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It’s striking how little Nepal’s foreign policy outlook has evolved in over 70 years since the 1950 democratic change. The national debates of that tumultuous decade (1950-1960) bear striking resemblances to foreign policy issues under current discussion. Even in 1951, those outside the government fulminated against the ‘unequal’ 1950 Nepal-India treaty, and there was no greater slur than to accuse the rulers of ‘pro-India’ bias. And just like now, among the elite class, there was back then a large constituency pitching for closer ties with China to balance India.

That is not all. Right now, those on the left have a field day criticizing the ‘imperial’ American MCC compact. Back then, too, they spoke against the American ‘grand designs’ against the communist Soviet Union and China, a charge that only got louder when the ban on communist parties was lifted in 1956. Except for BP Koirala, no other political party leader of the time could resist the temptation of invoking the threat to Nepali sovereignty from India for political gains, none more so than the wily Tulsi Giri, the three-time de facto[ARJ1] [ARJ2]  prime minister.  

After the 1962 India-China war, New Delhi was in a mood to reconcile with the Nepali monarch, and King Mahendra no longer needed the help of politicians to constantly needle India. When the war broke out, at India’s call, Nepali Congress abandoned its armed revolt against the autocratic Nepali monarchy, to the king’s great relief. He subsequently used his new leverage with India to remove the Indian army checkpoints from the Nepal-China border and to build a highway connecting Kathmandu with Tibet. Just in case, politicians like Giri continued to be handy to keep the Indians honest.

But if Giri was an uber-opportunist, so was KP Oli some decades down the line. Oli didn’t think twice about ditching New Delhi, his erstwhile all-weather friend, when he espied a chance to rise to power by cultivating closer ties with China in the wake of the 2015-16 Indian blockade. He opened up new trade routes via China. But when the Chinese started trusting him, he stabbed them on the back by deliberately delaying BRI projects just to please India.

His antics are not so different from those of another colorful character from the 1950s and 1960s: KI Singh, or the ‘Robin Hood of the Himalayas’. No one knew what Singh believed in. He was supposedly a communist (although he denied it) who even escaped to China to save his skin when his plot to take over Singhadurbar failed. The 20th prime minister of Nepal was also an expert at switching between India and China as was politically convenient. This does sound a touch like Prachanda, the 33rd, doesn’t it?

Could it be that as the geopolitical map is permanent, you can’t change a country’s foreign policy priorities, especially of one as precariously placed as Nepal? Every ruler since King Prithvi Narayan Shah has counseled balance between the north and the south. The presence of a strong third actor like the US has also always been vital to prevent India and China from settling Nepal’s fate between them. Whatever its level of development, for a relatively small country like Nepal (at least compared to its two giant neighbors), the priority of the ruling elite will always be the preservation of national sovereignty and independence. So, perhaps, it is wrong to say that our foreign policy has not evolved over the past seven decades. Maybe there is only so much room to maneuver.

For many observers, the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan is another vindication of China’s ‘strictly-business’ approach to diplomacy. Be they legitimately elected government ministers or mullahs who have killed their way to the top, if China can do business with them, it will. Earlier, the Chinese limited their engagement to those in power. Now they cultivate ties not just with the central governments but also all prospective claimants to the throne. 

This is certainly the case in Nepal, where these days the Chinese—their recent efforts at helping build a strong ruling communist party notwithstanding—don’t just back the communists, but are as comfortable dealing with Nepali Congress or Madhesi outfits. In Afghanistan, Beijing was offering the Ashraf Ghani government plenty of bilateral aid even as it was cultivating ties with the Taliban, knowing full well that their return to power was imminent. 

In Myanmar, Beijing maintained good relations with the junta, which is now back in power. But it was also a close ally of the deposed National League for Democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi. This kind of non-ideological, business-like and broad-based nurturing of relationships has some distinct benefits. Unlike the Americans, whose recent efforts at imposing democracy and human rights on countries like Afghanistan and Iraq have been disastrous failures, the Chinese don’t carry the baggage of forceful military intervention anywhere on the planet in recent memory. 

