-Survival Strategies of a Small State-
Dev Raj Dahal, Kathmandu, Nepal
The position that Nepal occupies and its ties with the regional and global powers in the changing world underline the essence of its geopolitics.
The decay of the value of distance has today diminished the relevance of geography and the nation’s ability to gain power and status by geographic means has markedly declined, even if it has not disappeared completely.
People still live within national borders that define their opportunities.
Yet, the modern technological system that binds people together is not entirely based on physical location alone.
The growing interdependence among nation-states has opened a new world of global relationship — a relationship defined by global and regional trade regimes, security regimes, human rights regimes, environmental regimes, etc.
The economic and political policies emanating from the international system have started to impinge upon Nepal straining its traditional dynamics of self-determination and altering the conventional modes of authority, legitimacy, and compliance.
In this sense, Nepal’s inability to cope with and benefit from these forces would not only affect its policy effectiveness in the days to come but would also seriously undermine the raison d’etre of its survival capability because states today are no longer isolated, self-contained, or self-sufficient entities as they were in the past, and their viabilities are being increasingly challenged by both external and internal forces – social, economic, and political.
The German school of Geopolitics that traced the origin of all discord and collaboration to a single paramount source- geopolitics — is now subject to various modifications with the change in the nature and complexity of the emerging global environment.
Modern geopolitical thinkers believe that the meaning of geopolitics rests more on the context and relationships of concepts than on textbook definitions.
This holds more in the case of Nepal than perhaps anywhere else.
Its geographic position has undoubtedly affected its policies, but it is not the sole causal factor that has predetermined and protected Nepal’s security.
As a small state, its unceasing struggle for survival can be attributed to a number of other factors. Statesmanship and will of the people are critical elements in moulding the free-spirited national character that have guarded Nepal’s
independence over the years.
At a time of global transition in political economy, it is important to probe into the risks and opportunities that post-cold war international system brings to small states like Nepal.
The reciprocal interaction of state and non-state actors for power and wealth, what one calls political economy, is by no means a new field of study.
Many smaller states are practicing its various forms — liberalism, statism, corporatism, and mixed economy.
The questions that come to mind here are: How is Nepal going to define its role for the century to come?
What would be the framework of rules and institutions? And how can it prove itself relevant to its own people, to the neighbors and to the international community in general?
Tied to these questions are: What are the basic geopolitical determinants of Nepalese foreign policy?
To what extent will Nepal be able to maintain its historic identity when several variables that affect it continue to remain outside the scope of national calculations!
These are the questions of utmost significance today.
It would be pertinent to address the subject from two perspectives – the geopolitical determinants of Nepalese foreign policy and the geostrategies it has pursued for survival, development, and peace.
The approach to these perspectives, adopted here, however, is pretheoretical focusing on the nation-state as a level of analysis.
GEOPOLITICAL DETERMINANTS:
SIZE: By the existing standards of size and power, Nepal is small, weak. and one of the least developed states.
Yet, size alone is a deceptive element of power and has often been considered relative to other elements.
Small states have not only small borders to defend but also small resources mobilize.
With an area of 147,181 square kilometers, Nepal is definitely bigger than some of its regional neighbors — Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives.
But among its immediate neighbors India is twenty-three, and China sixty-eight times bigger in size.
In terms of population also, its million population is very small compared to those of the neighbors — India (close to one billion) and China (more than one billion).
The power difference between Nepal and its mammoth neighbors is enormous reflecting the vivid contrast of a dwarf between two giants. Its armed forces of approximately 40,000 are minuscule by its neighbors’ standards.
It is this perception of power inequality that constitutes the operational basis for selecting the ends and means of Nepalese foreign policy.
LOCATION: Location is important because it affects the ability of a state to defend itself.
Nepal occupies a pivotal position in the Himalayas — between the Central and South Asian regions, a part of Eurasian landmass, to use Mackinder’s terminology.
To the north of this monarchical kingdom is Tibet, the Autonomous Region of communized China; to the east, west, and south are the federal states — Bengal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. — of republican India.
According to the Department of Survey, HMG, Nepal occupies a 1590-kilometer-long border with India and 1414-kilometer border with China.
Such a position forms its geostrategic setting critically important for India’s security and stability of its heartland, the Gangetic belt, where an enormous share of its human and resource base is concentrated.
This belt is also the source of Hindu civilization, Hindi language, and leadership growth.
