What do you think?
Rate this book
Tibet: An Unfinished Story
Tibet's enduring myth, animated by the tales of Himalayan adventurers, British military expeditions, and the novel, Lost Horizon , remains an inspirational fantasy, a modern morality play about the failure of brutality to subdue the human spirit. Tibet also exercises immense "soft power" as one of the lenses through which the world views China.
This book traces the origins and manifestations of the Tibetan myth, as propagated by Younghusband, Madam Blavatsky, Himmler, Acheson and Roosevelt. The authors discuss how, after WW2, Tibet-- isolated, misunderstood and with a tiny elite unschooled in political-military realities --- misread the diplomacy between its two giant neighbours, India and China, forlornly hoping London or Washington might intervene. China's People's Liberation Army sought nothing less than to deconstruct traditional Tibet, unseat the Dalai Lama and "absorb" this vast region into the People's Republic, and Lhasa succumbed to China's invasion in 1950.
Drawing on declassified CIA and Chinese documents, the authors reveal Mao's collusion with Stalin to subdue Tibet, double-dealing by Nehru, the brilliant diplomacy of Chou en Lai and how Washington see-sawed between the China lobby, who insisted there be no backing for an independent Tibet, and Presidents Truman and later Eisenhower, who initiated a covert CIA programme to support the Dalai Lama and resist Chinese occupation. It is an ignoble saga with few, if any, heroes, other than ordinary Tibetans.
This book traces the origins and manifestations of the Tibetan myth, as propagated by Younghusband, Madam Blavatsky, Himmler, Acheson and Roosevelt. The authors discuss how, after WW2, Tibet-- isolated, misunderstood and with a tiny elite unschooled in political-military realities --- misread the diplomacy between its two giant neighbours, India and China, forlornly hoping London or Washington might intervene. China's People's Liberation Army sought nothing less than to deconstruct traditional Tibet, unseat the Dalai Lama and "absorb" this vast region into the People's Republic, and Lhasa succumbed to China's invasion in 1950.
Drawing on declassified CIA and Chinese documents, the authors reveal Mao's collusion with Stalin to subdue Tibet, double-dealing by Nehru, the brilliant diplomacy of Chou en Lai and how Washington see-sawed between the China lobby, who insisted there be no backing for an independent Tibet, and Presidents Truman and later Eisenhower, who initiated a covert CIA programme to support the Dalai Lama and resist Chinese occupation. It is an ignoble saga with few, if any, heroes, other than ordinary Tibetans.
367 pages, Hardcover
First published November 28, 2013
5 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 15, 2020
This book is mainly about, not Tibet itself, but the way foreign powers have related to Tibet. The most prominent focus is on the various American efforts to foster Tibetan resistance to China, starting during the Korean war. The declassified information published here dates mainly from the 1950's, when the Cold War was at its height. The book documents efforts by the CIA to contact the Dalai Lama, gather intelligence, and equip airlifted teams of Tibetan resistance fighters. The overall implication is that America did not do enough. The Dalai Lama, however, seemed to remain cautious toward such efforts. In recalling his response to American offers of support in 1951 (eight years before he took exile in India), the Dalai Lama wrote, "As I pondered these thoughts, I continuously came up against two particular considerations. Firstly, it was obvious to me that the most likely result of a pact with America or anyone else was war. And war meant bloodshed. Secondly, I reasoned that although America was a very powerful country, it was thousands of miles away."
January 15, 2020
My review for Business Standard newspaper from May 7. 2014
To the good fortune of all geopolitics enthusiasts, comes this authoritative work on Tibet written by two US academicians — Tibet scholar Lezlee Brown Halper and US-China relations expert Stefan Halper. The two authors have relied extensively on declassified CIA and Chinese documents for their findings. Hence, the book presents an essentially western perspective on the Tibet conflict with little sympathy towards the nation that has and will continue to be one of the biggest pieces in the Tibetan jigsaw puzzle — India.
