Self-immolation in Vietnam had a big impact on the world's perception of that conflict. It created more internal and external pressure on the U.S. to get out. I always figured that these immolations were primarily directed at the rest of the world and China (I guess directing at China is internal from a perspective, but I think they are occupiers even though they have a holiday celebrating their "liberation" of Tibet). The rest of the worlds lack of will to pressure Chinga on domestic anything makes the efficacy of this protest questionable.

I listened to George Shultz give a talk on CFR a while back in which he gave a few minutes to the question of Tibet. He contended that whenever the U.S. war more preoccupied with maintaining the "relation" then to trying to make change little got done between the two countries and that over time relations tended to get worse. He thought that putting pressure on expanding the rights and freedoms of Tibetans was the kind of thing that would set the chinese back on their heels and force them to make some policy adjustments. I'm sure that my summary of his argument is thin and poor, but that's the gist at least. If the U.S. made Tibet even a small issue then immolations would get a lot more media coverage and goverment attention world wide.