This is the primary reason why India has been striving toward a firmer influence in Nepal for its territorial and political defence in areas that border on China, which Indian strategists perceive as the actual rival of India.
The entry of Chinese forces into Tibet has always been perceived by the Indian strategists as a breach of the outer limits of their country’s northern security zone arduously built by the British over more than hundred years for the security of the imperial subcontinent.
The plain area of Nepal Tarai is, however, considered as the inner limit of their security zone, where they have tried to deny a third country’s right to undertake any project.
Conversely, Nepal has historically been considered by the Chinese strategists as a part of a chain of their nation’s concentric inner Asian defensive system and even now bears no little importance for the security of its underbelly, Tibet, where a large number of anti-Chinese forces have converging interests.
Any violent event of political nature in Nepal therefore, would be an issue of serious concern not only for the neighbors but also for the new complex pentagon of powers — India, China, Japan, Germany, and America—each of whom is motivated by its global needs but pursues not-too-similar policies.
The Chinese are sensitive to the possibility of Nepal serving as a spring board for Khampa-like anti-Chinese activities in Tibet that continued until the mid-seventies.
The strength of the Indian and Western schemes for Tibetan separatism has now got somewhat strained, but has not ended. This is one strong point where Nepal’s policy differs sharply with those of the Indians and the West.
This difference presents a vitally rational option because Nepalese are well aware of the fact that Nepal, even if it sides with India and the West, can hardly tilt the strategic balance against China.
In contrast, the continued use of Nepalese territory as a base for fomenting subversive groups either against India or China would possibly set off a chain reaction of unforeseen, unprecedented consequences.
The Chinese economic and political cores like Beijing, Chengdu, Canton, and Shanghai are too far to be directly threatened from Nepal.
In contrast, Indians fear that Beijing’s deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles in Tibet and Xinjiang are targeted at India that can easily destroy the latter’s economic and political heartland.
India has only the medium range ballistic missiles that can strike up to Tibet. It is precisely the capacity for global projection that differentiates China from other regional powers like Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, and India.
Yet, owing to the non-usability of the thermonuclear weapons (because of their undesirable spillover effects), except for deterrence planning in the Himalayan geopolitics, the strategists of both India and China still look at the Himalayan barriers as a bastion of their long-term security and stability,
Ironically, however, each side claims that it bolsters Nepal’s politics of survival, but each fears the other’s potential to undermine it.
BORDER LINKAGES: The type of border and frontiers is also a valued factor of geopolitics.
Nepal has no littoral border.
The territorial status quo of Nepal has been legitimized by border treaties with the neighbors. Traditionally, the high physical barriers of Himalayas in the north have rendered Nepal, to a large extent, secure from various penetrations.
Nepalese history, like those of Afghanistan and Switzerland, is thus a classic example of the defensive benefits of mountains.
In the south, this function was well performed by dense malarial forests.
But the clearing of forests and building of roads for modernization have undermined the utility of physical barriers and therefore contributed to the steady decay of the country’s earlier buffer position.
The Kodari Highway links Nepal with Tibet in the north and through Tibet the strategic Highway of Karakoram links Nepal with Pakistan.
This area is historically a meeting point of four old empires — British Indian, Chinese, Russian, and Persian, where the Great Game for the control of buffer states was often played.
Numerous roads were built to connect Indian states that have both economic and strategic significance. More specifically, unlike the case with China, the lack of natural frontiers with India has weakened Nepal’s defensive capacity and enhanced its economic, political, and cultural permeability.
This has been a constant source of Nepalese weakness. For transit purpose, multiple entry and exit points of Nepal along the Indian border give it some advantages too.
These conditions set by the geographic situation constitute one crucial determinant of Nepal’s foreign policy.
SHAPE: The shape of a state is another vital component of geopolitics. The manner in which people are organized in a territorial nation-state to maximize their gains and minimize their weaknesses vis-a-vis other states is crucial for ensuring their existence and progress.
The shape of a state is the outcome of a long process of adaptation and readaptation. Nepal is brick shaped with its length stretched to 880 kilometers on an east to west basis while the width varies from 144 kilometers in the east to 240 kilometers in the west from north to south.
The thin belt of the land with its rugged topography ranging from 100-meter altitude of Tarai to 2100 meter-high Mahabharat region to the highest mountain of the world, Mount Everest (8848 m), manifests a widely diverse range of climates (tropical, temperate, and tundra), resource base, and ethnography.
