Rediscovering Balanced Foreign Policy

Nepal’s foreign policy goals are well articulated in its constitution. They offer a frame and choices for leadership to define the values, institutions, processes and strategies in attaining them. Owing to a lack of full grasp of constitutional duty and conduct, courage and imagination about them, Nepali foreign policy is, however, less tuned to coherence, balance and effectiveness. As a result, it is self-limiting the nation’s credibility, capacity and diplomacy. The world is now more divided than the past with the surge of several poles of power where each has its own purpose. They are engaged in various scales of relationship with each other, sometimes overstretching influence and even overstepping in the internal affairs of other states.  National interests, defined as an ultimate priority to self, are a vital force before the fleeting ideologies and regime compatibility with the external world. 

Considering this fact, Nepali leadership has to build a frame beyond leadership perception of regime survival, change or partisan manoeuvring. It should be governed by the national, constitutional, intergenerational and enlightened interests. But when it is tied with leaders’ self-interests in position and wealth pump it misses the spell of gearing, a careful balancing act required by the nation’s strategic pivot between two great powers of Asia - Bharat and China - to have evocative engagements. It is vital for the diversification of the nation’s security, political and economic ties, ensure its sovereignty and ease an escape from the corrosive spillover of the upending world order. Without being trapped in a security dilemma, Nepali leadership needs to engage with multiple poles of power for its independent manoeuvre, diversify ties affirming the policy of non-alignment and chart multi-task strategies for peoples’ wellbeing. 

The implicit fear of secular Nepali leadership to remain paranoid over Bharat’s cultural reconstruction and decolonisation and the Chinese moral support to it may compel it to rethink about its smug attitude and amnesia of the nation’s cultural powerhouse of soft power, the source of its intellectual heritage and identity. Powerful societal actors, especially business, civil society, functional groups and civilisational forces influence foreign policies yet do not assume mutual accountability in shaping the conduct.  Nepali constitution’s vision of the right to work marks a divorce with its economic diplomacy of exporting capital, labour, students and entrepreneurs while they are needed the most in the nation’s progress. 

One-sided dependence

The establishment of Nepal has converging foreign policy interests glued by neo-liberal economy, democratic fraternity, communication, educational and legal policies and shared worldview with the Anglosphere which propelled it to illicitly privatise all Chinese- and Russian-made import-substituting industries and broke the backward and forward linkages of the nation’s agriculture and industry to trade and commerce. The neo-liberal ideological consensus among the elites of various political spectrums has entirely shifted the country's geo-economy of mercantilism pursued by Prithvi Narayan Shah to excessive import, remittance, aid and debt-dependent landscape thus plunging the economy to downhill, laying poverty trap and propelling youths’ emigration abroad en masse. The consequence of one-sided dependence on elite preference has consumed the nation’s balance and dynamics. The increasing Asianisation of world politics especially with the pivoting of the US, European, Arabic, African and Latin American nations, including Russia entails Nepal to rethink balancing its policies beyond the Anglosphere. 

Ironically, its ties with Russia are getting frosty while with China cooperation is confined with verbal pedantry, delaying the execution of commitments and agreements signed on mutually beneficial cooperation. The Chinese Vice-Minister Sun Haiyan, representing the International Department of the Communist Party of China while holding debate with Nepali political leaders of various hues, revealed that the political relations between Nepal and China are good but “some countries do not want to see this” and, therefore, it is working hard to boost ties with Nepal by implementing the bilaterally agreed areas of cooperation.  Chinese President Xi Xinping, in his speech to the Communist Party Congress, stated that China’s foreign policy “offers a new option for other nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.” 

China’s moral and emotional support to Bharat’s indigenisation is premised on the fact of its growing self-confidence in its own version of democracy and foreign policy, not succumbing to the Western nations’ animus to China and Russia. Bharat’s increasing self-defining moment is also inspiring many Asian, African and Latin American nations to follow suit, considering it an independent power with its own global aspirations. China has offered Bharat to cooperate in the development of Nepal as both have great stake in its stability and progress. The West’s pivoting to Asia and turning Nepal one of the conduits of this strategy has increased the Chinese stake in Nepal for reasons of security of Tibet, protection of its growing investment, future of its pro-active diplomacy on global security, development and civilisation and transforming it from “landlocked to land-linked nation.”

