backwards on these issues.” There were no “Solidarity with Belarus” banners of any kind on the State Department websites, but then U.S. diplomats should not be expected to do anything that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not want them to do. The example has to come from the top.
The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale
The Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, who — according to the State Department website — “leads America’s public diplomacy outreach, which includes communications with international audiences,” is Judith McHale, appointed to this position by President Obama. But one could also say in her defense that nothing she did not do President Obama really wanted to be done. He certainly did not show much interest himself in the tragic events in Belarus. State Department officials are pursuing his public diplomacy, not necessarily public diplomacy serving long-term U.S. interests.
In 1981, VOA Polish Service did not have a website, but millions listening to our radio programs knew that the United States was fully behind the people of Poland. But then there was also no doubt what President Reagan, the White House, and the State Department stood for.
During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, U.S. public diplomacy had a powerful message in support of freedom, and U.S. international broadcasting played its journalistic role of reporting on it. While I can understand that VOA English and Russian services cannot report on something that the Obama White House and the State Department are NOT doing to keep Belarus in the news, they could at least report more on what others outside of the administration have been doing to draw attention to the violations of human rights which continue everyday, even when U.S. officials and many VOA and BBG managers are on a holiday vacation.
In light of all these developments, the initiative of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to broadcast the message to Belarus from former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is highly commendable. It’s vastly better than the totally ineffective public diplomacy outreach to Belarus from the Obama administration. Let’s hope that RFE/RL’s creative initiative will do some good, especially when Bush and Rice are heard alongside of many non-American statesmen and human rights activists.
But the participation of George W. Bush and the prominent placement of his photo on the RFE/RL’s website — but not on the VOA website — also send another powerful public diplomacy message, and not a very good one: the pilot of the Free World is still missing from the plane. The people in Belarus and in other countries under dictatorships are justified in asking who will be leading America in its support for human rights and democracy for the next two years. Unfortunately, they have already concluded, that it is not going to be President Obama.
We should be grateful that we still have Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Americans like George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, but these are not U.S. institutions and leaders who can have the greatest possible impact on public opinion abroad. The leadership in support of democracy has to come from the President and the White House to be taken seriously by dictators and authoritarian rulers like Russia’s ex-KGB spy Vladimir Putin. That type of leadership has been missing for the last two years.
As a former United States Information Agency and Voice of America employee with over 30 years of U.S. government service, my unofficial and subversive — from the perspective of the current White House and the State Department — public diplomacy message for foreign audiences is that President Reagan’s response to events in Poland in 1981 was much more typical for what most American’s would want now than President Obama’s practical non-response to the assault on democracy and human rights in Belarus.
Another unofficial public diplomacy message — again for what it’s worth since I have absolutely no current connection to the administration — is that President Obama’s foreign policy should not be always identified with the desires of the American people. In other words, democracy supporters abroad should not blame the American people and the United States for President Obama’s weak support for human rights. It is also worth remembering, especially in light of the results of the 2010 U.S. Congressional elections, that Barack Obama may no longer be president in 2013 and that American voters may soon help bring U.S. foreign policy back on its more traditional course.
About Ted Lipien
Ted Lipien is a former Voice of America acting associate director. He was also a regional BBG media marketing manager responsible for placement of U.S. government-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries in Eurasia. In the 1980′s he was in charge of VOA radio broadcasts to Poland during the communist regime’s crackdown on the Solidarity labor union and oversaw the development of VOA television news programs to Ukraine and Russia. After leaving U.S. government service, he founded Free Media Online (FreeMediaOnline.org), a California-based NGO which supports media freedom worldwide.
He is also author of “Wojtyla’s Women: How They Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church”(O-Books – June 2008). The book, which describes Pope John Paul II’s views on feminism, also includes evidence of the importance of Western radio broadcasts during Karol Wojtyla’s life in communist-ruled Poland and in the first ten years of his papacy. The book also has references to the efforts of the KGB and other communist intelligence services to place spies in the Vatican and to influence reporting by journalists covering the Polish pope.
This commentary by Ted Lipien may be republished in full or in part with attribution to FreeMediaOnline.org.
