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Title: Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival by John Kenneth Knaus ISBN: 1-891620-18-5 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: September, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: History and Adventure
Comment: Like I do with many books I read, I picked this one up because of issues arising in current events. I harbored some sympathies with the plight of the Tibetans and wanted a better understanding of the issues. (Honestly, I was inspired to pick up a book after watching Brad Pitt's movie about the Nazi mountain climber.) This book provides an excellent history on the involvement and motivation of the United States, as well as that of India. More importantly, it offers a wonderful narrative about naive and unwordly (but nevertheless capable of scheming) Tibetans being drawn into international diplomacy for the sake of their homeland. Much of the book focuses on CIA assistance to Tibetan rebels, which also provides an entertaining sense of adventure: parachuting CIA spies, Tibetan training camps in Colorado, armed resistance in Tibet, and covert operations in Nepal. Unlike fiction, however, history does not always provide exciting climaxes. In this case, with gradual abandonment by the United States, the Tibetan resistance movement eventually just vanished, leaving only the Dalai Lama's government in exile in India. The United Stated does not discuss Tibet much and, as such, our relationship with Tibet is unclear. Essentially, the United States has tacitly recognized Chinese sovereignty but has never actually retreated on its support for Tibetan self-determination. Such ambivalence, following our strong support for Tibetan resistance, can not be describe as anything but betrayal.
Rating: 5
Summary: Essential to an understanding of Tibet in the 20th Century
Comment: As someone who knows the author and who provided some assistance for the initial phases of the resistance effort, this review will suffer from bias. Nonetheless in my opinion the author has done an excellent job in presenting not only the operational details in the CIA's involvement with the Tibetans, but he has mined the diplomatic sources to provide invaluable background on the genesis of our assistance. Why we became involved will become much clearer as the complex relationships and interests of India, ourselves, China, and others are detailed in the book. Although the Tibetan resistance movement is not much more than a lengthy footnote in the history of the Cold War, nonetheless it an interesting and often tragic event made even more so by the fair-minded analysis of the author and the entertaining style used in the telling. "Orphans..." is a must read for history buffs of this period and our relationships, overt and covert, in this part of the world
Rating: 1
Summary: Naive Readers Beware!
Comment: Unlike previous reviewers, I'm not going to drag on my comments for long, indulging in senseless blabber. In one sentence, while they are telling you yiddi yiddi yadda, I'm saying to you that this book belongs not on the shelf, but in the refuse dump.
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Title: The CIA's Secret War in Tibet by James Morrison, Kenneth J. Conboy ISBN: 0700611592 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top-Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow by William Burr, Henry Kissinger ISBN: 1565845684 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: China's New Rulers: The Secret Files (New York Review Books Collections) by Andrew J. Nathan, Bruce Gilley ISBN: 1590170466 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Integrating China into the Global Economy by Nicholas R. Lardy ISBN: 0815751354 Publisher: The Brookings Institution Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Modernizing China's Military : Progress, Problems, and Prospects by David Shambaugh ISBN: 0520225074 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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