Dev Raj Dahal
Senior Political Scientist, Nepal
-Ruckus of New Geopolitics-
The Nepali Constitution defines the fundamental objectives of the nation’s foreign policy: to enhance the dignity of the nation by safeguarding sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence and promoting economic well being and prosperity. It aims to contribute to regional and global peace, harmony and security. The basic principles of its foreign policy are non-alignment; the five principles of Panchaseel coded in non-interference, non-violence, peaceful coexistence, mutual cooperation and respect for others sovereignty affirmed by Bandung Conference of 1955 and the principles of the United Nations and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Practically, however, Nepali leaders’ strong desire for personalized power made them more interested in the government, not the state, and often invited outsiders for regime change or survival.
This practice has neither enhanced the state’s élan vital affirming constitutional principles and international laws nor the Nepali state’s raison d’etre rooted in national self-determination. As a result, geopolitics has turned into a locomotive force of its national and world politics which the nation always wanted to escape.
Nepali state has become weak to deal with other states and prevent the nation plugging into a strategic stage of great-power politics between the United States, China and India and their allies and foes strutting in the sidelines of the nation’s trajectory. They are more interested in roping Nepali leaders in their geopolitical interests for their audacity to defy constitutional rules and diplomatic code upon which the national art of good governance rests. This is the key political challenge for consistency, credibility and effectiveness of Nepal’s foreign policy. The tendency of its leaders to jockey for power in a perpetual state of clash, opening to outsiders while closing informed debate in the nations’ public sphere on international affairs, has clogged any reflection on its history for insight, inspiration in balancing foreign policy and diplomacy and act with the wise decision and determination on behalf of the public, national and enlightened global interests. Crafting a broader geopolitical map and astutely pairing the linkages of rival measures of security, stability and development of India, China, the USA and their allies are vital considerations for the efficacy of its Weltanschauung (worldview) governing foreign policy in a post-Westphalian world order.
Aside from the goals and principles coded in the Nepali constitution some critical questions leaders face are of geopolitical significance: How long can Nepali leaders remain aloof from controlling buffer and borderland politics when geopolitics is played on the basis of power, not rule of law?
How can Kathmandu, the heartland of the nation, act as a centripetal force for the strategic unity of the nation’s Himalayas and Terai so as to evade the creation of an inner ring of buffer or “restricted” zones?
Is there sufficient soft power of ideas, culture and national values that can glue social cohesion and national integration and defy the temptation of great powers to tilt its foreign policy?
Does the “diversification” of strategic partnership help Nepal to acquire national economic independence and maintain foreign policy autonomy without re-socializing habit-driven elites to the historical coherence of statehood and national interests? Does external dependence offer choice for Nepal’s multi-polar equidistant foreign policy in a world of many poles of power? Each of these concerns requires separate research and reflection. One can, however, respond to these issues positively, if Nepali leaders can broaden their geopolitical vision, diversify aid, power, investment, remittance, trade and international relations where no one great power is singularly decisive to influence its domestic politics. It can enhance its autonomous maneuver abroad or combination with like minded states to increase leverage for bargaining. This act can muster national consensus and the minimum pull of great powers to stoke centrifugal forces to enlarge demands not matched by the state’ ability to fulfill them. Consistency of Nepali foreign policy requires acting in line with vaulted non-alignment, utilizing both natural and human resources, valuing strategic geography and lifting up the nation’s independent image in world politics.
The global geostrategic shift has changed the narrative from classical realism to idealism to neo-realism, a concept that discounts norms and values governing international relations. Neo-realists are right in the sense that international structure defines foreign policy elites’ cognitive perception of threats and opportunities emerging from the global game-changing geo- strategic moves. Their claim that the state-centric system does not account for the nature of the structure of the international system which has become a source of inter-societal and inter-state conflicts and the war is compelling.