In fact, while the Americans like to lecture others on democratic values, the way they have destroyed one country after another on the pretext of doing so has disillusioned even its once ardent backers. How are the human rights of common Afghans, Iraqis, and Libyans protected by destroying their homelands and then leaving them to fend for themselves? Increasingly, this kind of hypocrisy is starting to gall outside observers. 

Instead of dealing with such hypocrites, who, in the name of promoting democracy and human rights, trample on the very values they champion, why not rather do business with the more straightforward Chinese? They have no truck for democratic values but then they never pretended they cared about them. The devil you seemingly know is better than the friend you don’t. 

The reality is more nuanced. China is an autocracy and it too doesn’t desist from coercive action when it is displeased with other countries, as South Korea, Japan and India will attest. Yet, when contrasted with the gung-ho Americans who come with seemingly many hidden motives, the Chinese have, by and large, managed to project an image of peace-loving, non-ideological businessmen. And in diplomacy, perception is often as important as reality. 

The Chinese approach has other advantages too. For instance, China is the country most likely to nudge the Taliban to, say, respect girls’ right to education. On the one hand, China has ample interest in moderating the Taliban’s extremist instincts, lest it imports Islamic extremism from across the border. On the other hand, the Taliban don’t even want to hear of an extension of the US deadline to pull out its troops beyond August 31 if the evacuation of all Americans remains incomplete by that date. No wonder that despite all the hullabaloo surrounding the ‘debt trap’ diplomacy, the Chinese stock in the region remains high. The Americans, in the aftermath of their hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, meanwhile, have never been so unpopular. 

The Americans have left South Asia most vulnerable to terrorism than at any point in recent memory. Good intent counts for little if you fail to see the possible consequences of your actions. It will take a long time for America’s image in the region to recover. The American ‘value-based’ world order faces its greatest crisis in a generation, and nowhere more so than in South Asia.  

Often forgotten in hard-nosed debates on geopolitics is the fact that the countries under discussion are home to people just like us. Take Afghanistan, the country of 40 million that geopolitical analysts often refer to as the ‘graveyard of empires’. All the important international actors are in play in this traditional confluence of South Asia and Central Asia. We in Nepal think we are struggling to manage international geopolitical competition in our midst. But if our situation is that of struggle, in Afghanistan, things are hopeless. People there have little to look forward to.

The scenes of Afghans clinging to a military aircraft about to take off, in what was their last desperate ditch to leave the Taliban-controlled country, were heart-rending. One shudders to think of their state of mind. Yet there seems to be no shortage of commentators, including in Nepal, who are celebrating the Taliban’s ‘liberation’ of Afghanistan. As a rule of thumb, the farther on the left you go, the greater the number of sympathizers for Afghanistan’s new ‘liberators’.

In the past few days, I have had the misfortune of listening to countless Afghan women express their fears of living under the Taliban. These interviews broadcast over TV and radio had an overarching theme: whatever the mullahs might say, women are not safe in the new Afghanistan. They fear their jobs will be taken away, girls’ education will be discontinued, and they will be forced to accept their ‘second-class’ status under the sharia law. Even the limited achievements in gender equality that has been achieved in the past two decades would now evaporate into thin Hindu Kush air.

But it’s not only women who are afraid of the Taliban. Most of those trying to force their way into Kabul airport to leave were young men. The US is certainly to be blamed for a lot that has gone wrong in Afghanistan since its 2001 invasion. Did they need to invade the country to capture one terrorist, whom they could have easily ‘neutralized’ through precision airstrikes? If they were going to ruin the country, why didn’t they have any plans to rebuild it afterward? And why did they so callously assume that the Afghans would welcome an invading force with open arms? And, by the way, wasn’t it the US that first armed most of the men who now fight under the Taliban umbrella?