SAN FRANCISCO — Sometimes really bad decisions produce some unintended good results. Two recent public diplomacy disasters caused by President Obama’s questionable judgement — where was Judith McHale and the State Department diplomats? — had some unexpected good consequences, as did the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize despite his lack of any concrete foreign policy accomplishments. Some of his recent foreign policy decisions that were particularly ill-advised finally prompted the liberal media in the U.S. to start doing some critical reporting, albeit still far too limited, and may have forced President Obama himself to begin questioning his own thinking about the realities of international politics.
When the president chose to make his announcement of canceling the Bush Administration missile defense plans in Central Europe on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, both The New York Times and The Washington Post published op-eds criticizing his lack of historical sensitivity in dealing with U.S. allies and his handling of other foreign policy isues. This level of criticism of President Obama has not been seen before in liberal U.S. media.
Conservative and independent media reporters have been doing their job of questioning and criticizing the Obama Administration, but their loud voices do not count for much among the current Democratic Party governing establishment in Washington. In fact, prior to the missile defense announcement debacle, the White House had ignored numerous criticisms and suggestions that might have averted the latest foreign policy and public diplomacy disasters.
When rumors started the day before the announcement that it was imminent, I had warned that making it on September 17 would expose the United States to international dismay and ridicule that would not be limited only to Poland. But President Obama was going to scrap the missile shield no matter what, apparently in order to please the Kremlin in the vain hope of getting Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev to help him in Iran. In retrospect, therefore, the fact that he made the announcement on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland was a fortunate one, despite the fact that the decision itself was a very bad one for America’s reputation among its friends abroad, and in terms of how Barack Obama will be perceived by America’s potential enemies and rivals.
In finally forcing liberals and Obama supporters to engage in admittedly limited public discourse, but still better than the previous near total admiration for the president and lack of any critical discussion, the missile shield announcement on September 17 produced a good outcome that the administration and its critics had not expected. These decisions exposed the incompetence of the White House and the State Department public relations officials and diplomats. This turned out after all be a good thing for the American people despite the terrible message of President Obama’s decisions for those small nations that count on America’s commitments to defend human rights, democracy, and independence from bullying by authoritarian powers like Russia. The controversy finally prompted even the most liberal media in the U.S. to start doing its journalistic job of questioning some of the foreign policy decisions and actions of their favorite president.
The second bad Obama decision that potentially can have equally negative repercussions around the world for a long time to come — again where were the State Department public diplomacy experts? — was the banning of the Dalai Lama, the highly-revered Tibetan spiritual leader, from visiting the White House. Why was the Dalai Lama snubbed? Because President Obama did not want to offend a bunch of aging Chinese communist leaders before his presidential visit to Beijing. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan refusing to see Pope John Paul II because the then Soviet leadership might have been upset?
By the way, the Norwegian Nobel committee never gave the Peace Prize to John Paul II or to Ronald Reagan, even though they both contributed greatly to ending the Cold War. Perhaps the Cold War was not hot enough, but more likely the Left-leaning Nobel committee members did not like the politics of these two leaders. Their decision of giving this year’s prize to President Obama again focused media’s attention on his lack of foreign policy accomplishments and his questionable judgement on Poland, the handling of other U.S. allies in Central Europe, and the Dalai Lama’s visit.
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, another famous international figure who has never received the Nobel Peace Prize although he clearly deserved one, simply could not believe that the U.S. president would decline to see the Dalai Lama out of fear of how such a visit might be received by the Chinese communists. This former human rights activist and inmate of communist prisons, who was among international supporters of Barack Obama’s campaign for the U.S. presidency, had this to say:
Is President Obama listening? He might be to some degree after the latest barrage of criticism of his foreign policy decisions that is no longer limited to conservative U.S. media. Vice President Biden is being dispatched to Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania to engage in damage control. It’s too bad, however, that the liberal U.S. media did not consider it necessary to look critically much earlier at some of the naive assumptions behind President Obama’s foreign policy statements. Perhaps the United States would have been sparred international embarrassment and the loss of trust among its allies and among human rights supporters around the world.
SAN FRANCISCO — Arthur Bliss Lane (16 June 1894–12 August 1956) was the United States Ambassador to Poland (1944–1947). He served earlier as the U.S. Ambassador to the wartime Polish government-in-exile in London and was with the U.S. diplomatic mission in Poland in 1919. During the interwar period, he had a number of other diplomatic assignments in Western Europe and Latin America.
