Political gaming: We see it played out everyday. Unfortunately, this game can sometimes influence the government’s decision in ways that ignore historical reality.
Recently, two actions of the Bush administration struck me as, well, interesting, to say the least.
Two weeks ago, the president came out almost demanding that Congress not pass a nonbinding resolution that would have recognized the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, now Turkey, as genocide. The president opposed this resolution because Turkey, an ally in the Iraq War, adamantly opposes labeling the killings as genocide.
Later, Bush not only praised Congress for awarding the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor that Congress can give any person. He also attended a ceremony to present the Tibetan leader with the award himself. The Chinese government opposed these actions, believing that they give the Tibetan independence movement legitimacy.
The question then arises: Why would the president concede to the wishes of a country such as Turkey, but not to a country such as China, which appears much more internationally influential than Turkey?
The answer is pure political game.
According to reports by the United States government, the U.S. military currently uses Turkish land and airspace to transfer roughly 70 percent of its supplies into Iraq. Thus, if Turkey decided that it did not want to allow the U.S. to use its territory for this transportation anymore, the U.S. would have to find an alternative route to get supplies to the military in Iraq.
However, the problems with a Turkey that does not listen to the U.S. go beyond simple supply routes. Turkey, in recent years, has resisted the possibility of crossing into Iraq to fight Kurds who wish to gain an independent Kurdish state. If Kurds in Iraq were successful, it could prompt Kurds in Turkey to try to separate from Turkey and join the Kurds from Iraq. Thus, any attempt by the Kurds in Iraq to gain territory has deeply worried the Turkish government.
Indeed, just this week Turkey allowed troops to cross into Iraq to combat members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a group that Turkey considers to be a terrorist organization.
The stakes are very different when looking at the U.S. government’s decision to honor the Dalai Lama, despite China’s objections.
“Bush’s meeting with the Dalai Lama was a calculated move,” said Professor Richard Baum of the political science department and former director for the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.
The meeting “was low-cost, low-risk for Bush. All the Chinese did was cancel a few meetings with the United States.”
Baum went on to say that, in a way, the meeting was meant to “throw a bone to (Bush’s) conservative base” by honoring a man that many in the conservative movement see as a leader in the fight for religious freedom internationally.
However, he did note that if the U.S. were to declare Tibet independent from China, it could ruin Sino-U.S. relations.
Thus, in these two moves, Bush was simply, for better or for worse, playing the game of politics.
In both cases, there seem to be easy moral answers to each question.
Yes, the Armenian Genocide was genocide and should be recognized as such, not only by the U.S., but also worldwide.
And yes, the Dalai Lama should be seen as an international leader of independence and religious freedom.
However, current world affairs being as they are, these answers cannot be so easily applied. Indeed, the politics of the world stage ultimately dictate the decisions of many governments, not just our government, and these two decisions were no different.
President Bush, as wrong as he may be in not supporting the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, has a reason that makes sense politically.
Presidential recognition of this atrocity could ruin relations with a country that could possibly be keeping an already-unstable region from breaking out into full-on chaos.
As governor of Texas running for the presidency in 2000, Bush called on America to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. However, in his current position as president, such a statement could do irreparable damage to U.S. relations with Turkey.
Thus, due to the realities of the Iraq War, recognition of atrocities must be set aside until it makes more political sense, an atrocity in and of itself. If the U.S. did not have to cater to the wishes of a country that is simply strategically placed in the Middle East, then history could be acknowledged as fact and the mistakes of the past could be understood so as not to be repeated again.
E-mail Margolis at
mmargolis@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.