Yes, they were guilty on these and many other counts. But there was also a welcome side effect of the Taliban’s removal from power. Women could uncover their faces and attend schools and colleges. They were consulted in making modern Afghanistan. They had found a voice. Even as bombs continued to fall all around them, young Afghans, boys, and girls, now started imagining a life of freedom and gainful employment. How can the crushing of their aspirations and dreams be celebrated?

I have often been amused at this divide in Nepali intelligentsia, between the proponents of ‘freedom and democracy’ at any cost and the backers of unconditional ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’. For some, the Americans are evil imperialists whose sole intent is to conquer the world, and such was also their intent in Afghanistan. For others, no regime is worse than the one in Beijing, whose ‘debt trap’ diplomacy is no more than modern-day colonialism. For still others, the expansionist India is to be the most feared. There is no middle ground in this race-to-the-bottom debate.

Instead of everyone uniting to raise a collective voice in favor of better lives for common Afghans, they seem mostly busy holding their ideological forts. On the plus side, people around the world have gotten to hear and see from the Afghan streets. A geopolitical hotspot it certainly is. With 63 percent of its population under the age of 25, it is also a young and restless country teeming with possibilities.

The reactionary right is getting all-righteous again. Their central argument has been that federalism and secularism are ‘imported’ concepts imposed on Nepal. The argument’s genesis goes back to 2005 and the signing of the 12-point agreement between the Maoists and the Seven Party Alliance in New Delhi. It was the basis of the subsequent second Jana Andolan, the restoration of the dissolved House, the two Constituent Assembly elections, and the 2015 constitution. India, it is alleged, dictated the agreement and much of the subsequent developments in Nepal.

Then, in 2007, when the interim constitution was being written, secularism was added to the charter at the behest of conniving, free-spending Europeans. Federalism, likewise, found a mention in it because of outside pressure. Neither federalism nor secularism was the demand of the street during the second Jana Andolan. And so, as Nepali people were not consulted on these all-important issues, we either need a referendum on them or these provisions should be declared null and void. 

But the question is, which part of the current political system is unique to Nepal? The idea of a constitution through an elected constituent assembly in Nepal was first proposed by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1950. For various reasons, a constituent assembly could not be elected back then. Yet both the constitutions promulgated in the 1950s had heavy inputs from Indian constitutional experts.

The reason we have a parliamentary system is that India does so, and India does so because it inherited it from the British. Again, back in the 1950s, our monarch was seeking asylum in India even as our freedom fighters were waging a guerrilla war in Nepal, again from Indian soil. Just as in 2005, New Delhi in 1950 mediated talks between Nepali interlocutors: King Tribhuvan, Nepali political forces, chiefly Nepali Congress, and the Rana regime. If the 12-point understanding in 2005 had an Indian imprint, New Delhi virtually dictated the 1950 agreement that heralded democracy in Nepal.  

Democratic governance is universal, characterized by periodic elections, check and balance, separation of powers and fundamental rights. We also borrowed all the governing principles of modern nation-states from abroad. Perhaps this is a simplistic argument. But then it is even more simplistic (and misleading) to argue that there is something uniquely Nepali about the institution of monarchy or the country’s erstwhile identification with a single religion.

We embraced the idea of constituent assembly as we thought it would be the best way to frame a democratic constitution. Similarly, we adopted federalism as the earlier unitary state failed to bring meaningful change to the lives of common Nepalis. It is also disingenuous to argue that federalism has failed even as power and resources continue to be centralized in Singha Durbar.

Likewise, all progressive nation-states are secular. Those who argue Evangelical Christianity has spread like wildfire in federal Nepal should listen to parliamentary debates from back in the 1950s when successive governments were accused of promoting religious conversion. Even before that, we have written a history of the coercive conversion of indigenous communities who worshipped various natural deities into Hinduism. Calling Nepal a secular state is thus only honoring its heterogeneous ethnic and religious make-up.    