Their narrative of international politics is validated by geopolitical turn now owing to the “anarchical” nature of the international system which sets few normative constraints on the behavior of power-driven states. It has polarizing effects on domestic politics, setting unstable balance of power owing to multi-polar world order where aspiring powers’ (China, Russia, India, Africa, Japan, Brazil, etc) revisionist lure haunts the status quo powers of Atlantic world thus leaving growth of interdependence on meta issues from poverty, climate change, arms race, terrorism, globalization, migration, upsurge of nationalism and populism-both right and left unsettled. In the commotion of new geopolitical game driven by tension, wars, expansion, containment, pushback and nuclear deterrent of each other’s influence by great powers, Nepal is rediscovering its old roots of “golden mean” in the internal politics, in the neighborhood and Panchsheel and non-alignment in global politics to reconcile “the combination of its identity and sovereignty” (Douglas, 2020: 524). This article narrates the strategic geography of Nepal, various policies it has pursued, shifting geopolitical trends and new foreign policy choices for the nation.
Strategic Geography:
Nepal sits smugly in the centre of two strongest powers of Asia – India and China – not by choice but by geospatial fortune. Its gravitational pull is derivative of its strategic geography between the heartland of India, the Gangetic belt, where it harbors open border, supplies Gurkhas and reaps the transit access for the diversification of trade and commerce and the Tibet Autonomous Region, the geopolitical loophole of China where Sino-phobic powers have converging interests in its separatism. Nepal is vital for their security, stability and peace and extra-regional powers’ interest to watch and contain each other. The location provides it critical leverage to obtain concessions from neighbors and great powers to offset its relatively small size, power potential, utilize vital resources, manage borders, govern circulation patterns and acquire considerable leverage.
Its landscape remains the central axis of sensitive Himalayan heartland where India, China, the USA, Japan, Russia and European nations confer enormous value to their aspiration for great power status and chart grand strategy to prevent each other from acquiring it. It has sucked Nepal into their rivalry, motivating its leaders to seek common cause without impairing cooperation and balancing foreign policy choices. The engagements of these powers with Nepali political leaders, Nepal Army and solidaristic organizations have a compelling rationale, as professionalism and impersonality of state institutions with the capacity to act impartially and pursuing national unification trails appear to be losing both muscle and stamina.
Technology-driven globalization which made the world functional even with the spread of COVID-19 is shifting global power balance to Asia especially with the ascent of revisionist powers –China, India, Iran and Russia stoking counter currents to influence status quo powers of the Atlantic. It entails a new strategic tuning for Nepal renewing its ability to inhabit with rival regional and global regimes beyond exclusively state- centric and national-interest based conduct. The pandemic has imposed limited human mobility but not the flow of people, communication, money, goods and services. The growing interest of global and regional powers in Nepal’s policy evolution has been fervent, leaving all the beleaguered Prime Ministers often jockey for their regime survival than long-term plan for the nation’s overall weltpolitik—domestic and global foreign policy, protect its lebensraum, the living space and level its own way.
The once multi-speed globalization, connectivity and interdependence among citizens, corporations and states have turned the state-centric balance of power woolly. It now requires a new imagination about the drivers of world politics who are now facing de-globalization with the revisit of geopolitics, nationalism, crisis in multilateralism, surge of rival alliances, Russia-Ukraine war that began on February 22, 2022, the latest US- China rift following the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan despite the Chinese objection to American deviation from One China Policy and weakening of multi-lateral organizations such as the UN and the World Trade Organization. In the macro context of Easternization, Atlantic nations’ pivoting to Indo-Pacific region, the South China Sea and the Asianisation of world politics, Nepali leaders cannot often remain lenient to promote regime interests without being coherent with the nation’s historical middle path and address external initiatives and dependency. Many International non-government organizations, non-state actors and civil society are struggling to reshape its foreign policy orientation in multiple directions, though many of them are based more on their partial interests, than public and national interests. The MNCs, INGOs, solidaristic bodies and global institutions influence Nepali foreign policy but loiter outside the burden of their actions where only the state has to helplessly bear.