Arthur Bliss Lane served as Minister to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from June 1936 to September 1937, and was later transferred to Yugoslavia. He remained in Belgrade until the German occupation of April 1941. Later during the war, he was Minister to Costa Rica, October 1941 to April 1942, and Ambassador to Columbia, until October, 1944.
From October 1944 to May 1945, he was Ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile in London. In May 1945, he became Ambassador to the Polish Government in Warsaw after the United States and the United Kingdom transferred their recognition to the Soviet-dominated regime in Poland.
Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane resigned from the State Department in 1947, after a distinguished career in U.S. diplomatic service, in protest against what he saw as the betrayal of Poland by the United States and other Western allies toward the end of World War II and in the immediate period after the war.
In his book I Saw Poland Betrayed An American Ambassador Reports to the American People, he criticized President Roosevelt’s naive trust in Stalin and his concessions to the Soviet Union at the expense of Poland and other East Central European nations. The cost of Roosevelt’s deals with Stalin was not only decades of Soviet domination and communist repression in Europe but ultimately the Cold War, wars in Korea and Vietnam, thousands of American lives lost and billions of dollars in U.S. defense spending.
Roosevelt’s intentions, however, were not evil. In fact, they were noble and idealistic by the standards of international politics of his time. Roosevelt refused to see Stalin for what he really was, a ruthless dictator who had earlier made a deal with Hitler to divide Poland and take over the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and parts of Finland and Romania.
Naive idealism combined with appeasement are dangerous qualities in any U.S. president. Former Czech president, playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel, who has been a supporter of Barack Obama, had this warning in response to the U.S. president’s refusal to see the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama:
Appeasing the Kremlin and the Chinese communists in the hope of winning concessions makes such concessions far less likely, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found out during her humilating visit to Moscow last week. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Medvedev couldn’t be more brutal in telling her that putting pressure on Iran to end its nuclear programs was not in Russia’s national interest, when in fact they meant their own interest. Prime Minister Putin went to China and was not around to receive her.
In fact any Russian scholar with a good sense of realism could have told President Obama that the current leaders in Russia want the U.S. out of Eastern Europe but don’t believe that they owe America anything if the Americans leave. They will also continue to rely on anti-Americanism to consolidate their power internally. They want oil prices to be as high as possible, and therefore want tensions to be high in the Middle East. For that reason, they want the United States to be bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The only thing that the Obama Administration should expect from the Kremlin are Russian concessions that would allow the U.S. to continue and expand military operations in these two Muslim nations.
During World War II, when the stakes were still much higher than they are now, Arthur Bliss Lane was not the only one to see the danger in Roosevelt’s policy of appeasing the Soviet dictator. In 1942, another American diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union William Christian Bullitt Jr. accurately predicted the “flow of the Red amoeba into Europe“. Roosevelt responded to Bullitt, Jr. with a statement summarizing his rationale for war time relations with Stalin:
I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. . . . I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Since President Obama’s vision of U.S. foreign policy seems to resemble to some degree President Roosevelt’s worldview — as seen by Obama’s unilateral concessions to Russia on the missile defense, his often expressed hope for a “reset” in relations in Moscow, as well as his refusal to see the Dalai Lama at the White House in order to appease the Chinese communist leadership — the following excerpt from Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane’s I Saw Poland Betrayed book, might be relevant to any media discussion of current issues in U.S.-Polish and U.S.-Russian relations:
The public has a right to know when the executive branch of the government makes far-reaching commitments which affect millions of persons and which might seriously endanger the security of the United States. (…) The peace of the globe itself calls for the maintenance of a policy of firmness by the United States backed by military strength. History has already proved that such a policy is a far more effective deterrent of international aggression than a policy of inertia, vacillation or appeasement. Arthur Bliss Lane in “I Saw Poland Betrayed”
Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane’s book was published in 1948.
A book about Poland which Arthur Bliss Lane had with him while serving at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Warsaw in 1919. The book is now in my library.
The Yale University Library, where Arthur Bliss Lane’s private papers and documents are archived, has on its website additional information about his diplomatic career and his public activities after he resigned from the State Department.
“From April 1947 until his death in August 1956, Arthur Bliss Lane undertook a number of lecture tours, radio programs, articles and letters by which he worked to stimulate public opposition to the activities of the Soviet Union, particularily in Eastern Europe. In his speeches and writings, … Lane denounced both the spirit of the Yalta Agreement and the manner in which it was carried out. He became a critic of the Roosevelt Administration and of the Democratic Party.
