P Kharel

Longstanding territorial dispute and border skirmishes have in the recent months reiterated that the hills in Northern South Asia are no longer quiet, and threaten to turn into a flashpoint for a major war. Comparative metrics between the two giant nuclear-power neighbours, representing more than a third of the world’s population, are too obvious for dispute over which of the two outstrips the other by leaps and bounds. China, the No. 2 economy all set to take over the No. 1 slot in the next decade, has a defence budget of $180 billion as against India’s $47 billion. That the United States and its media focus on China - often negatively - while ignoring events in India for days on end are telling signs of which of the two emerges as a bigger force to reckon with.
Nepal’s senior-most columnist on foreign affairs, MR Josse is back with a second book this year, Strategically Speaking, published by Periwinkle Prakashan. It is a carefully revised and refined collection of his studies, which those familiar with his decades-long and unbeaten innings as a political analyst should find vintage Josse. Spread over 132 pages, the book is a compact and absorbing study, priced at Rs 200. Twelve of the write-ups were produced in 2020 and two others are adapted from earlier presentations. One of them covers the late King Birendra’s 1976 Tibet visit and the other stems from a 2007 paper presentation on China and SAARC.

Window on the world 
In Nepal, foreign affairs expertise is more in oral narrative than in the printed and structured form. Probably the first Nepali national to do his Master’s study in international relations, Josse’s solid reference material examines various angles pertaining to the issues under his scanner. Information gathered from a variety of sources are pieced together to pack almost every paragraph with illuminating insights and, at times, foresight of things to unfold. It is an analysis replete with detail, and powerful arguments in the sequence of events in Nepal’s foreign policy. Queries as to what were the challenges, which course was embraced and how did it impact bilateral and multilateral relations are Josse’s recurring theme. With sharp logic, he doggedly explores the issues and ideas that attract him in the contemporary world of international affairs. 
Many tend to believe that the pet assumption in Indian power circles has been, and continues to be, that India can get away with anything in Nepal. In this light, Josse digs deep into the nuances laden in statements and briefings for subtle meanings carrying hints or couching much of the substance before allowing the same to eventually strike in action. He asserts that “Lipulek is merely the symptom of the Indian disease of hegemony”, at a time when New Delhi is assessed as “assiduously straining every sinew to be aligned with the United States and her strategic interests”. 
Publisher Pushpa Pradhan’s appreciation of the “incisive, informative pieces” is no exaggeration. Cogent analyses with convincing conclusions are Josse’s much appreciated forte. Sino-Indian rivalry, India veering away from non-aligned movement and Sino-American contest for the top position of military and economic strength are among the issues on the table for discussions. Nepal borders the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh (population 200 m), Bihar (population 110 m), West Bengal (population 91 m) and Uttarakhand (population 10 million) - in all stretching over 1,414 km. Josse recommends scrapping the “open border”, the timing being the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indeed, technological and education breakthroughs have created vulnerabilities and opportunities for the ambitious and innovative-minded. Careful weighing of issues and subtle pushing of strategies should bear positive results in the long term.

Perceptive, not preachy
Nepal, China, the US, Europe, India, Russia, SAARC and world disorder are Josse’s other key themes. The book appropriately opens with a piece on “COVID-19 will reshape geopolitics”, whose consequences, it predicts, “are arguably bound to be as seminal as those in the public health domain”. Post-COVID world might prove to be to the US decline what the 1956 Suez fiasco proved to be to the British. China’s emergence as a source of “systemic alternative models of governance” worries Washington and its close allies.
One of the 20 oldest independent states, Nepal lives a landlocked geography, which is why Prithvi Narayan Shah the Great was prescient in his vision and assessment of his country’s landlocked position, flanked completely by India and China. Of note is that the Tibetan autonomous region is the source of “headwaters of the Yellow, Yangzi, Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej”, and hence its strategic value is attached with extremely high stakes. Josse notes that several tributaries of the Ganges first flow into Nepal from Tibet, which include the Karnali, the Narayani (Gandak in India) and the Koshi.
China’s Prime Minister Hua Guofeng, in 1976, broke precedent to greet King Birendra in Sichuan capital in Chengdu when RNAC made its first trans-Himalayan Nepal-China flight that built, as described by the Chinese premier, an “air bridge of China-Nepal friendship”. This was the first meeting held outside Beijing for a foreign head of state. In fact, it was the first foreign head of state’s visit to Tibet. A year earlier, China had endorsed King Birendra’s Zone of Peace idea for Nepal as a “just proposition”. 
With China being “the only Great Power that is contiguous to South Asia,” Josse’s attributes the slow pace and very modest achievement of SAARC to Indo-Pakistani running differences. Beijing’s “long march to Observer Status via a decision of the 13th SAARC summit in Dhaka” in 2005 enabled China to formally join the 14th summit in 2007. In reference to The Times of India’s argument that “on the face of it, China as a part of South Asia is absurd”, Josse points out India’s largest circulating English daily’s self-contradictory acceptance that “in an era of globalisation the Himalayas cease to be much of a barrier, as South Asia must interface with the rest of Asia as well”. 
All in all, Strategically Speaking is a must-read collection of analyses, packed with detail and powerful arguments in the sequence of events in world affairs and Nepal’s foreign policy. 

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)