Soft Power To Boost Nepal-Australia Ties

Nepal-Australia diplomatic relations have entered a happy moment after six decades with the formal visit of Tim Watts, Australia's Assistant Foreign Minister, to Nepal. The visit has added hope in the pursuit for soft power resources and instruments as catalysts of bilateral ties. During his visit, Tim met with Nepal's Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, Foreign Minister NP Saud, high-level diplomats, officials, and academics in quest of means to strengthen the bilateral ties. This is a praiseworthy and highly expected initiative in bilateral relations.

The fresh visit by Tim was the continuation of exchange of visit after Nepal’s Foreign Minister paid an official trip to Australia in 2016. Exchange of high level visits is remarkable indicators of warm bilateral ties and friendly relationship. The number of exchange of high level visits between Nepal and Australia has been very limited. However, Prime Minister Prachanda has sent an invitation to his Australian counterpart to visit Nepal at the latter’s convenience.    

Appealing assets

Soft power is a country's ability to influence the world through numerous appealing assets, most notably morals, culture, foreign policies, art, history, education, sports, language and religion, among others. If one observes attentively, one may see that Nepal has far more soft power resources and instruments than hard power resources and tools. Soft power is the protection apparatus of small powers like Nepal. Nepal is a landlocked nation situated between India and China. With her long glorious history, the nation has also remained independent. 

Nepal is currently passing through a period of momentous change in different spheres: political, economic, and social, in domestic as well as foreign affairs. With the changing scenario, soft power is expected to help safeguard the national interest, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, maintain peace and security, and enhance economic prosperity through development cooperation. There are numerous think tanks and research institutions worldwide that rank the global powers in terms of soft power. In terms of soft power, Nepal and Australia have also positioned themselves based on their own soft power assets among the list of numerous global powers.

Basically, the soft power rankings emphasise the importance of a variety of strategies founded on foreign policies, culture, political value, global image, reputation, international education, migration, tourism, trade, people-to-people contact, and a country's domestic policies. Australia is a top-ranked soft power as 13th, 10th, 13th, and 14th in the years 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively, while Nepal is at the bottom of the list and ranked 95th, 102nd, and 91st in the years 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively.

Despite a significant gap in soft power resources, instruments, capacities, and potentialities between Australia and Nepal, soft power ingredients can be used as effective means to address shared interests, add value to development cooperation, achieve success in technological transformation, and address the needs of the diaspora. The relations between the two friendly nations would only improve through mobilisation of soft power resources, instruments and assets inherited by either side to address shared interests through diplomatic engagements.

There were 12 posts in the Facebook account "Tim Watts MP" that provide a glimpse of the Nepal-Australia engagements and highlight Tim Watts's stay in Nepal on May 16–17, 2023. The first post expresses ties over the official visit of two ministerial counterparts and highlights the expanding tendencies of the Nepalis living in Australia (about 130,000 people) and the rapidly expanding bilateral engagements. The second is concentrated on women's leadership development and empowerment in business, government, and civil society due to inclusion in democratic values and practices, followed by the issue of cultural property and the matter of the stolen artifact "Tunala" of Nepal in 1975 and being returned to the nation at the initiative of the Australian government.

Forth is linked with technological transformation. Tim mentioned that "Australian alumnus Dr. Sanduk Ruit and his team at the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology have achieved amazing results in improving eye care in Nepal and other countries worldwide, with the Fred Hollows Intraocular Lens Lab. The Tilganga Institute was established nearly 30 years ago by Professor Fred Hollows and Dr. Ruit with a small amount of seed funding from the Australian government. During that time, only 10 per cent of people in Nepal could receive quality eye surgery. Now, 99 per cent have access to this service. 

The fifth post, which also recounts Tim's visit and worship to the Pashupatinath Temple, deals with religious attachment and the psychology of people-to-people relations and public diplomacy. The sixth is the dissemination of his visit with Nepal’s PM regarding bilateral ties, development cooperation and assistance. The following is about public diplomacy in the fields of art, film, and literature, as well as personal diplomacy with Nepali and Hindi film star Manisha Koirala. The eighth piece is about public diplomacy, and he mentions the multidimensional engagement of Nepal-Australia ties through education, health, public policy, technology, gender, and social inclusion. Furthermore, post of Tim describes Nepal’s tourism prospects like natural beauty, Himalayas, including Mt. Everest, and mentions Australia as the fourth largest tourist source market for Nepal.

Way forward

In the diplomatic relations between Nepal and Australia, the means, reasons and functions of ties and shared interests are hugely different as compared to the past. Nepali students and diaspora are well-known and interwoven phenomena in the Australian society. In contemporary circumstances, Nepali diaspora is not only a remittance provider to their homeland but also a revenue generator in Australia. On the one hand, being a soft power superpower, Australia attracts and persuades people from all over the world as it boasts advanced technology, has close ties with other superpowers. The financially secure nation has the capacity to invest. 

Nepal has low-cost projects in the areas of education, tourism, water resources and hydroelectricity, herbal and medical use, agriculture, cultural preservation, and natural resource utilisation. At this moment, the diaspora, business community, educators, academics, investors, and diplomatic channels make joint efforts to find common interests and solutions to them. As such, there should be particular research measures to strengthen bilateral ties for the benefit of the peoples of both sides, with a focus on the utilisation and mobilisation of soft power assets inherited by both sides.

(The author is pursuing PhD in International Relations and Diplomacy from Tribhuvan University.