During this period, Arthur Bliss Lane was a member and participant in many Polish charities and anti-Communist organizations, including committees supporting the investigation of the Katyn Forest Massacre. Lane campaigned vigorously in 1952 among the Slavic ethnic groups for the Republican Party and Dwight D. Eisenhower. After 1952, he urged diplomatic relations with the Vatican.”
As the Wikipedia article about this remarkable American diplomat correctly points out, while in Poland, “Lane was so saddened” by the Soviet domination of the country and the communist suppression of Polish patriots and democrats that he resigned his post on February 24, 1947. He wrote I Saw Poland Betrayed, “which detailed what he considered to be the failure of the United States and Britain to keep their promise that the Poles would have a free election after the war. In that book he described what he considered betrayal of Poland by the Western Allies, hence the title, I Saw Poland Betrayed.” The book was translated into Polish and published by an underground publishing house in Poland in the 1980s.
The Polish Wikipedia has a much longer and more detailed biography of Arthur Bliss Lane.
If any relatives or friends of Ambassador Bliss Lane would like to contact me with more information about his life and diplomatic career, please send an email to mail@tedlipien.com.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner would not receive at the White House the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who was on a visit this week to Washington. President Obama apparently wanted to avoid upsetting Chinese communist leaders before his official trip to China.
Unwelcome at the White House at this time, (White House officials said that the Dalai Lama would meet with Obama after the presidential trip to China.) the Dalai Lama sent the US president a letter, congratulating him on being awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize and praising his work toward world peace.
In his letter, the Dalai Lama also urged the US president to be a champion of liberty. “I have maintained that the founding fathers of the United States have made this country the greatest democracy and a champion of freedom and liberty,” the Dalai Lama wrote.
“It is, therefore, important for today’s American leaders to adopt principled leadership based on these high ideals. Such an approach will not only enhance the reputation of the United States, but also contribute tremendously to reducing tension in the world.”
A letter with a similar message, signed by another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Poland’s former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and a number of other Central European leaders, had been delivered to the White House earlier and was promptly ignored.
In a statement released on October 5, human rights organization Freedom House warned that President Obama’s apparent decision to postpone a meeting with the Dalai Lama sends the wrong signal to the Chinese government at a time when the authorities in Beijing are intensifying efforts to silence peaceful critics at home and abroad.
The NGO noted that Obama reportedly delayed meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader this week to win favor from China’s leaders ahead of his first visit to Beijing as president next month. It will be the first time since 1991 that the Dalai Lama has not met with the U.S. president while visiting Washington.
“The doors of the White House should always be open to a globally-revered advocate for peaceful efforts to secure fundamental human rights,” said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director. “It is hard to see how shunning the Dalai Lama will advance American interests. The Obama administration is presenting an unfortunate profile by putting human rights so conspicuously on the backburner in its relations with repressive regimes.”
Freedom House also pointed out that already this year, the administration has given only muted support to pro-democracy activists in Iran and has withdrawn funding from independent, pro-democracy activists in Egypt. On China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier this year that human rights would not “interfere” with the U.S. dialogue with China on other global concerns. READ MORE
There is a danger that the decision of the Nobel Peace Prize committee will further convince President Obama that his approach to international politics is the correct one. The largely friendly, often admiring, and mostly uncritical media in the US – with the exception of the conservative TV and radio channels, which most of his supporters view with disdain – are not likely to examine his decisions to any great depth and offer constructive criticism.
This may further convince President Obama that he knows how to achieve world peace. He may, however, turn out to be more like President Roosevelt than President Kennedy. The former thought that he could win over Stalin by accepting his demands to change Poland’s borders and place Eastern Europe firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence. FDR once said “I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. . . . I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world… of democracy and peace.”
Several American presidents who followed Roosevelt, including Kennedy – also a young and progressive Democrat like Obama – had to defend the United States at a great cost to the American people from the results of the decisions and the deals made by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at the Yalta conference.
