Back in 2017, the Pushpa Kamal Dahal government was under incredible pressure from the ‘democratic world’ to keep Nepal from joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Westerners, keen to minimize communist China’s growing footprint in South Asia, argued how Nepal would be foolhardy to willingly walk into this ‘dark, bottomless pit’. The Indians feared Nepal joining the BRI would spell an end to its monopoly over the landlocked country. Only after Kathmandu repeatedly assured New Delhi of its ‘limited’ BRI membership—one dealing solely with ‘connectivity’ projects—did India reluctantly give its nod.
Many Nepali intellectuals were (and still are) skeptical about the BRI. Yet they still credit China for at least trying to explain the concept to them. Over the past five or six years, no month has perhaps passed without at least one China-sponsored conference in Kathmandu on the BRI. Visiting Chinese scholars have been grilled on the initiative. They have not always come up with satisfactory answers. Yet just the fact that Nepali intellectuals and journalists have been able to question them on the BRI, often with no restraint, has helped blunt its hard edges.
In sharp contrast, when the US State Department announced at the end of 2018 that Nepal would play a ‘pivotal’ role in the American Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), the intellectual community in Nepal felt cheated: How could such a monumental shift in Nepal’s international outlook—whereby Nepal was being pulled into a supposedly military alliance aimed against its close neighbor—have been handled so nonchalantly? Why were there no prior
consultations in Nepal?
Again, at the time Nepal joined the BRI, there were already extensive discussions here on its costs and benefits. The Chinese wanted to convince Nepalis of all the ways Nepal would benefit from the initiative, and hammer in the point that it was not aimed at saddling Nepal with debt it cannot repay. In some ways the underlying motive behind the BRI was less important than the Chinese messaging.
The IPS has been a more hush-hush affair. The American Embassy in Kathmandu has sponsored no seminar or conference where the architects of this strategy were invited to explain it to willing listeners. Its closed-door briefings on the IPS to handpicked journalists adds more to the suspicion than they help clarify things.
If you want the IPS to work in Nepal, at least give it a good shot at success. Or is the IPS so obviously a military alliance that the Americans in Nepal are hard-pressed to shed light on its non-military aspects? Concurrently, could it be that the much-withered Department of State that handles the US diplomatic engagements is helpless when the constantly bloating Department of Defense is calling the shots?
But even with limited resources the American Embassy could do a better job at highlighting the good aspects of the IPS, if any. Otherwise the perception that it is the American military that is driving the IPS, and that it is a purely strategic alliance to contain China’s rise, will stick. It is hard to see how such a perception will help long-term US interests in Nepal. Task number one for the American mission in Nepal: Convene an IPS conference in Kathmandu—pronto.