The new geopolitics operates at multi-scales and spheres—local, national, intra-national, global and even outer space. Its mastery rests on the ability of leaders to control the scope and strategy of politics and match means and strategies to enlightened objectives spelled out in the Nepali Constitution. The classical side of old geopolitics based on Halford Mackiner’s control of Eurasian heartland between the Arctic sea and the Himalayas, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s expansion of commerce and colony through the control of sea lanes and Nicholas Spykeman’s version of rimland stretching through the Mediterranean, south of Himalayas and across Southeast Asia to Japan are the keys to global power (The Economist, 2022: 23). Now, the projection of power in space with the rise of astropolitics and competition for the control of outer space opened another dimension of geopolitics with hypersonic missiles, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, satellites and laser weapons that can hit from above to the Earth’s surface and cripple all satellites. Nepal has to adapt to this changing geopolitical milieu and formulate context-sensitive foreign policy to address the complex geopolitical dynamics. At the moment, Nepali leaders trapped in a tightrope of three nodal powers’ frame – India, China and the USA must work to enlarge the nation’s gaze as the world is bigger than them. They should develop the nation’s outreach to multiple poles of power so that no single power is capable of cutting its policy choice.
Geopolitical Trends:
Now all great powers of the world are pivoting to Asia and seeking various types of adjustment, accommodation and reaction to China’s extraordinary rise as a potential super power with global outreach, initiatives and strategy. Technology has freed geopolitics from classical determinist and ideological grasp though old signs are seen in the emerging spatially rooted rival alliance patterns. They are affecting Nepal’s foreign policy behavior entailing it to appraise its historical concepts defined by Prithvi Narayan Shaha’s introvert foreign policy of “a yam between two boulders;” Rana’s internal status quo, special relationship with British- India and isolation from the rest of the world (Khanal, 1970:166); democratic regime’s special relationship with India in the early fifties as a buffer serving front line state to contain communism; positive neutralism in the late fifties with the diversification of ties with the UN, competing ideological camps and nonaligned nations; non-alignment, diversification, equidistance and peace zone during Panchayat rule; democratic affinity, Washington Consensus and globalization in the 1990s, equi-proximity by some parties for some time and resetting, strategic partnership and endorsing rival initiatives of the USA, China and India now with multiple reading of the nation’s image as transit state, vibrant bridge, link nation, dynamite, etc not the motherland or fatherland as people the world over treat their nation. The patterns of geopolitical trends are:
First, the central dynamics of world politics is now pivoting around the security, economy and political competition of the US and China and their allies, the former aspiring to retain its global leadership while the later aspiring to change the rules of game corresponding to the growth of its aspiration, power, influence and outreach. “Avoiding Thucydide’s trap in this case will require nothing less than bending the arc of history” (Allison, 2017: xx). The Sino-Russian strategic partnership and the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine 2014 and 2022 in the pretext of the latter’s interest to join North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) added another dimension to it. Finland and Sweden have joined once moribund NATO, the West imposed economic sanctions against Russia, expelled it from Swift Financial Transfer System and suspended its oil supplies to Europe including the Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines which was a source of Russian financial strength and leverage in continental Europe. 
These activities are mutually hurting as the war dragged on, energy crisis, inflation, scarcity, arms race and nuclear proliferation mounted hitting the world order and individual states and swelling defense expenditure of European nations for their security. This has increased Russian cooperation with China, India, Iran and North Korea. The former two are the biggest buyers of Russian Oil. They have decided to do business in their own currency aiming to de-dollarize international financial markets. For air defense India and Turkey, a member of NATO, have bought SS- 400 from Russia. Ferocious competition of virtual cyber and artificial intelligence exists among great powers resembling a new great game played by different means. The dependence of Nepali state on survival, power, legitimacy and progress on external forces and interdependence on a number of vital issues including sharing of resources transcend the nationalist and globalist debate of international relations breeding multi-polarity in ecology, security, political and economic order.
In this context, “delicate exercise in the balancing off surrounding powers in order to limit their capacity to interfere” (Rose and Scholz, 1980: 117) is the most suitable strategy for Nepal.
Second, the new geopolitics is power-based, not rule-based. Its politics captures the geographic context of multi-level human interaction which is beyond any classical state-centric geopolitical thinking.
