Tibet-China relations continues......

This background of the self-interest of the monasteries and of the feudal lords of Central Tibet (of Ü and Tsang provinces, together known as Ü-Tsang) influenced much of Tibet’s internal policy-making and also its foreign policy. The military threats to Tibet lay primarily from the warlike and aggressive Mongols in the north, and secondarily from the Han Chinese in the east. When Tibet itself was a warlike monarchy under King Songtsen Gampo (617-657 CE) and after him his son and then his grandson Trisong Dentsen, Tibet was itself a military power and had none to fear; but later when the Mongols under Chinggis Khan began their astonishing rise, the Tibetan policy towards them became one of appeasement, broadly speaking, though some of this came about fortuitously, as we shall see later. Basically, appeasement in return for a non-aggression promise became a viable foreign-policy and security option, and also happily a cheap option. A version of this is followed by modern Japan today, where an American security guarantee frees Japan, under its post WW-II peace-loving Constitution, from having to spend any money on developing a missile counter-strike capability or a missile shield, at first against the Soviet Union during the Cold War period, and now against Communist China or North Korea.
Through this politico-religious pact, Tibet acquired for itself a strategic ‘security umbrella’.

It was primarily the financial self-interests of the two Central Tibet power-groups that greatly influenced Tibet’s policy for the defence of its provinces of Amdo and Kham, the large north-eastern and eastern provinces, which formed the frontiers with the Mongols and the Han Chinese. Since the financial interests of the Central Tibet aristocrats was not threatened by events in either Amdo or Kham, they took the security needs of those areas lightly. This policy or non-policy had largely left the Amdoas and the Khampas to fend for themselves. This was one of the reasons why the Chinese were able to take them over in 1950 against only local Tibetan resistance, though Chinese efforts in this direction had begun from the 1905 invasion of the Chinese warlord Zhao Erfeng, Governor of Sining.

To be continued.....