cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50538886
On January 29, 2026, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) participated in an event at the National Endowment for Democracy which launched former City University of Hong Kong Professor Hon-Shiang Lau’s book “Tibet Was Never Part of China Since Antiquity.” The book launch included a panel of Tibetan leaders and experts who discussed Tibet’s historical sovereignty and refuted the People’s Republic of China (PRC) narrative that Tibet has always been a part of China. Professor Lau’s groundbreaking scholarship clearly dispels PRC propaganda that Tibet has been a part of China by analyzing official Chinese documents and definitively establishing the historical fact that Tibet had for centuries until 1950 been independent and sovereign.
Former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom (and United States Senator and Governor of Kansas) Sam Brownback delivered keynote remarks highlighting Tibet’s long history as a free and sovereign nation and warning about the growing cultural genocide the PRC is committing against the Tibetan people. On a panel moderated by the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin that included Lau, Sikyong Penpa Tsering of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), and ICT Research and Monitoring Head Bhuchung K. Tsering, Brownback contextualized the importance of Lau’s scholarship within the larger Tibetan movement. The PRC’s forcible assimilation of historically independent Tibet lays bare the hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s anti-colonial rhetoric. The CCP fears religious freedom more than any weapon, Brownback observed, because it undermines the weak foundation of the state.
Lau noted his purposeful choice of publicly available, Chinese-sourced official documents created before the 1950 occupation in hopes of credibly refuting the CCP’s false narrative around Tibet’s historical sovereignty. For example, China has not historically played, or sought to play, any role in the selection process of the Dalai Lama.
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Well, I’ve seen much less nuance and knowledge from other lemmy.ml users, so I appreciate your thoughtful take and arguments.
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really want to spend time going into all the details here on an online forum.
That’s a good Wikipedia you posted, and I think we can both agree on that as a historical record of the US’s soft/hard power foreign policy.
I think you’re reading too much into Operation Gladio and the “goal” of the NED. Don’t watch what people say, what what they do.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were definitely imperialist and I wanted to point out the psychological differences between the US public’s support for those wars, and the CIA coups of the First Cold War, as well as the war fatigue afterwards, but I guess you understood that.
One thing I also wanted to point out is that the foreign policy of the different political power centers in the US can be very different. Even if the CIA and the president think that they should use financial aid or sanctions against a country, that doesn’t mean that congress or the NED will necessarily follow along.
But yeah, Iraq is basically what a “successful” Ukraine war would have looked like for Putin, and it was obviously a massive failure and decade of shame for the US. It is a tragedy that the war crimes committed there were not prosecuted properly.
For what it’s worth, I also don’t defend the modern Trump/Biden America. There were some good achievements and progress in the Bushes/Clinton/Obama years, but there are also some really stupid and destructive people in the US during all administrations.
My main point was just that color revolution theory is a hoax and that the NED didn’t overthrow any governments, and I stand by that.