 |
| US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R) meets with Nepal's Foreign Minister Pradip Gyawali at the State Department in Washington DC (Photo: US Embassy in Nepal) |
If Nepalis seem a bit flustered at the way the United States now sees them as central to a free and open Indo-Pacific, you can blame their collective saga and surroundings.
Viscerally skeptical of their giant southern neighbor India, the ‘Indo’ part of the latest international relations fad carries heavy historical baggage. The ‘Pacific’ side is a geographical contrivance that might be partly redeemed by its connotation to Nepal’s other giant neighbor. But, then, containment of China remains the clearest implication of Washington’s assertive yet ambiguous formulation.
Nepali Foreign Minister Pradip Gyawali, back home from talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in mid-December, was prompted to issue a clarification. Nepal’s ‘central role’ in a free, open, and prosperous Indo-Pacific, as the State Department stressed in its official statement after the discussions, did not pertain to geostrategy. Pompeo’s focus was on how the US saw Nepal in a vital geographic region.
The resumption of direct high-level contact between the United States and Nepal after a 17-year hiatus itself was bound to generate much interest. The prevailing view in Nepal is that the United States took the initiative. That in turn brought back memories of early 2002, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made a hastily scheduled stopover in Kathmandu.
During that visit, Powell had largely bypassed the elected government to discuss directly with the Nepali monarch and generals on ways of strengthening the Royal Nepali Army’s capabilities in suppressing a decade-long Maoist insurgency. Washington, like Kathmandu and New Delhi, had designated the Maoists a terrorist group. Powell’s trip paved the way for an Oval Office meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba later that year. Nepal’s entry into the global war on terror set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the abolition of the monarchy and triumph for the Maoists in multiparty elections.
The United States and Nepal have had a mutually beneficial relationship ever since diplomatic relations were established in 1948. The early decades were characterized by regular exchanges of high-level visits and US economic assistance in such key areas as health, education, infrastructure. Since the 1990s, the United States has focused on strengthening democratic institutions along with military engagement. In recent years, however, Nepalis have also sensed a proclivity on the part of the United States to subcontract its Nepal policy to new-found ally India.
In 2006, Washington, which still saw the monarchy as a bulwark of stability despite a royal coup, was dragged by New Delhi to back an agreement it had brokered between mainstream Nepali parties and the Maoist rebels, which ultimately led to the creation of a federal and secular republic. The State Department did not have to waste too many words to explain that although the Nepali Maoists were on its terrorist list, they were not in the same league as Al Qaeda.
Welcome as this renewed American interest may be, there are also reasons to be apprehensive. Much of Nepal’s post-2006 political evolution has been driven by Sino-Indian cooperation and conflict. Prior to the agreement, New Delhi had quietly engaged with Beijing on the imperative of a mainstream-Maoist alliance for stability in Nepal. China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and India, then serving a two-year term on the body, carefully cooperated to limit a United Nations political mission that oversaw the early phases of the Nepali peace process. New Delhi and Beijing subsequently worked to ensure the departure of the UN lest it replicate the staying power of its peace missions elsewhere.
In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit Nepal in 2015, India and China quietly cooperated in immediate rescue and recovery, as many donors were deeper pockets dithered on issues of operations and accountability.
Sino-Indian engagement on Nepal has been a delicate balancing act. When India felt Nepal was veering too close to China, New Delhi imposed an unofficial economic blockade on the landlocked nation in 2015. Instead of succumbing to Indian pressure as it had during previous blockades, Nepal signed a series of agreements cementing comprehensive cooperation with China. While India recognized the agreements as immediately irrelevant, it saw their ominous portents over the long term.
China promptly reiterates its commitment to upholding Nepali sovereignty and independence when Nepalis experience India’s overbearing embrace. Yet Beijing has also deferred to New Delhi’s sensitivities, such as when Nepal cancelled Chinese projects that India deemed objectionable.
A sharp public display of Sino-Indian engagement on Nepal emerged on the sidelines of a regional conference in the Indian city of Goa in October 2016, when Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nepal’s then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal happened to be around the same area of their hotel lobby and decided to convene an impromptu trilateral summit.
Admittedly, much has changed since then. And much has remained the same, including the grudging recognition by India and China that they need to maintain their delicate balance in Nepal. India may find it difficult to see beyond its cultural, religious and social affinities with Nepal as China struggles to move past the reality that Nepal was the last tributary state to the Qing dynasty. But the Asian giants know they do not need another roadblock to their simultaneous rise.
Renewed American engagement with Nepal may excite India in terms of the broader contours of its relationship with the United States. Locally, it is bound to raise Indian apprehensions, as New Delhi assiduously avoids being relegated to a junior partner to Washington as well as raising Beijing’s suspicions.
The general ambiguity of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy may be a source of satisfaction to China, but it knows that it cannot afford uncertainty over US and Indian intentions in Nepal amid an aging Dalai Lama and the inevitable search for the next Tibetan leader. The 14th Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since 1959 along with thousands of followers apprehensive of the future. The Chinese are too steeped in history to forget that Nepal once served as an important base for a US-sponsored Tibetan insurgency against China.
Such external undulations are bound to play out in Nepal’s cantankerous politics. The Nepali Congress, traditionally friendly to both Washington and New Delhi, was trounced in the last election and would be tempted to use any perceived deviation in Nepali foreign policy to undermine the government.
The ruling Communist Party of Nepal, an amalgam of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist parties, would relish an opportunity to extricate itself from the India-China straitjacket. Its more radical cadres, however, are not likely to appreciate their leaders hobnobbing with ‘imperialists’ at a time when the party is mired in factionalism.
The Nepali people, anxious for tangible economic and social benefits of democracy, may see in the new United States International Development Finance Corporation a source of some succor and sustenance, if history and geography leave them enough breathing space.
