Dahal has not embarked on any official foreign visit after his election, but it appears that he will do so with a visit to India, honoring the long-standing practice of Nepali prime ministers making their first trip to India first.
During his first premiership in 2008, Dahal had broken this tradition by attending the Beijing Olympic Games, a move that didn’t go well with New Delhi. He would later tell his close confidants that it was his mistake to travel to Beijing before New Delhi. So when he became prime minister for the second time in 2016, he made it a point to visit New Delhi first. He is intent on honoring the tradition this time too, as was evident by his decision to not attend the Boao Forum for Asia held in Hainan Province of China. Although Dahal attended the Summit for Democracy, a virtual meet organized by the US, the Prime Minister’s Office saw to it that the meeting was portrayed as a low-key event, unlike in 2021 when former prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, and his team issued a public statement regarding his address. It is said Prime Minister Dahal didn’t want to make a big deal out of the summit considering the current geopolitical climate. At the end of the summit, 73 countries came up with a joint statement but there is no mention of Nepal. Some countries including India have expressed reservations on some of the points of the statement but Nepal has kept mum. The main objective of the summit was to advance a democratic bloc to contain the growing global influence of communist China, and Prime Minister Dahal didn’t want to give any wrong message to Beijing by becoming an enthusiastic participant. Interestingly, a few days before the Summit for Democracy, China had organized ‘The Second International Forum on Democracy: Shared Human Values’, where it had invited politicians, experts, and scholars from around the world. There were no reports about Nepali government officials taking part in the event. The Dahal government faces a tough challenge of balancing ties with both the US and China. There is a dispute between the US and China on what and how democracy should be like. This conflict over the definition of democracy is playing out in countries like Nepal. American Ambassador Dean R Thompson on March 29 wrote a newspaper article to reinforce the importance of democracy, and the very next day, Chinese Ambassador Chen Song published his own opinion piece on the Chinese model of democracy, where he claimed the broadest, truest, and most effective democracy was truly rooted in China. With two global superpowers competing to exert their influence over Nepal, Prime Minister Dahal is treading carefully so as not to irritate Beijing or Washington by making his preference known. As the US, China, and India are all crucial development partners of Nepal, it explains Prime Minister Dahal’s decision to skip Boao Forum for Asia meeting, his low-key participation in the Summit for Democracy, and his decision to make his first official visit to India. For now, Dahal’s first priority is to make an official visit to India. Time and again, he has publicly said that preparations are underway for his India trip. Soon after he became the prime minister, Dahal had talked about his plan to visit India, but it could not take place due to internal political issues. In February, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra visited Nepal to make preparations for Dahal’s India visit. Again, the prime minister was caught in internal political affairs. He will most likely visit India once his newly-formed coalition government gets full shape. After India, Prime Minister Dahal wants to visit China, but it is not sure whether Beijing will extend him an invitation. While extending its invitation to Dahal for the Boao Forum for Asia conference, China had expressed its intention of converting his trip into an official one. So, there is still hope that Beijing could invite Prime Minister Dahal for an official visit. It is clear that India, China and the US want to deepen their ties with Nepal on economic, political and military fronts. But for Dahal, balancing expectations of these three countries is going to be difficult, and not just because of their geopolitical rivalries, but also due to internal factors. For instance, Dahal could face pressure, including from the opposition party, CPN-UML, to take up the issues such as revising the 1950 treaty and settling the border dispute with India. New Delhi is certainly not keen on discussing these topics, let alone agreeing to settle them. The Indian side has said repeatedly that it wants sustained diplomatic talks on these issues before forwarding them at the top political level. Instead, India seems more interested in expediting the development partnership with Nepal, focusing on connectivity and hydropower projects. China too has shown its interest in increasing its engagements with Nepal that were obstructed due to the Covid-19 restrictions and the lack of interest shown by the former government under Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress. To this end, Chinese Ambassador Song has adopted an on-the-spot approach on bilateral issues related to trade and development projects. Recently, China also agreed to fully open all border points to ease bilateral trade. For the US, the key priorities are smooth implementation of the projects under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Nepal compact, bringing Nepal on board its State Partnership Program (SPP), concluding the transitional justice process, and expediting the activities under USAID. While India, China and the US seem to have made their priorities known, Nepal has no clarity on how to deal with the interests shown by these countries and how to benefit from them. Nepali society remains sharply divided over some of the programs and projects launched by the US and China, largely due to the fear sowed by the political parties. It is up to Prime Minister Dahal to convince all sides. This will be his biggest challenge, especially when the political ideologies and foreign policies of his coalition partners are at odds with his own party.