If one compares the content and the tone of Roosevelt’s statements on world affairs with Obama’s, they are strikingly similar. If one compares Obama’s statements with Kennedy’s – starting with their inaugural speeches – they are strikingly different. There was no doubt whatsoever that President Kennedy was fully committed to the cause of defending human rights, and would not sacrifice the interests of America’s allies to win favors with the Kremlin, the Chinese communists, or Fidel Castro. If anything, he may have been initially too willing to use the CIA and military force in defense of freedom rather than rely on more indirect means like sending the right messages and backing them up with America’s strength as a nation willing to stand by its democratic ideals and its friends.
Kennedy would have never barred from visiting the White House an important religious leader representing an oppressed nation. Knowing that, Soviet leaders still thought – mistakenly, as it turns out – that Kennedy was naive and weak, because to them he appeared idealistic and inexperienced.
Even if today’s dictators and authoritarian rulers are not to be compared to Stalin, it is because they are far more sophisticated and can take better advantage of their opponents’ misconceptions and weaknesses. Sending the right moral message to them and to pro-democracy forces, which they try to suppress, can determine the course of history, as President Reagan aptly demonstrated with his right balance of principles, strength and flexibility in dealing with America’s enemies.
By unilaterally deciding to withdraw the US missile defense system from Poland and the Czech Republic, and announcing his decision on September 17, the day of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the beginning of WWII, President Obama left an impression in East Central Europe that his worldview is much more similar to that of President Roosevelt than to Kennedy’s, Reagan’s or most other US presidents after 1945.
Poland and the Dalai Lama have become a nuisance for President Obama, just as Poland had became a nuisance for President Roosevelt. It seems that from now on, Chinese communists will determine when President Obama can meet with the Dalai Lama. If President Obama chooses the same approach in dealing with Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev – and all indications are that he has already moved firmly in that direction – Lech Walesa may be sending more letters to the White House, which will have no effect whatsoever.
The uncritical media will cheer on, and President Obama may never learn an important history lesson. Shunning allies who share your values for a promise of a deal with those who don’t at the expense of the former may be very costly for the American people long after he leaves office.
Obama won’t meet Dalai Lama – another public diplomacy disaster
The White House has added yet another to a series of recent public diplomacy disasters: not sending a high-level delegation to Poland for the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII, announcing withdrawal of US missiles from Central Europe on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, going to Copenhagen to address the IOC.
The White House has added yet another to a series of recent public diplomacy disasters: not sending a high-level delegation to Poland for the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII, announcing withdrawal of US missiles from Central Europe on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, going to Copenhagen to address the IOC .
The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB) announced that Jianglin Li, a scholar of Tibetan history, joined its Advisory Board.
Jianglin Li is a researcher and writer, focusing exclusively on the history of Tibet after 1950. She has conducted research in Tibetan refugee camps in India and Nepal and interviewed hundreds of refugees. Since 2004, Jianglin Li has met regularly with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and interviewed him many times. She is the first Chinese-speaking writer born in mainland China to be his authorized biographer. She has published more than 30 articles on Tibet and a book on the 1959 Lhasa event. She is currently writing a book on the secret war in Tibet from 1956-1962.
For a moment on New Year’s Eve 2010, I thought the leader of the free world was still George W. Bush. The President of the United States reads 
But the first real sign that confirmed to me President Obama’s intention to relinquish his role of leading the Free World in defending democracy was his 
The second bad Obama decision that potentially can have equally negative repercussions around the world for a long time to come — again where were the State Department public diplomacy experts? — was the banning of the Dalai Lama, the highly-revered Tibetan spiritual leader, from visiting the White House. Why was the Dalai Lama snubbed? Because President Obama did not want to offend a bunch of aging Chinese communist leaders before his presidential visit to Beijing. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan refusing to see Pope John Paul II because the then Soviet leadership might have been upset?
President Obama’s apparent decision to postpone a meeting with the Dalai Lama sends the wrong signal to the Chinese government at a time when the authorities in Beijing are intensifying efforts to silence peaceful critics at home and abroad.
Even if today’s dictators and authoritarian rulers are not to be compared to Stalin, it is because they are far more sophisticated and can take better advantage of their opponents’ misconceptions and weaknesses. Sending the right moral message to them and to pro-democracy forces, which they try to suppress, can determine the course of history, as President Reagan aptly demonstrated with his right balance of principles, strength and flexibility in dealing with America’s enemies.
Opinia.US
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