The growth of new forces operating across the world influences the decisions of the state. Now the boundaries of climate change, human rights, technology, communication, financial flow, market economy, migration, civil society etc are transcending national sovereignty and affecting the autonomous capacity of Nepali state to formulate and execute foreign policy without collaborating with others. Geopolitics is also informed by the environment, history, economy and popular culture. The market, driven by missionary zeal of profit, is conquering the spaces of ecology, society and politics while science and technology are shifting the balance of power from the state to political parties, commercial, non-governmental and non-state worlds unraveling the unity of the state, economy and citizenship. Obviously, this shift has generated huge wealth for leaders having a monopoly on politics, business and civil society without creating a healthy local, national, regional and global community and sound governance away from what political realists call “anarchical international system.” Unless politics of Nepal is democratized and the wealth is fairly distributed where even the poor can afford basic public goods and build stake on its rule, the state-society tension will spill over to new fault lines straining its foreign policy consistency and effectiveness. One can see the controversy about the citizenship bill, transitional justice, State Partnership Program, border dispute and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Third, the new geopolitics is marked by a shift of global power balance. The former US President Donald Trump’s America first policy, retreat from major global initiatives including Trans Pacific Trade Pact and its own policy flaws on climate change, rift with European allies on trade and defense scale up, departure from human rights regime and an image of a waning superpower compelled its European allies to assess their security beyond the architecture of NATO, Indo-Pacific Strategy, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, the pact of Australia, the UK and the US (AUKUS) evolved as a reaction to resolve the security dilemma of the US in the Indo-Pacific region and Five Eyes partnership, the intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States to strengthen their position in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and the Himalayas. This prompted China to increase its naval power and set up operating military bases in Tajikistan, Djibouti, Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan and improve the ports of Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan to break its perception of strategic encirclement to block the flow of oil and natural resources. Russia and the Atlantic nations are fighting proxy wars in Ukraine, in the doorstep of democratic Europe promoting economic integration. Their economic sanction against Russia has proved feeble and mutually hurting.
China and India are buying Russia’s cheap energy leaving Europe starving while Turkey, Iran and India are also purchasing weapons from it. In this context, France, frustrated over Australia’s cancellation of its nuclear submarine deal under US pressure, considered NATO brain dead and preferred bolstering the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set up to face resurgent Russia. Germany has nostalgia for Ostpolitik.
Nations of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are adjusting to the Chinese initiatives in connectivity, economy, security and bilateral pacts. China has formulated its own concept of Global Security Initiative and Global Development Initiative and asked Nepal to join while G-7 nations in June 26, 2022 announced $ 600 billion Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) for Global South focusing on climate and energy security, digital connectivity, health and women’s equality and coordinating their efforts. They had earlier set up Indo-Pacific Economic Forum with the elements of economic connectivity, economic resilience, clean energy and just economy for enhanced engagements aiming to counterbalance the Chinese economic and military clout. The US and its allies have set another initiative Partners in the Blue Pacific Pact while the EU has set up the Global Gateway Scheme to deter Chinese influence.
Fourth, the new geopolitics harbors geo-strategy and geo-economics. Russia remains in the front line of geo-strategy but in the margin of the global economy.
China has acquired greater salience in the global economy as its share account now 18 percent on its way to 30 percent in 2040 (Allison, 2017: xvii) Nepal has to see whether its policies based on Washington Consensus and worldview based on “attributional affinity” to
India and the West on matters of law, education, security, economic policy, democracy, human rights, governance, etc and pivoting to Indo-pacific strategy of the USA and relatively distancing from Sino- Russian camp are compatible to its national interest and policy of diversification. The mainstream Nepal Communist Party and Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideological dialogue organized twice on Xi Jinping Thought to deepen fraternal ties appeared flawed because ideology matters less than interest for non-monolithic Nepali left leaders. It has dismayed the NC which deemed it an effort to harm Nepal’s democratic constitution. Its perception of China has changed as the latter sought to strengthen ties with Nepali Congress Party and Nepali Foreign Minister Dr.
Narayan Khadka visited China on August 9-11, 2022, affirmed “one China policy” in matters of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the face of US-China standoff, promised not to allow its territory to be used against China and accepted to conduct feasibility survey of Kathmandu-Keyrung railway under the grant assistance. China too agreed to resume the second phase of Kathmandu Ring Road Improvement project and operation of Tatopani and Rasuwagadhi roads crippled since the earthquake of 2015.
To be continued: Ed. Upadhyaya.