The objective of this work is to educate the readers about three points. First, why was Tibet unable to become an independent state even though nations around it saw a tectonic shift of power as the colonialists retreated from Asia? Second, what role did the US, India, China, Russia and Britain play in the Tibetan game? And third, why is Tibet’s story relevant to global affairs today? Barring the scepticism with respect to the Indian role, Tibet: An Unfinished Story fulfils these three objectives brilliantly.
The first few chapters deal with the early representations of Tibet in western literature. Living up to its sobriquet of “Forbidden City”, the government of Lhasa isolated itself from the world ‘in order to preserve the Tibetan religious identity’. As a result, there were only a few missionaries and a handful of secular travel missions that were successful in ‘unveiling the last mystery of the East’ by the end of the 19th century. Quite analogous to the descriptions about India, these early visitors described Tibet as the land of plenty and wrote fascinating accounts that glorified the Tibetan way of life. By the first half of the 20th century, Rudyard Kipling’s widely read novel Kim and James Hilton’s reference to a mythical land ‘Shangri-La’ in his novel Lost Horizon took the craze about Tibet to its zenith.
What is missing in this pre-colonial description however, is an account of the Sino-Tibetan and the Mongol-Tibetan relations during the Qing, Mongol and Manchu dynastic rules throughout the second millennium that have had a great bearing on the Tibetan conflict. So much so, the terms ‘sovereignty’ and ‘suzerainty’ were never differentiated with respect to the Chinese control over Tibet and this continues to be a nagging issue to this date.
By the early 20th century, the British East India Company began looking at the economic aspects of Tibetan control and worked to ‘open Tibet and establish a trade route linking India with China and Central Asia’. It was here that Tibet gained geopolitical significance and became a part of the Great Game between the Russians and the British Empire. Angered by Lhasa’s refusal to permit British entry, the authors present a detailed account of how Sir Francis Younghusband in 1904 marched into Lhasa. It describes the lack of realism in the Tibetan government’s policy — while the British charged with modernised arms, the Tibetan soldiers armed with swords and muzzle-loading rifles believed that the Dalai Lama’s blessings would come to their rescue.
The US got involved in Tibet during World War II in the hope of countering the Japanese thrust into south-east Asia. The engagement increased during the Truman administration when Tibet assumed a growing role in Washington’s global anti-communist effort after the war. Lezlee and Stefan Halper have done an excellent job of surveying the dilemmas the administration faced during this time. On one hand, the US administration conjectured that Tibet could serve as a platform for covert operations against the Sino-soviet combine. On the other, the domestic political rhetoric of ‘Red Scare’ drove the US foreign policy to improve relations with the Kuomintang as the only legitimate challenger to the communist claims over China. The Kuomintang was vehemently opposed to the independence of Tibet as an unpopular partition would further decrease their support in China. Thus, the powerful anti-communist China lobby in the US ended up restricting US manoeuvres in Tibet.
Tibet: An Unfinished Story also deals at great length with the Indian role in this conflict. The authors opine that India ‘held the key to Tibet’s future in many ways’. Here, the authors toe the line of the standard US narrative where India’s policy of non-alignment is perceived as being a shot in the arm of the communists. The book deals excessively with Jawaharlal Nehru’s personality fears and incorrectly implies that all decision making regarding Indo-China-Tibet were the personal prerogative of the Indian prime minister. There is little emphasis on the fact that the lack of capacity made a nascent Indian republic only a marginal player in the Tibetan struggle. Also, the authors fail to acknowledge that by allowing a Tibetan government in exile on Indian soil in 1959, India has managed to hold an upper hand in the Indo-China dynamics. This section on India is the book’s weakest part.
Drawing from CIA’s declassified documents, the authors go on to describe the various covert efforts by US to ‘stir up trouble’ for the People’s Liberation Army in Tibet. It has some chilling details of Washington’s clandestine programme in Tibet during the Eisenhower administration. However, these operations were effectively dismissed in the 1970s as the Nixon-Kissinger policy sought to normalise relations with the communist government in China.