It was the popularly elected Constituent Assembly that abolished the monarchy. Its representatives framed the new charter, warts and all. But there was no mistake made in declaring Nepal a secular republic. Only a popular revolution of the kind we witnessed in 2006—an unlikely event—can change that.    

The controversy over 33-year-old Nepali national Jaya Singh Dhami—who was swept away by Mahakali River after the ‘rope bridge’ he was using to cross the river was cut by an Indian border official—is emblematic of the vastness of Nepal-India relations. People on one side routinely cross to the other to attend to some small business, see a relative, or in search of a job.

Bilateral relations depend perhaps more on such dealings than the one between Kathmandu and New Delhi. So is this what makes the relations between these two countries ‘special’? Yes, in a way.

Few other bilateral ties are based on such extensive people-to-people, commercial, religious, cultural, and historical ties. Nepali political leaders like BP Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh were participants in Gandhi’s satyagraha against the British. This in turn motivated them to seek freedom in their homeland. When the Rana rule in Nepal ended, it was only natural for them to borrow ideas from the south, including those shaping the country’s new bureaucracy and security forces.

Arguably, the biggest determinant of such closeness is geography: It would be hard to imagine such extensive contacts had, say, the highest mountain in the world separated them, as is the case with Nepal and China. But then that is just another way of saying that the bilateral ties are somehow special. (It’s a different matter that Nepali pride is pricked whenever India invokes that specialness to impose its will.)

But should any two sovereign states have such special ties in this day and age? What if the special ties with India prevent Nepal from engaging more with the rest of the world, China especially? In other words, is Nepal, as by far the smaller of the two powers, too dependent on India? If yes, is there a way to minimize this dependence, irrespective of New Delhi’s wishes?

In theory, yes, Nepal can and should diversify beyond India, and venture into every part of the world, and derive maximum benefit from globalization. In practice, surrounded on three (more accessible) sides by India, we are India-locked. It will always cost us less to import third-country goods from Indian rather than via Chinese ports, Nepal’s only other option. Moreover, thanks to the mass media, the centuries-old socio-cultural ties between Nepal and India are being strengthened, not weakened.

This suggests that Nepal can’t have good relations with another country, including China, if it does not get along with India. Concomitantly, Nepal can’t prosper without prosperity tricking down to the lowest rungs of the Indian society. Without the prosperity of bordering parts of India, Nepal’s development will be stymied: All kinds of influences, good and bad, are continuously trickling through the porous borders.

So perhaps Nepal should look to enhance its relations with these bordering Indian states and apply their success stories in Nepal, at least in Tarai-Madhes. But then New Delhi keeps the states on a tight leash on foreign affairs. This makes it hard for these states to prioritize their agenda in what little interaction they have with neighboring countries. Never mind the rhetoric emerging from New Delhi. The ‘roti-beti’ relations between adjoining areas of Nepal and India are the least of their concern.

The SSB official who cut the rope bridge isn’t answerable to anyone in Uttarakhand but reports directly to the Indian home ministry. So the Pithoragarh district magistrate, posted by the state government, writing to Darchula’s chief district officer to clarify that no SSB official was involved is meaningless. This incident again goes to show that special relations need special attention for their sustenance.  

The parliament should ratify the MCC Compact, pronto. Why? It’s in our national interest. How? There are many reasons. One, it’s a well-thought-out, detailed, time-bound roads and transmission lines project, which Nepal selected based on its priorities. If completed within the stipulated five years, it would set a wonderful precedent in a country notorious for time and cost overruns. Few other foreign-funded projects in Nepal are so thorough. And oh, it won’t add a paisa to our debt burden.

Two, we need a level of American presence in Nepal to balance the otherwise overbearing influence of India and China. That was one reason we first reached out to the Americans back in the late 1940s. Without the presence of strong third actors like the US and the EU, Nepal will have no leverage over its two neighbors, and Nepal’s fate could then be settled between them. Already, Nepal’s core concerns have been trampled upon in multiple Indo-China dealings. We can also safely overlook ridiculous concerns like the American army entering Nepal on the back of the MCC compact. That just doesn’t add up.

