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From the author of Globally Rational

It seems that President Bush’s top security advisor, the man responsible for his trip to China for the Olympics, doesn’t know the difference between Tibet and Nepal. During a recent appearance with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, he repeatedly used the word “Nepal” to describe the country whose 58-year-long rule by China has been a major international concern in the few months before the Olympics. The President, meanwhile, has ignored calls for him to boycott the Olympic opening ceremony, despite the fact that many other world leaders have publicly clarified that they have no intention of supporting Beijing on that day. These two facts, especially when coupled together, can only lead us to believe that the administration is far from concerned about the innocent victims of the injustices in Tibet. For the benefit of the security advisor (whose name, by the way, is Stephen Hadley), I thought I’d outline the difference between Tibet and its neighbors:

TIBET: Victim of an unprovoked Chinese invasion in 1950. Ever since then, the rights of Buddhist majority have been suppressed by the Chinese government, which openly expects atheism from its citizens. Tibet is home to most of the Buddhist monks that we often see on TV wearing orange robes.

NEPAL: An independent kingdom in the Himalayas, only 10% of whose population is Buddhist. Most people in Nepal are Hindu, many of them speak Hindi (the primary language of India), and their traditions are far more Indian than they are Chinese or Tibetan. The Dalai Lama, the leader of the Buddhist people, has never lived here and Tibet is in no way affiliated with Nepal (aside from their proximity). Nepal is known mostly for Mount Everest, but definitely not for Buddhism.

BHUTAN: Unlike Nepal, Bhutan is a Buddhist kingdom that neighbors Tibet. This would have been a better comparison because, although Tibet is not a kingdom, Bhutan does have a strong tradition of Buddhist principles.

MYANMAR: Again, this would have been a better comparison. This is another Buddhist state and it did change political hands around the same time as Tibet (Myanmar, then known as Burma, became independent from Britain about the same time as China invaded Tibet). Furthermore, Myanmar is about the same size as Tibet.

So why did Mr. Hadley confuse Tibet with Nepal? There were three countries that are much more similar to Tibet than Nepal is… but my guess is that he doesn’t know that. Confusing Tibet and Myanmar is understandable to some extent; it’s analogous to confusing Syria and Jordan (similar cultures, different political systems). But confusing Tibet and Nepal is more analogous to confusing China and India (shared border, but very different in terms of culture/ethnicity/religion/government).

Apparently, he doesn’t care enough to learn the difference… and America’s relative apathy in the matter is a testament to how isolated our society is becoming in this increasingly globalizing economy. I wonder what percentage of Americans could successfully find Tibet (or Nepal) on a world map.

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not all that rare...
written by joel, May 19, 2008

Mr. Hadley isn't the only American (and U.S. Govt official) to confuse rather stark differences between people and places "over there"--John McCain was having some trouble identifying the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims on his Mideast tour earlier this year, and of course, we know how deft Mr. Bush himself is on subtle matters of world culture (cf. last year's speech at APEC in Australia, where he confused APEC with OPEC and Australia with Austria--doh!).

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