The book concludes that at no point of time were India, the US or even the Tibetan authorities convinced that they wanted a no-holds-barred campaign to overturn Chinese control over Tibet. As a consequence, the global geopolitical powers settled on the next best alternative — project Dalai Lama as a flag-bearer of the free world against communism. Subsequently, the international debate over Tibet has moved from seeking independence to demanding autonomy to merely protesting against the violation of human rights.
Tibet: An Unfinished Story is relevant today as it explains that in international affairs, it is matsyanyaya or the ‘law of the jungle’ that applies. The strong prevail over the weak and becoming powerful is the only way for a sovereign state to survive. Tibet, for too long stayed in isolation, had constant struggles over succession of leadership and lacked a modern government, economy and military — all essential for enhancing national power. As a result, it was overcome by a more powerful entity. Thus, this book serves as a practical lesson in realpolitik in the true sense of the word.
To the good fortune of all geopolitics enthusiasts, comes this authoritative work on Tibet written by two US academicians — Tibet scholar Lezlee Brown Halper and US-China relations expert Stefan Halper. The two authors have relied extensively on declassified CIA and Chinese documents for their findings. Hence, the book presents an essentially western perspective on the Tibet conflict with little sympathy towards the nation that has and will continue to be one of the biggest pieces in the Tibetan jigsaw puzzle — India.
The objective of this work is to educate the readers about three points. First, why was Tibet unable to become an independent state even though nations around it saw a tectonic shift of power as the colonialists retreated from Asia? Second, what role did the US, India, China, Russia and Britain play in the Tibetan game? And third, why is Tibet’s story relevant to global affairs today? Barring the scepticism with respect to the Indian role, Tibet: An Unfinished Story fulfils these three objectives brilliantly.
The first few chapters deal with the early representations of Tibet in western literature. Living up to its sobriquet of “Forbidden City”, the government of Lhasa isolated itself from the world ‘in order to preserve the Tibetan religious identity’. As a result, there were only a few missionaries and a handful of secular travel missions that were successful in ‘unveiling the last mystery of the East’ by the end of the 19th century. Quite analogous to the descriptions about India, these early visitors described Tibet as the land of plenty and wrote fascinating accounts that glorified the Tibetan way of life. By the first half of the 20th century, Rudyard Kipling’s widely read novel Kim and James Hilton’s reference to a mythical land ‘Shangri-La’ in his novel Lost Horizon took the craze about Tibet to its zenith.
What is missing in this pre-colonial description however, is an account of the Sino-Tibetan and the Mongol-Tibetan relations during the Qing, Mongol and Manchu dynastic rules throughout the second millennium that have had a great bearing on the Tibetan conflict. So much so, the terms ‘sovereignty’ and ‘suzerainty’ were never differentiated with respect to the Chinese control over Tibet and this continues to be a nagging issue to this date.
By the early 20th century, the British East India Company began looking at the economic aspects of Tibetan control and worked to ‘open Tibet and establish a trade route linking India with China and Central Asia’. It was here that Tibet gained geopolitical significance and became a part of the Great Game between the Russians and the British Empire. Angered by Lhasa’s refusal to permit British entry, the authors present a detailed account of how Sir Francis Younghusband in 1904 marched into Lhasa. It describes the lack of realism in the Tibetan government’s policy — while the British charged with modernised arms, the Tibetan soldiers armed with swords and muzzle-loading rifles believed that the Dalai Lama’s blessings would come to their rescue.