Three, Sri Lanka’s example is offered to suggest the MCC is somehow an imperialist concept, and that Nepal, following in the island country’s footsteps, should also reject its own MCC compact. The Sri Lankans, under the Beijing-leaning Rajapakshas, had rejected the compact that allegedly impinged on the country’s sovereignty. But Nepal is no Sri Lanka, which has no contiguous neighbors. At its closest, it is nearly 4,000 km from China, and with India, it is separated by a water-work, which, again at its narrowest, is over twice the shortest distance been Nepal and Bangladesh. So Sri Lanka has much more room for geopolitical maneuver than Nepal does. It’s thus a false comparison. 

Four, much hoo-hah has been made about the compact’s mandatory parliamentary approval. But what difference does that make? We are already a signatory to the compact and without the clause for parliamentary approval, we would by now have started working on it. Parliamentary approval wasn’t mandatory earlier. The Americans later added the proviso when the compact countries failed to take ownership of the related projects.

Five, isn’t the MCC part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, and shouldn’t we reject this anti-China project? Again, whether or not it’s (retrospectively) a part of the IPS makes no difference whatsoever. It would be naïve to believe in this day and age that any sovereign country would help any other country selflessly. As they say, there is no free lunch in international dealings. All future American help, in one way or the other, will be aimed at checking China’s military and economic rise. Nepal should be more worried about how best to secure its interests, not what India or China will think.

Six, but seriously, can Nepal overlook Chinese concerns that the Americans are out to encircle them with India’s help? I think one problem is the failure of Nepali interlocutors to convince their Chinese counterparts of the MCC compact’s importance for Nepal and to assure China that the compact would not, in any way, impinge on its core interests. If China is a good neighbor, it will understand our geopolitical compulsions.

Lastly, the dispute over the MCC compact has shown the great power of disinformation. This power will only grow in the coming days. Nepal will have to be vigilant to know the right from the wrong and to safeguard its interests.

I recall a year-old conversation with a reporter with a Nepali daily who covers security issues. He had just come back from the National Investigation Department under the Prime Minister’s Office. There, as I was told, an official of his acquaintance sat him down and after a few taps on his computer keyboard proceeded to tell the astounded reporter about his personal life, things like his education qualifications, the details of his immediate relatives, the location of his residence, his work history, and all his phone numbers. Had they also recorded his calls? That, he was not told.

Back at our meeting place, the exasperated reporter asked: “Imagine the kind of details they must have on VIPs and VVIPs if an ordinary reporter like me is so closely tracked!”

I was reminded of the conversation by the latest scandal around Pegasus, the Israeli spyware that can be surreptitiously installed in cell phones. Its Israeli developer, NSO Group, had apparently sold the software to many governments, including Narendra Modi’s. Among the Modi government’s targets were resident ambassadors in New Delhi, from China, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia—and Nepal.

The spyware’s presence on the cell phone of Nilambar Acharya, the Nepali envoy to India, indicates the mistrust that has developed between the two countries since the promulgation of the constitution in 2015. This mistrust reached new heights when then-Prime Minister KP Oli in May 2020 issued a new map incorporating the disputed territories of Kalapani. Although the relationship was beginning to thaw in the latter stages of Oli’s premiership, things are far from hunky-dory, as the Indian prime minister still refuses to accept the final Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) report.

The Pegasus revelations also make me wonder, again in light of the above conversation with the security reporter, about the extent of phone tapping in Nepal.

Big Kathmandu-based embassies—the US, China and India—are widely suspected to be running their own intelligence programs to keep tabs on vital Nepali actors. All three embassies closely monitor the press—who writes and says what—and send detailed reports back to their capitals. Each has a list of people working for and against their interests, often prepared on flimsy grounds. As the geopolitical rivalry between them heats up, it wouldn’t at all be surprising if they have also upped their spy games in Nepal.