 The Chinese ideological preference in Nepal is now shifted to realpolitik of engaging with all sides so that it does not entangle with anti-Chinese forces. Nepali regime has also set aside EPG report, review of peace and friendship treaty, trade deficits, Kalapani imbroglios, etc. and entered into cooperation with Bharat allowing it to invest in hydropower, scale up money for the high impact community development and stated to become “comfortable with India.” It has, however, provoked the utterance of counter-elites. Nepal’s statecraft entails realpolitik placing the purpose of balancing the interests of great powers above the neo-liberal affinity defined by ideological worldview without glossing over the concerns of Sino-Russian power charging ahead.  

It is rash to ditch Russia which has asked for detailed proposals from Nepal for 13 projects on May 4, 2023. If animated, it would have transformative potential. The projects include the construction of electric railways, highways and cancer hospitals for children, increase of the scholarship quota for Nepali students to study in Russia with its own investment and resume direct flight between two nations interrupted since 2002. The Chinese and Russian proposals seem to have been sloughed off while the American MCC and Bharat’s high impact community development are in full swing while the State Partnership Programme is in partial execution. Nepal still needs Russia’s partnership like the former Soviet Union which along with China contributed to its industrial set up and human and infrastructural development. 

Russia keeps a strategic leverage with Bharat, China, Africa and the Gulf region on which Nepal’s non-aligned policy flourishes; the latter is the source of its remittance flow, the lifeblood of the national economy. Improving relations with Russia and the nation’s reindustrialisation can cut linear dependence, capacitate its diplomatic muscle and ease a constructive talk for Nepalis’ return from the Russian army fighting against Ukraine. But it also requires Nepal not to remain reticent but to persuade Ukraine not to employ Nepalis in its army to fight against Russia. Nepal’s independent foreign policy now finds itself on the cusp of many impediments. First, its personalisation by top leadership lacking the anchor of institutional memory and inputs from the epistemic community. It is an epistemic community which can bring updated and specialised knowledge to foreign policy decisions in dealing with the correlation of various levels of power and avert the risk of resistance that opposes Nepal’s unity, progress and peace.  

Second, its leaders’ deliberate refusal to follow diplomatic code and Foreign Ministry’s guidelines while meeting foreign diplomats and dignitaries in the nation and abroad has compressed international and national laws and diplomatic codes, thus reducing Foreign Ministry, the central institution of foreign policy articulation, to triviality. Ambassadors of certain powerful nations meet high officials without presenting their credentials. Third, personalised and partisan style of appointing ambassadors without any consideration for their edifying account of history, institutional memory, intellectual heft, dexterity and language proficiency but slouching towards the antiquated boudoir diplomacy makes them loyal to leaders, not to the Nepali nation thus sullying national image and acceptability. Similarly, the secret diplomacy associated with it has become passé in the modern times with the proliferation of communication, social media, mobile phones, digital cameras and the invention of multi-track diplomacy where the support of the public is required to it to become legitimate, credible and successful. 

Societal actors

 Refusal to comply with the protocol has flagged the integrity of polity in global politics. Fourth, lacking conformity between old style international relations that support official interaction to a shift to global relations where not only the state actors are the keys of interactions abroad but also the societal actors are engaged in cross-border transactions, posturing and rallying, some even anti-state, thus turning the context of foreign policy more interdependent. Multi-civilisation world order offers small states like Nepal better freedom of action for security, survival, progress and identity provided the establishment does not confiscate state power and its ability of national self-determination, subdue internal foes tied to various geopolitical poles and set the convergence of the state, economy and people in national space to tune with Asianisation of world politics and overcome its impediments.  

At a time of waning of multilateralism and institutions of global governance by the effects of direct or proxy wars of great powers and the growth of parallel rival initiatives and institutions of security, economy and geopolitical flirtation, Nepal too needs careful reframing of balancing of their interests, not retreating to imbalance and disengagement from the Eurasian pole and concentrate only on its rival for reason of elites’ Westernizing ambition. The nation has emerged as a biggest contributor of peace troops in the UN but vulnerable to internal insecurity including that of geopolitical penetration, dependency, poverty, depopulation of the nation and climate change. It is high time to unwind ideological barriers or rationalisations only and prevent domestic flaws swelling outward so as not to tear the frame of its historically evolved security and foreign policy of balance, credibility and effectiveness.

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)