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Historically,
Bhutan's foreign policies were greatly
influenced by Tibet.
Bhutan acknowledged Tibet's
influence over it until 1860
and continued to pay a nominal tribute to Tibet
until the mid 1940s,
although not necessarily on friendly basis. Despite
religious and cultural affinities, most of Bhutan's
elite were refugees who had fled Tibet
for religious reasons over the centuries. From 1865
to 1947,
Britain guided Bhutan's foreign affairs.
Thereafter Bhutan's foreign relations until the early
1970s
were under the guidance of India, with which Bhutan
had official diplomatic relations from 1949.
During the 1970s
and 1980s,
however, Bhutan became a member of the UN and its affiliated
agencies; established formal diplomatic relations with
fifteen other nations, primarily in South
Asia and Scandinavia;
actively participated in the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the
Non-Aligned Movement; spoke out against, among other
subjects, nuclear proliferation and terrorism; and had
a peripatetic head of state who traveled abroad widely.
By the early 1990s,
Bhutan's foreign policies were effectively autonomous.
A
shortage of diplomatic officials limited Thimphu's
missions in New
York and Geneva
(established in 1985)
and meant that the nation could only staff embassies
in New
Delhi, Dhaka,
and Kuwait.
Bhutan had only one employee, a computer programmer,
at the SAARC
headquarters in Kathmandu
in late 1990.
Only India
and Bangladesh
had representatives in Thimphu
in 1991;
other nations generally gave dual accreditation to their
ambassadors in New
Delhi to enable them to represent their countries'
interests in Thimphu.
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