CIRCULATION: Geography has played a positive role in Nepal’s independence but it has also created barriers that impose formidable east west and north-south divisions.
There is the duality of core areas in Nepal. Tarai, the economic core, is a fertile region, high in socio-economic and technological indicators, and contributes substantially to Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product High mountains in the north are fragile for cultivation.
The mid-montane region is overused.
But these two regions bear enormous sources of water, biodiversity, and beautiful valleys for tourist attraction and have been historically a defensive belt against Tibetan and British intrusions.
Diversity in topography offers Nepal a good scope for the diversification of its agriculture, animal husbandry, and resource base. Numerous passes including Kuti and Kerong in the high Himalayas have provided since time immemorial access for Nepal’s trans-border trade and commerce.
But, since political and economic mobility in the north is limited, only Tarai and the valleys seem to hold Nepal’s economic future.
Due to the lack of a buffer zone between Tarai and the Gangetic belt, the region is vulnerable to the inflow of Burmese, Tibetan, Indian, and Bhutanese migrations, population pressures, cross-border smuggling, and economic and ecological imbalances. Such a situation could easily invite political instability in the future.
The political core is still the valley of Kathmandu, the seat of government, where major domestic and foreign policy decisions are made.
It is relatively safe. Yet, the electoral and urban development of Nepal is gradually tilting toward Tarai, and shifting the locus of power, which might undermine the traditional centrality of the mid-montane region, including Kathmandu — the political heartland of Nepal — in the days ahead. Beyond doubt, the hitherto hill-dominated Nepalese history and psychology will undergo substantial change if demography is allowed to decide policies and priorities.
A strong balance between the political heartland, Kathmandu, and the economic heartland, Tarai, is thus important for the survival and growth of Nepal as an independent state.
VITAL RESOURCES: In terms of physical geography, Nepal is separated from the sea.
But it is blessed with a number of large rivers offering Nepal a total of 83,000 MW hydro potential.
So far, it has utilized only 250 MW hydropower serving just 10 percent of the total population.
The river system of Nepal that flows from north to south has a number of implications for its use in hydropower generation, river transport, irrigation, flood control, and ecosystem preservation.
Geologically, Nepalese rivers have contributed to the formation of a large part of the fertile Gangetic belt nourishing the wealth and enriching the hydraulic Hindu civilization.
This is the reason India’s main population centers lie in Nepal’s close vicinity.
Despite tremendous potential, Nepal has failed to adequately utilize its water resources for national purpose.
Unlike the developed countries with multiple resources (like technology, industrialization, skilled personnel, strategic commodities), it has only one prime resource – water.
Water has thus acquired tremendous importance for its economic progress.
Its nearest port is Calcutta in India which is nearly 1000 kilometers away.
The nation is predominantly agricultural with an incipient stage of industrialization which exports chiefly agricultural commodities and imports industrial products symbolizing what dependency theorists call a semi-periphery role in the world political economy.
In the absence of commercially useful minerals and incompetitive trade, its development policy has been a never ending adjustment to global capital markets, biased terms of trade, and disarticulation of national choice.
The scattered settlement of the Nepalese people in mountains, valleys, and Tarai entails the growth and distribution of small hydel plants in a decentralized manner so that regional disparity can be balanced with social, economic, and ecological considerations, and agro-based small and cottage industries can become a transit point for big industries.
Infusion of modern technology for economic development can also help prevent the growing marginalization of hill economy and migration of labor to Tarai and India.
Trade with India, however, is not an alternative to trade with China and other countries.
The Chinese population centers lie relatively far away from the Nepalese borders.
Tibet’s thin population offers Nepal a small market, and the distance factor makes trade and transit costly.
It facilitates natural trade and transactions with India. But the heavy dependence on a single seaport, Calcutta, has rendered landlocked Nepal vulnerable to frequent interruptions in transit every time as the relations between the two countries become constrained.
Unless and until a modern supermarket is developed by China near the Nepalese border point Khasa, Nepalese objectives to reduce dependence on India and diversify markets can hardly be realized.
In this sense, the utilization of water resources involves a number of considerations: Can some linkage be established between Nepal’s water resource and landlockedness?
Can its water provide an alternative transit route facility through Radhikapur to the Chittagong port of Bangladesh? Can a bargain be struck on water resource or to sell it like a commodity for other resources?