The best evidence of the US surveillance mechanism are perhaps the detailed cables the American embassy routinely sends to Washington, many of which are now publicly available on Wikileaks. The Indian Embassy has time and again released compromising audio recordings of Nepali communist leaders, most famously of Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara asking for money from his Chinese contact to ‘buy Nepali MPs’.

Before that, Prachanda had found himself in trouble over the Shaktikhor tapes (again courtesy the Indian Embassy) where he can be heard boasting about hoodwinking UNMIN. It would also be surprising if the Chinese, the world leaders in 5G, didn’t snoop around in Kathmandu, to keep Uncle Sam honest, if nothing else. Others may be in it too.

A new parliamentary bill aims to legalize tapping of phones under the garb of ‘national interest’. But phones of Nepali VVIPs have long been snooped on. The cat came out of the bag during the tenure of Lokman Singh Karki as the CIAA chief, when he started brazenly tapping the phones of his critics.

Even PM Oli, during his latest stint, dropped hints that he was privy to the phone conversations of his political opponents. At a time when Google knows more about us than we know about ourselves, perhaps we can all stop pretending that we can lead neatly siloed private lives anymore. 

Sher Bahadur Deuba as a five-time prime minister brings to the office his vast governing and electioneering experience. It was under his leadership that the three tiers of elections were completed in 2017. These elections were a sort of redemption for the veteran politician, who in 2001 had been dismissed from office by King Gyanendra as ‘incompetent’ after failing to hold elections scheduled that year. It is now once again up to Deuba to ensure timely elections and to forestall another constitutional crisis.

But that’s for later. First, he has to get the unlikely 136 votes in the federal lower house to continue in office beyond the 30 days he gets before the floor test. The Nepal-Khanal faction of the CPN-UML, with their 23 MPs, had backed Deuba’s claim to premiership. But if they vote for Deuba during his floor test, the UML will all but split, and this is something both the party factions seem determined to avoid.

If Deuba falls short of the magic number, his government will automatically turn into a caretaker one whose sole responsibility will be to hold elections within the next six months. If elections cannot be held by this time, there could be a grave constitutional crisis. As he tendered his resignation on July 13, Prime Minister KP Oli knew this well, and he seems determined to have it both ways.

If Deuba loses the floor test, KP Oli will be vindicated in his conclusion that there was no alternative to his government, further strengthening his hold on UML. If, on the other hand, Deuba gets the vote of confidence, he will take the country into the constitutionally mandated November 2022 elections. For this unlikely event to happen, the Nepal-Khanal faction will have to vote in Deuba’s favor by abandoning the mother UML ship. In that case, there won’t be a challenger to Oli’s party leadership and he will go into the elections and the next UML general convention in high spirits. 

The big danger is of a power vacuum if Deuba loses the vote of confidence and fails to conduct elections on time—and this is a real possibility. Multiple factors are at play. The BJP government in India has never been happy with the Nepali constitution and would gleefully see it bite the dust, which in turn will clear the way for the restoration of the Hindu state. Oli, who has of late switched his allegiance back to New Delhi, would help India in this effort as he looks to cash in on Nepal’s Hindu vote bank to get back to power. (His UML stalwart Mahesh Basnet is already calling for a review of the country’s federal and secular status.) 

If Deuba fails, a new ‘apolitical’ electoral government, like the one under Khil Raj Regmi in 2013, can’t be ruled out. Even back then, India had twisted many arms to get Regmi appointed as prime minister. Something like that could happen again. The Covid-19 pandemic and the Election Commission’s lack of preparations make it even more likely. The best case would thus be for Deuba to win the floor test and take the country into the 2022 November election.

Unfortunately, that is the least likely outcome, unless, of course, our political leaders can pull out another rabbit from their bag of tricks. But betting on Oli to support Deuba’s premiership and thereby diluting his electoral appeal will be asking for a lot. Those wishing for the failure of the current political dispensation are licking their lips.