- Nepal’s Local Elections
- Putin’s Ukraine War Grinding to a Stalemate
- Possibility of China Invading Taiwan?
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Emergence of Party Dictatorship in Nepal
International Experience in Democracy
In vibrant democracies like Germany, South Korea and Australia, we have seen the smooth transfer of power after the ruling party lost and the opposition party(ies) won.
However, even in the world’s oldest democracy, the United States, the last time around the transfer of power was challenged by the incumbent Donald J. Trump, who attempted by hook or by crook to hold on to power. The inherent sense of democracy was not ingrained in him and a section of the Republican Party.
Trump, the anti-democrat is now making his third attempt at the U.S. presidency. The twice impeached, who also attempted to blackmail Ukrainian President Zelensky, has the support of nearly half of Americans. It is unbelievable, that such a high percentage of Americans – who on the face of it are supposed to be democracy inclined – can favour such an unprincipled and uncouth person.
America today is a nation divided – a country at war with itself and no savior in sight!
This was not lost on the rest of the world. It will, therefore, be difficult for U.S. President to project the ongoing conflicts with Russia and China as being between ‘democracy’ and ‘authoritarianism’.
The Nepali Experience
In the new dispensation after the so-called restoration of democracy, the political parties came into their own.
The use of certain words and phrases also illustrated the new trend. The use of prajatantra was discarded in favour of loktantra [although both words translate to democracy], while the former was associated with the former regime and, therefore, decadent and regressive.
The new dispensation was resplendent and progressive.
Successive governments with different political parties promised the moon to the Nepalese people, each time wholly disappointing them. After their tenure of office, it was always back to square one.
Still some development work was done, because the bureaucracy plodded on and the private sector did their part. Just imagine where Nepal would be today, if the public sector had run full throttle!
Unlike political parties in Western countries and East Asia, where they are essential for the functioning of representative democracy, Nepali political parties developed into something more akin to political tribes.
This political tribe was expected to sustain and maintain its members in every aspect of their lives – whether to find jobs or ascending the promotion ladder.
The tribe also extended its tentacles into every nook and corner of the state machinery. In political parlance, we would call it the politicization of all state institutions, including the police and the armed police.
Only the Nepal Army has succeeded in keeping these political tribes at arms length. However, the infamous Prachanda was within a hair’s breadth of installing unpatriotic Lt. Gen. Kul Bahadur Khadga as army chief.
The supreme party leader was the tribal chief. He was supported by various underlings at the centre and the districts with a primitive administrative structure which was top to bottom.
Modern political parties with internal democracy could not and did not emerge.
The main purpose of elections is, therefore, to capture power and enjoy the spoils – alone or with coalition partners – the notorious bhagbanda.
This permeates the local to the national level. The general motto is: ‘Make hay while the sun shines’.
After all, even at the local level there is a lot of money to be made, (over)exploiting the local resources to the hilt.
Nepal cannot, therefore, be classified as a genuine democracy – it is not even ascribing to be one.
At best, it is a pseudo-electoral democracy, with elections giving the veneer of democracy, but actual practice making it a sham!
The Bottom Line
The youth of the country have to put an end to the tribal politics and the incumbent kleptocratic gerontocracy by thoroughly cleaning the Augean stables. After all the future of the country is in their hands.
They have to start from scratch and build from the bottom up with participatory democracy. There are some local institutions worth preserving and developing like the women groups managing communal forests. This could be extended to other local resources.
Putin Has Failed in Ukraine
Putin may declare victory because his troops have finally taken over the besieged port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov [ adjoining the Black Sea ] , but it is a Pyrrhic victory. His troops ‘succeeded’ in destroying everything and nearly everyone. It will take billions to rebuild and who will pay? The Ukrainians for resisting Putin’s aggression?
Mariupol has become a shining symbol of indomitable Ukrainian resistance, just as Bucha a grim example of brutal Russian atrocities.
Putin Misreads US Afghanistan Exit
Against the compelling advice of his senior military and national security lieutenants and without closely consulting his NATO friends and allies, Joe Biden’s lonely personal decision to adhere basically to Donald Trump’s time frame to exit Afghanistan at a most inopportune moment and political constellation, resulted not only in the complete collapse of the government and military, but in widespread misery for the Afghan people.
This one fateful decision had major domestic repercussions too – the one policy choice that remains a stigma on Biden’s administration and is still influencing his very low poll numbers most unusual otherwise for a president that has many other laudable achievements to his credit.
These momentous events must have played on Putin’s mind, giving him the wrong impression of US weakness, dilly-dallying and not resolute in defending friends and allies.
Putin’s wishful thinking of the U.S. as a declining power also played into his own lonely and personal decision to attack Ukraine.
Pre-History
However praiseworthy current Western military help for Ukraine may be, we must not forget that Ukraine was saddled with a war not of its choosing.
After casting off the yoke of Soviet imperialism, Ukraine was firmly on the path of democratization, if by fits and starts.
NATO was then on the path of expanding eastwards and even dangled the possibility of membership to Ukraine as far back as 2008!
Fully realizing Western weakness and indecisiveness, Putin pounced in 2014 and brazenly annexed the Crimean Peninsula [on the Black Sea] and supported so-called breakaway parts of Ukraine’s industrial heartland in Luhansk and Donetsk [in the style of Russian enclaves as in Georgia and Moldova].
These egregious acts were blatant violations of the United Nations Charter, but the UN Security Council was incapacitated.
The Western Powers reacted masterfully – by imposing luke-warm sanctions on Russia, which accomplished a fait accompli.
This time around, Putin underestimated on various fronts:
- Above all, Ukraine’s unbelievable and resolute powers of resistance in the face of massive, overwhelming Russian military leverage
- The great leadership qualities of Ukrainian President Zelensky who skillfully mobilized his people
- The outpouring of humanitarian support from the immediate neighbours of Ukraine
- Massive military hardware from many NATO countries.
Putin did overestimate:
- The will and singularity of purpose of the Russian military machine
- The quality and quantity of Russian military hardware and equipment
- The leadership qualities and decision-making capacity of the Russian regime
- The capacity of the Russian economy to withstand the onslaught of Western and other sanctions
- The extent of the support from close partners China and India, and further afield Brazil and South Africa.
For the rest of the world, Russia is now an international pariah.
Putin’s imperial quest of post-Soviet super-power status now lies in tatters. Like many other dictators, he entertained delusions of grandeur. With his own eventual downfall, he will also drag down Russia and its innocent people.
Putin has now revealed that he is a Fascist and Neo-Nazi and a brute no better than Adolf Hitler whom he reviled but copied from his innermost being.
The Spectre of a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.
Western academic journals and the media are full of articles and discussions about the impending invasion of Taiwan by China.
One such even reports on a war game conducted by the US Center for a New American Security and NBC: “A Fight Over Taiwan Could Go Nuclear” (Foreign Affairs, May 20).
The article concludes: “If China attempted to forcibly invade Taiwan and the United States came to Taipei’s aid, the threat of escalation could outstrip even the current nerve-wracking situation in Europe,” where Russia’s barbaric aggression of Ukraine has raised the spectre of nuclear war.
The doomsday prophecy does not apply to the European war and less so in an imagined armed conflict in the Straits of Taiwan.
In the case of Europe, only a coward like Putin makes such dire threats, as he has run out of options. But even he knows that even the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in the field or a ‘demonstration’ can have dire and absolutely uncontrollable escalatory effects with the guaranteed final result of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD).
In the case of China, President Xi Jinpin is too much of a realist to undertake any foolhardy steps.
China has stated time and again that reunification will be a peaceful process.
China is also completely aware that the U.S. is still far ahead in conventional and nuclear arms and will not undertake any unnecessary risks.
Any risk-benefit analysis will show that China has no compelling reason to undertake any action with unpredictable results.
However, at the same time, the U.S. instead of concentrating on the ‘Three Cs’ – Cooperation, Coexistence, and yes Competition, it has chosen to marshal a pseudo-alliance of disparate countries from the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific titled the “Quad”, comprising the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.
The Quad is attempting to completely contain China and dampen its inevitable rise. For all the Quad members, a better strategy would be to develop equitable trade.
Thus, it is unfathomable why the Biden administration still clings to the Trump-era China tariffs, when their very removal would bring down domestic inflation considerably!
The so-called “Indo-Pacific Strategy” is, therefore, ill-conceived and Nepal itself must avoid any proximity to it.
U.S. Would Use Military Force to Defend Taiwan
In the latest development, at a news conference in Tokyo, Biden said the U.S. is committed to use military force to defend Taiwan if it were ever attacked by Mainland China (NYT, May 23).
The comment marks a radical departure from the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, in which the U.S. remains vague on how it would respond if China used military force to seize control of the self-governing island. And this also in spite of the fact that the U.S. still adheres to the “One China policy”.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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