And, can we use this resource to support national development strategies?
In the two well-known cases of Koshi and Gandak deals with India in 1954 and 1959, Nepal felt itself ‘cheated’ and more recently, also in the case of Tanakpur.
All this has set off a bad precedent arousing serious national concerns.
The sharing of water resources requires a comprehensive framework of national consensus: on procedural matters; on the utilization of whole river resources; on the issues of process, strategy, and policies; on distribution, and on a whole array of foreign policy matters pertaining to the nation’s vital interests.
The vexing issue of Tanakpur has now merely diverted the other salient issues such as Labor Act, Citizenship Act, work permit, open border, national security, migration, Bhutanese refugees, and many others, including the larger social issues of AIDS and girl trafficking in the brothels of the Indian cities which are likely to plague the social peace and harmony of the country incurring enormous human and financial costs.
The water resource is closely related to the future of the Nepalese people. Its proper preservation and protection is therefore essential for promoting a national economy that can sustain people’s livelihood; a social system that can minimize the cleavages arising from the economic and political deprivations and can maximize the legitimacy of the political system; and a foreign policy that can promote trade, investment, aid, finance, technology, and information without destroying the social, ecological, and geological bases of the nation.
Nepal controls the sources river waters and ecology for several Indian and Bangladeshi sites in the downstream areas serving itself as an environmental security zone.
The scarcity of fuel in Nepal would not only induce the Nepalese to cut down forests but the consequent deforestation could endanger the survival of Nepalese, Indians, and Bangladeshis alike causing soil erosion, flood drought, and other hazards destabilizing the forests’ backward and forward linkages with the bio-and socio-spheres.
The first priority of water resource use must be, therefore, given to the nation itself.
Then only can one talk of bilateral and multilateral uses. It means small and medium size rivers such as Bagmati, Narayani, Kamala and others should be harnessed first because they do not require bilateral and multilateral funding.
This can be done with its own means — resources equipment, and technical expertise — as it did in the past.
In contrast, large projects are more prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and car prove unsustainable in the long run. Going for big projects and selling surpluses to India involve two considerations:
Can Karnali and Pancheshwar projects with billions of dollars’ investment contribute to the benefit of the people of this region? Given uncompetitive trade and transit, if it has surpluses, what is to be done with it? In this sense, resource security emerges as a vitally important aspect of Nepalese geopolitical thinking.
Resource security is, in turn, tied up to ecological security and several policies on population, land, labor, agriculture, industry, and commerce.
The growing ecological crises in Nepal have compelled the Nepalese government to reconsider the relevance of the traditional forms of resource policies as well as defend population and land from outside intrusion.
This also means asserting the rights of the average Nepalese people on economic matters.
Building their stake in the political process is the best security, reserve for regime stability.
For, democratic order is judged by the freedom of choice of an individual and nation in the market place.
Ecological security has, therefore, started to claim a place of critical salience in the Nepalese foreign policy thinking because it is directly or indirectly related to tourism and trade.
LEVERAGE: The leverage factor is also a vital component geopolitics.
The Chinese leverage over Nepal is already enormous: presence of the ethnic Chinese, pro-Chinese political force, and China’s ability and willingness to project power across the Himalayas.
On the contrary, the Nepalese will and capacity to influence the Chinese policies are very weak.
China’s strategic influence will grow over the next decade in South Asia as its economic muscle offers it the means to become a powerful element in the overall Asian strategic equation.
In fact, Nepalese do not have much leverage over China except the country’s strategic disposition which Chinese consider as a safety zone for their security in Tibet.
The Chinese declaration on Panchasheel that stipulates the “guarantee of Nepalese security in the case of a foreign attack,” determination to oppose hegemony, and willingness to contribute to Nepal’s development and independence stems from the consideration that an independent Nepal will resist any temptation and pressure for anti-Chinese policies.
The Nepalese and the Indian leverage over each other is reciprocal. Gurkha recruitment in the Indian army is a critical link in the Indian security system.
Another link is the Nepalese mobility from Kumaun, Garhwal in the west to Assam, Sikkim, Bhutan, Chittagong of Bangladesh, and Burma in the east suggesting an image of paterfamilias — a sort of head of one big family.
Due to such a situation, India has tended to remain quite sensitive to Nepal.
