Dr. Achut Gautam

Setting up the stage, great power contestation that has unfolded will continue for decades to come. China’s entry into the WTO was relatively a quiet phenomenon, although the negotiations were, to a certain degree, very difficult and long drawn. Finally, and in due course, the Chinese diplomatic capital prevailed. China’s entry into the WTO coincided with the time when the US and its European allies were busy fighting bloody and senseless wars on multiple fronts, fuelled by American exceptionalism and the DNA of liberal hegemony. All this while, China was at peace and busy manufacturing for the world, realising growth otherwise deemed ‘impossible’ and also experiencing and embracing the momentum of its gigantic economy.
It took the world by surprise, once again, when its economy tripled in the brief period after hosting the Olympics. The rise of China has indeed been phenomenal, never achieved by any country in the entire history of mankind. Twenty years of wars on terror and active engagements in the Arab Spring and wars of sorts have ruined Libya and Egypt, ravaged Syria and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan. The end result has been that the US has lost its war on terror in Afghanistan. Although Al-Qaeda is defeated, more of its dangerous outfits and offshoots still exist out in the open.
The core problem underlying the defeat was the fact that the US never had a long-term pragmatic strategy to begin with, and Washington’s dependency on war industry, pro-war lobbyists, private armies and security firms including all those profiting from protracted wars was, in reality, far from being rational. On the reverse, if those 5 trillion dollars lost in these wars were utilised domestically, the American citizens would certainly have been the real winners.

Alaska summit
Following the Alaska summit between the US and China, seven months have elapsed with volleys of insults, hostile attitudes and words of fury exchanged between them, gravitating in grave uncertainty as the pressures unleashed for geopolitical polarisation have placed many nations in extremely precarious situations often against their political will and national interests. China’s “new type of great power relations'' premised on the ideals of equal footings, has been challenged by the US. The challenge has manifested in various fronts with the aim to contain China geopolitically and economically. The US has exercised to rally its allies into an anti-China coalescence.
And organisations such as the Indo-Pacific Strategy are being employed to “contain” China. Similarly, conducting drone surveillance off the coast of Japan, escalating militarisation of the region encircling China, sanctioning and pressurising other nations including EU member states to follow suit are some of the ways and methods that the US has employed to counter China’s “new type of greater power relations''. In response, China has beefed up its security and placed the PLA on alert. It has scaled up its surveillance in the region and carried out naval exercises and reached out to other nations offering trade incentives and economic opportunities while punishing a few. Reports show that tensions are high.
Within the matrix of geopolitical contestation, the idea of “equal footing” proposed by China vis-a-vis US-China relations is regarded by the US as a challenge to its global hegemony. Great power entanglement has been a new phenomenon in the US-China geopolitical competition, never observed before. It would make eminently good sense for the United States to abandon liberal hegemony, which has served it so poorly, and pursue a more restrained policy abroad, writes John J. Mearsheimer in his recent essay Realism and Restraint. However, escalating the ‘China containment’ drive even further, the US, UK and Australia have recently set up a trilateral security partnership aimed at confronting China, which will include helping Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines. As a result, floodgates to proliferation are visible.
In this moment of geopolitical contestation, even a moderate country like Nepal has faced a debate. The US assistance on Millennium Challenge Compact has been fiercely debated domestically over a year. With the recent visit of the MCC Vice President, Fatema Z. Sumar, on the 9th of September, the debate has further escalated. One of the many issues of concern regarding the Compact has been around the clauses that are related to the national security interests of the United States.
Nepali leadership must understand that in the present day of geopolitical and economic rivalry, the binding clause of the agreement may place Nepal in a difficult position. Otherwise, Nepali public has always been open to foreign aid and finance and welcomes support from the global community in good faith.
As a sovereign state, Nepal enjoys its foreign policy of non-alignment and its constitution guarantees it. Principles of constitutionalism must prevail in a democracy. And as times have proven, Nepal has benefitted by and succeeded in enhancing its independent ideology and image, practising the principles of nonalignment.

Grievous strategic
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the non-aligned movement has been on the decline for decades. However, with the spectacular rise of China, great power competition has taken root; and thus, the need for a stronger and strategically driven non-aligned movement has never been felt so urgently as it does at present. As majority nations fear entrapment in this power competition, non-aligned movement will provide an essential gateway to peaceful coexistence. And further, the strategic location of Nepal and its political capital premise it as the right candidate to lead the movement. On the reverse, if Nepal is sucked into the abyss of geopolitical polarisation and alliances, it will be a grievous strategic failure leading to dire consequences. Nepal needs to think geo-strategically, align its national interests accordingly and have the courage to reject geopolitical polarisation and alliances as the great power competition plays out.

(Gautam is a researcher and political analyst. achut.gautam@gmail.com)