The US got involved in Tibet during World War II in the hope of countering the Japanese thrust into south-east Asia. The engagement increased during the Truman administration when Tibet assumed a growing role in Washington’s global anti-communist effort after the war. Lezlee and Stefan Halper have done an excellent job of surveying the dilemmas the administration faced during this time. On one hand, the US administration conjectured that Tibet could serve as a platform for covert operations against the Sino-soviet combine. On the other, the domestic political rhetoric of ‘Red Scare’ drove the US foreign policy to improve relations with the Kuomintang as the only legitimate challenger to the communist claims over China. The Kuomintang was vehemently opposed to the independence of Tibet as an unpopular partition would further decrease their support in China. Thus, the powerful anti-communist China lobby in the US ended up restricting US manoeuvres in Tibet.
Tibet: An Unfinished Story also deals at great length with the Indian role in this conflict. The authors opine that India ‘held the key to Tibet’s future in many ways’. Here, the authors toe the line of the standard US narrative where India’s policy of non-alignment is perceived as being a shot in the arm of the communists. The book deals excessively with Jawaharlal Nehru’s personality fears and incorrectly implies that all decision making regarding Indo-China-Tibet were the personal prerogative of the Indian prime minister. There is little emphasis on the fact that the lack of capacity made a nascent Indian republic only a marginal player in the Tibetan struggle. Also, the authors fail to acknowledge that by allowing a Tibetan government in exile on Indian soil in 1959, India has managed to hold an upper hand in the Indo-China dynamics. This section on India is the book’s weakest part.
Drawing from CIA’s declassified documents, the authors go on to describe the various covert efforts by US to ‘stir up trouble’ for the People’s Liberation Army in Tibet. It has some chilling details of Washington’s clandestine programme in Tibet during the Eisenhower administration. However, these operations were effectively dismissed in the 1970s as the Nixon-Kissinger policy sought to normalise relations with the communist government in China.
The book concludes that at no point of time were India, the US or even the Tibetan authorities convinced that they wanted a no-holds-barred campaign to overturn Chinese control over Tibet. As a consequence, the global geopolitical powers settled on the next best alternative — project Dalai Lama as a flag-bearer of the free world against communism. Subsequently, the international debate over Tibet has moved from seeking independence to demanding autonomy to merely protesting against the violation of human rights.
Tibet: An Unfinished Story is relevant today as it explains that in international affairs, it is matsyanyaya or the ‘law of the jungle’ that applies. The strong prevail over the weak and becoming powerful is the only way for a sovereign state to survive. Tibet, for too long stayed in isolation, had constant struggles over succession of leadership and lacked a modern government, economy and military — all essential for enhancing national power. As a result, it was overcome by a more powerful entity. Thus, this book serves as a practical lesson in realpolitik in the true sense of the word.
September 1, 2015
Rather than being an overarching history of Tibet this book is primarily focussed upon an analysis of United States' Foreign Policy towards Tibet and India, specifically in the period between the end of WW2 and Kissinger/Nixon's diplomatic engagement with the People's Republic of China in the 1970s. The book very briefly attempts to place this period within the broader context of Tibet's history prior to this time and gives some comment on recent events (e.g. - the unrest during the 2008 Beijing Olympics), but essentially it is a political history of US diplomatic relations with Asia (and CIA activities/involvement with Tibet) during the height of the Cold War era.
February 23, 2019
Great Book, gives a detailed overview of the Tibetan fiasco. Very well written, essential reading to understand the background of the current state of Indo China relations.
April 23, 2014
Fascinating, scholarly and heartbreaking account of the betrayal of Tibet's independence aspirations - a victim of Cold War politicking that should shame the nations involved, particularly India and the USA
May 18, 2016
fascinating, but was much more occupied with an academic analysis of the foreign policies of britain, america, china and india toward tibet, rather than the country or people themselves.
Read
December 15, 2014Finally finished !!!!
from last six months i am struggling with this book.
very enlighting and informative book.
from last six months i am struggling with this book.
very enlighting and informative book.
October 22, 2014
Fascinating links between literature, history, international relations, etc. to form the sequence of events that led to Tibet's current state
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews