John Kenneth Knaus served “four decades as a CIA political action officer” (p. 98) and is the author of Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival, the best book to date about the CIA in Tibet during the Cold War. In this new volume he takes on the broad sweep of United States–Tibet relations from its origins in 1908 to 2011, and has produced a book of considerable merit with some shortcomings.
This is a straightforward scholarly narrative history utilizing an array of oral histories as well as English language primary and secondary sources. Knaus outlines a relationship that began with the modest ambitions of a single US diplomat and only became intense with the coming of the Cold War. After another period of diminution during the 1970s and 1980s, the alliance blossomed again, albeit in a different format, with the internationalization of the Tibet issue.
While scholars will find little that contributes to what is already known of this history in general, Knaus adds many new details, particularly through the numerous interviews he has conducted. This is especially evident in the final chapters about the origins of the “Tibet Mafia” which got the US Congress to champion the Tibetan independence cause.
As with his earlier book, Knaus is limited, as we are all, in the inability to use any CIA documents (he cites a sole economic intelligence report [p. 132]), because of the agency's obstinacy in declassifying decades-old operational documents. Oral histories are useful but memories are imperfect, and without documentary corroboration caution is advisable.
What's mostly missing, however, is an analytic framework. The actions of the non-Tibetan players – Chinese, American, British and Indian – are rarely put into context. Policies towards Tibet by all the nations were but a small part of each government's policies, and the absence of this larger picture renders this history incomplete.
This is nowhere more true than during the Cold War period. Knaus does an excellent job of describing the CIA's Tibet operations (after all, he headed it for some years) but neglects to inform us of the many other covert operations the CIA was engaged in against China and the rest of East Asia at the same time. None of these operations were conducted in a vacuum but by focusing the lens entirely on Tibet we miss the larger history of US actions in the region and how the Tibet operation fit into US foreign policy. CIA officers of course are only invested in the operation they are engaged in, and perhaps that explains this myopia.
There are some surprising omissions of which I offer only two examples: first, the March 1959 uprising in Lhasa is never explained. As other historians have noted, it was sparked by rumours purposely begun to foment an uprising. And Knaus doesn't mention the correspondence between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese officials during those tense weeks, which certainly shaped Chinese actions. Without the larger context Knaus's narrative about these momentous events is perfunctory; second, astonishingly, Knaus doesn't mention the Dalai Lama's decision not to accept an invitation to visit Beijing in January 1989 which, arguably, is the most important political decision he has made in 50 years and one which, had he gone, might have radically changed the course of events.
The book is sorely in need of copy-editing. Wade-Giles and pinyin transliterations are used randomly; sometimes for the same name as in Zhang Jingwu (p. 92) and Chang Ching-wu (p. 103). Gyalo Thondup is sometimes referred to as Gyalo and sometimes Thondup. Alex McKay becomes David McKay. During the Kuomintang period China is referred to as “Peking” (pp. 53–54). In 1949 the Indian mission in Lhasa is referred to as the “British mission” (p. 68) and at one point (p. 190) he introduces “Uban” and “Establishment 22” without explanations which will surely confuse general readers.
For all of its strengths, and there are many, this is a partisan account since Knaus, as he observes of another intelligence agent, “…had committed the ‘cardinal sin’ of the professional intelligence officer by ‘falling in love with his agents’” (p. 184). Knaus is often writing about his friends who were engaged in what he strongly believes is a noble cause.
And, finally, there is an implicit sense that Knaus seems to believe that the US has the solution to the Tibet problem; that the administrative and legislative branches can play some role in settling this issue. He lauds the efforts of the US Congress on behalf of the Dalai Lama while ignoring the negative effects these efforts have had on the situation inside Tibet where the international campaign has strengthened the hand of Chinese hard line officials who reject negotiations with the Dalai Lama.
With those deficiencies notwithstanding, this is the most complete history of US–Tibet relations currently available and will lend itself well to classroom adoption.