Any deviation from its professed special relationship raises for it the specter of a Greater Nepal just as the Indian version of Manifest Destiny, Akhand Bharat, does for the Nepalese.
India’s enormous leverage – the presence of Indian influence, control over circulation, economic clout, and will and ability to project power — always makes the Nepalese sensitive to Indian policies.
EXPOSURE: Despite the proximity of Nepal to two great civilizational systems — Sinic and South Asian — which have historically made it a main avenue for cultural synthesis and trade entrepot, Nepal’s greater geophysical exposure toward the south has made India an omnipresent neighbor influencing its circulation pattern and acculturation process.
This explains why the Nepali state located near the predominantly Hindu population centers of India has been moulded on the Hindu matrix and Hindu elites in Nepal often subscribe to the Sanskritic worldview of the Gangetic belt.
The reassertion of this identity is manifested in the democratic constitution of 1990. The germs of communism and Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism flow to Nepal not from China but from India itself. Almost all the political parties of Nepal are affiliated with like-minded Indian political parties.
This is why the breeding of conflict among diverse linguistic, religious, regional, and cultural forces assumes a transnational dimension posing barriers to national integration and economic development for Nepal where the sense of nationhood still struggles against loyalty to ethnic groups.
In some cases, the clock is being turned back as some tribes and indigenous groups revive ancient prejudices.
Geostragies:
If cooperation and conflict between India and China underlie the primary framework of Nepalese geopolitics, the success of its foreign policy strategies lies in the cautious balancing of its ties with them.
The central issue of Nepalese geostrategic thinking stems from the pattern of Sino Indian relations; China as a factor in India’s relations with the South Asian countries, and the extra-regional powers’ role in this region, a region where China and India are the key geostrategic entities in the global power equilibrium.
Nepal’s foreign policy behavior is primarily derived from this thinking because the freedom of choice or limitations in the formulation and execution of foreign policy is determined by this consideration.
It is so because the geostrategic location of Nepal renders it impossible either to escape from or to halt Sino-Indian contest and cooperation.
SECURITY FRAMEWORK:
If the security of Nepal means avoidance of psychological fear, so far it has successfully avoided the three-fold fear of being abandoned to isolation; becoming a cockpit of regional conflict, that is, subjecting itself to hostile coexistence; and subordinating itself to Sino-Indian bigemony implying neutralization. But Nepal is not immune from the conceptual cacophony over the terms that contemporarily characterize its foreign policy position.
It is so because no one is sure whether India and China have an equal stake in Nepal.
What is sure is that Nepal’s security and freedom of maneuver are best guaranteed by a system in which both the neighbors balance each other.
A rational security system, if it is to be functional, must rest on the relative responsibilities and distribution of the internally available security commodities according to the minimum requirement of the given constituent units (Nepal-India-China) and successful adaptation in the international environment.
How serious are India and China about their stakes is difficult to assess and impossible to predict.
Indian dislikes of equidistance that characterized Nepal’s foreign policy in the three decades of Panchayat rule (1960-1990) and the Chinese distaste for special relationship of Nepal with India (1950s have virtually closed two of the conventional foreign policy options of Nepal.
Similarly, the Indian desire for a common security perception with Nepal following the signing of the Arms Assistance Agreement of 1965 and the anti-hegemony understanding reached between Nepal and China in 1972, too, have caught Nepal in a bipolar ethical-political value system analogous to the traditional case of Finland between Sweden and the Soviet Union.
In such a context, any successful adaptation by Nepal requires the evolution of a trilateral zed security framework as a part of its strategic thinking.
This also means that the balance of power followed periodically is now less relevant for three specific reasons: first, the end of cold war; second, the growing Sino-Indian rapprochement; third, the rise of geo-economics regionalism.
These factors have also led to the erosion of the classic geopolitical notion of inevitability of conflicts between the neighbors that justified its earlier policies.
Security through balance of power strategy is therefore not only theoretically flawed but also impractical for at least three reasons.
First, there is an absence of a viable policy to bolster this idea. Second, the distribution of power is often subject to fluctuations. And, finally, since the notion implies the maximization of power of nation-states, security of one state automatically increases the insecurity of another.
This psychological dynamic does not create a common security regime.
And the fact remains that both neighbors of Nepal are disinclined to curtail their ambitions and subordinate their power for the requirement of balance.
For, the choices available to each of them are fundamentally different, producing dissimilar strategic worldviews.
