Jiba Raj Pokharel

The report on the foreign policy of Nepal was like a snake of Iceland. It was conspicuous by its absence. Soft-spoken and humble Foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali should be congratulated for this maiden effort.
This is very essential as the Minister will be taking the bull by the horn if at all he takes part in the bilateral talks with India soon in the future given the new political development. But as are all the maiden efforts, this policy compendium also has kept the door ajar for refinement.

Foreign Policy
The history of the foreign policy goes back at least to the fourth century BC when Chanakya, the Prime Minister of the Emperor Chandragupta Maurya wrote that one should immediately wage a war if the neighbouring state is weak to take it into possession, and sign a treaty of nonaggression if it the neighbour is strong. Niccolo Machiavelli sang almost the same song in the fifteenth century.
The mere expansion of the territory, however, did not bring peace as is evident from the case of Emperor Ashok. He was tormented despite securing victory in the war of Kalinga looking at the enormous amount of bloodshed in the war.
He embraced Buddhism which was a fountainhead of peace and compassion. Lord Buddha's doctrine of peaceful coexistence became a bedrock of foreign policy of nations. The United Nations unanimously adopted the resolution of peaceful coexistence in the year 1957 after being proposed by India, Yugoslavia and Sweden.
India and China were the first two countries to recognise it as the spine of their foreign policy. The naked aggression has thus been few and far between these days. But it has mutated in the form of economic help like a virus. It has been aggressively followed by China in recent times, most notable being the debt trap experienced by countries like Sri Lanka in particular.

National Aspirations
Foreign policy is the plan of action of one nation for a diplomatic hobnobbing with another to secure the nation's aims and aspirations. So the aims and aspirations should form the point of departure for the formulation of any foreign policy.
This has been outlined as building a strong, prosperous, peaceful and dignified nation by maintaining Nepal’s independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, freedom and national unity in the report published by the Government.
How does a country become prosperous, peaceful and dignified is perhaps a million dollars' question? Even so, China cracked this tough nut very successfully. Its leader Deng Xiaoping realized that China needed to compete with the west for achieving global standing if not supremacy. For this, it had to modernise itself. He initiated modernisation drive focusing on agriculture, education, defence and science as well as technology.
The communist economic model did not work as it did not reap the desired dividend even after its practice for two decades till the seventies after Mao emerged in the political scene in the fifties. Deng said that one should not bother whether the cat is black or white so long as it catches the mice.
He advocated for a hybrid system- one of the communist political system coupled with a capitalist mode of economy. One can see how the right policy undertaken in the seventies has propelled China to the dizzy height of prosperity after just three decades.

Approaches Towards Foreign Policy
The approaches to arrive at a good foreign policy are many but the concentric approach is one of those few that is used rather conveniently. The concentric approach takes geography at the point of departure whereby the country in question is at the centre and the importance of the states or regions diminishes as one moves away from the centre in concentric circles.
The neighbouring countries assume paramount importance. King Prithvi Narayan Shaha had very aptly described the situation of Nepal concerning the neighbours India and China when he said that Nepal was like a yam between two stones. This geographical approach though simple suffers from some limitations. For example, it does not explain the foreign policy-making dynamics and why priorities change.
The more useful tool is one of the core and periphery which underlines issues accordingly depending upon their importance. The core issues are related obviously with the immediate neighbours which are India and China in the case of Nepal. It consists of significant and primal ideological, strategic and economically important issues.
India and China will never have a totally friendly relation because of their rivalry in Asia. The time has come to make a tough choice for Nepal. One can see how the UAE has developed a relationship with Israel when it could not be imagined a few years back.
Moldova has mended fence with the European Union and it is slowly drifting away from Russia. Nepal should not advocate for a pretentious equidistance when China will find it hard to believe in view of its cultural, religious and geographic proximity with India. The perpetual relationship of the USA with the UK as well as Canada explains this phenomenon very well.

Nepal's Indigenous Experiment
Nepal has one very important lesson it can learn from its history. The kings of Gorkha and Lamjung Dravya Shaha and Nara Hari Shaha were involved in a ceaseless fight. Their mother was worried and she dropped milk by squeezing her breast in the bordering river Chepe. She told the fighting brothers to remain on either side of the river because it is forbidden to leap across the mother's milk in Nepali culture. Nepal has such a device in Hinduism and Buddhism.
Nepal's political history begins with religious tourism with the arrival of Bipaswi Buddha for meditation in the Kathmandu valley. He was followed by Sikhi, Biswabhu and Manjushree Buddha. The development of Hindu and Buddhist religious tourism can play the trick to put the Indians and Chinese beyond the borders of Nepal as did the queen mother did to put her feuding sons on either side of Chepe river.
India has more than a billion Hindus and China has 245 million Buddhists. The latter is bound to increase because of President
Xi's affinity towards Buddhism as against his disliking to Christianity and Islam.
Countries exercise different forms of diplomacy. Henry Kissinger adopted shuttle diplomacy whereby he would visit the countries off and on. Science diplomacy is yet another which has been recognized as a viable tool of improving relations between two countries.
It was instrumental towards warming of the relation between USA and China at a time when it was in a deep freeze leading to the visit of President Nixon to China. Similarly, religious tourism diplomacy could be a panacea to the problems inflicting Nepal. But this fact is not reflected in the foreign report.

Nepal A Religious Tourism Country
Nepal should thus be declared as a religious tourism country. It will then be a mecca for tourists prompting them to visit once in their lifetime. The promotion of goods like vegetables and fruits that can be grown in Nepal instead of importing them and it will restore the trade balance. This coupled with the Hindu and Buddhist religious tourism will not only make it econo mically strong but also reduce the political vulnerability of the country.
The report is like an island of excellence amid the sea of mediocrity. It is a narrative of blanket statements which are applicable in general but not in particular to Nepal. The pragmatism that the country needs appear absent in the report. So, it leaves a wide window for its improvement.

(Pokharel is former Vice Chancellor of NAST)