In such a context, a critical choice appears as a possibility: balance by the equilibrium of policy or preponderance of one neighbor.
The hard fact, however, is that a stable configuration of power for symmetric balance is very difficult to achieve among unequal powers and security dilemma makes it certain that national interests, not concepts, guide the neighbor’s policies.
The notion of interdependence, too, has resurrected the concept of common security as opposed to the idea of balance of power — a security that rests more on joint survival, shared interests, and mutual assurances rather than perpetual reciprocal fear.
The four critical factors — erosion of the buffer position of Nepal as a consequence of interdependence, irrelevancy of balance of power, economic integration in the regional and global political economy, and the shift in the decision-making system from nation-state to transnational market forces — have virtually ended Nepal’s other two strategies — century-long isolation and neutrality followed in some regional crisis situations.
Since Nepal is nonaligned, the policies of self-distancing, special relationship, and isolation are now outdated.
Of these three traditional approaches, equidistance was rooted in the belief that it would serve as a psychological antidote to special relationship.
But it is losing its relevancy now for a number of reasons. First, Nepal lacks the requisite power potential to keep both the neighbors at an equal distance.
Instead, they are more powerful and come closer whenever they feel necessary. Second, equidistance could be relevant if the country is geostrategically marginalized and pursues an isolationist policy.
Finally, equidistance is a better analogue to the concept of negative neutrality than to nonalignment.
Adherence to the principles of nonalignment does not permit Nepal to be indifferent to or unaffected by what is happening in the neighborhood and beyond.
In this sense, equating nonalignment with equidistance — that is what the Panchayat regime did — and equating nonalignment with special relationship — which is what the post-Panchayat regimes have advocated — are essentially similar efforts to dilute the notion of genuine nonalignment.
In fact, the old cliché of special relationship needs to be diverted to the common necessity of economic development rather than common fear as it does not subordinate Nepal’s role within Nepal-India security relationship, does not undermine its ties with other friendly nations, does not compromise the legitimate aspects of the nation’s sovereignty, and even prevents Finlandization, despite the fact that Nepal’s strategic geography would exhaust the real essence of such a concept.
Since Nepal is nonaligned, not neutral, it is unlikely to be subjected to Finlandization.
And unlike Sweden, which had consistently nurtured the policy of Finnish neutrality between itself and the Soviet Union, China would not prefer such a role.
In this sense, this type of relationship is a high-risk, high-cost security policy, incompatible with Nepali nationalist sentiments.
The lesson of Finland’s recent move beyond its Nordic neighbors and toward the European Union suggests that national interest, rather than ideology, should define Nepalese foreign policy.
This implies that the definition of national interest is essentially a normative one.
It actually has a double role: it unites the people for a cause but divides the cause of one country from the other, although this division is being masked by the ideology of democracy and human rights.
At their best, national interests, if not an epiphenomenon of regime or state interests, are rooted in the raison d’etre of the state.
With all that has been said so far, what can be proposed?
The fixed facts of geography and the changing face of power patterns leave one viable option for Nepal: the option of a flexible foreign policy, which is to say, equiproximity, or equally close and friendly relationship with both the neighbors.
After all, it is precisely this approach that can mobilize broad public support internally as well as externally.
There are several advantages of using the concept of equiproximity.
Analytically, it makes it possible to find an accommodation with its mega-neighbors and improve the shortcomings of bilateralism, which has in fact created more problems for Nepal than solved them.
Normatively, the concept also makes it possible to evolve a certain trilateral approach, referring in part to Nepal’s new relationship with the neighbors based more on pacified geography, rather than just the crude geopolitics of the old days.
Conceptually, it also renders it possible to define the links of Nepal’s regional and global roles and strike its social and political balance in a tightrope walk between the two worlds.
If this nation cannot transcend its geographical destiny of coexistence with India and China, it can at least try to arrest the irregular foreign policy drifts, trying thereby, as much as possible, to equalize the degree of friendship on each side of that relationship by maintaining amicable ties with both and finding alternative outlets.
This presupposes that the Golden Mean for the Nepalese foreign policy is really a golden rule.
# Text courtesy: “The Political Economy of Small States” edited by Ananda Aditya for Nepal Foundation for Advanced Studies, (NEFAS) second edition 2001.
# Thanks the NEFAS and the distinguished author Dev Raj Dahal: Upadhyaya.
# Second part of this article will be published soon: Ed.