Review of World Affairs (RWA)
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Nepal in the International Arena
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has claimed that Nepal’s image and credibility had been enhanced in the international arena under his leadership in the current coalition of very strange bedfellows (THT/The Himalayan Times, March 19). This has, of course, to be taken with a pinch of salt!
Our memory is not that short to forget all that happened leading to the ratification of the U.S. funded MCC – Nepal Compact. His Communist coalition partners made a mockery of good governance and the parliamentary process. Parliament is again in limbo without any explanation to the general public.
It is also quite strange that the PM chose the forum of the Nepal Council of World Affairs on the occasion of its 74th anniversary to make his grandiose claims. This organization is only a shadow of its former self, and with the best of intentions, cannot be characterized as a research institute or think tank. Its activities are few and far between and it emerges from obscurity only on rare occasions.
Another so-called “research institute” or “think tank” – the Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) – like a myriad of others in the Valley, is not very transparent in its activities and publications.
Recently, an associate of the Institute while writing about “Ukraine War: Lessons for Nepal” (my Republica, March 17), noted precisely that “small states like Nepal must walk a fine line between protecting their sovereignty and showing ‘strategic empathy’ toward the interests of major powers”.
However, Nepal is in a completely different geo-political situation as compared to Ukraine. And “Nepal’s first foreign policy priority” as the columnist formulates it, is not the balance of power.
Nepal is too small a nation between two Asian behemoths to attempt a balancing act. Its foreign policy must be pro-active and not reactive. Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of the Nepali nation, has already shown us the path – domestically and externally – of preserving our sovereignty and territorial integrity.
It is astounding that so many pundits of Nepal’s foreign policy are unwilling and unable to give the Father of the Nation his proper due.
Nepal must at all times project a posture of positive equidistance between India and China – and also between the United States and China. This policy also contains the seeds of dynamic non-alignment which also entails judging any and every issue on its merits according to the principles of international law, international norms and the Charter of the United Nations – like Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Careless India Fires Missile Towards Pakistan
On Wednesday, March 9, an Indian missile landed in Pakistan territory. No one was killed or hurt, and Pakistan chose to react responsibly.
The Pakistan military spokesman made details of the missile’s flight path public, pointing out that it had endangered many national and international passenger flights both in India and Pakistani airspace, as well as human life and property on the ground and demanded an explanation from India.
India responded arrogantly only two days later, blaming a “technical malfunction” for the “accidental firing of a missile”. An official statement described the incident as “deeply regrettable” but stopped short of apologizing to Pakistan.
The matter was also of deep concern to all the other immediate countries of the region – China, Afghanistan, Nepal – but the would-be hegemonic regional power and rising world power, of course, considered it below its dignity and did nothing of the sort.
India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers and are constantly at loggerheads. They have fought four wars since their independence in 1947.
An accidental missile launch, which is not immediately notified to the other side, could have started a fifth war under different circumstances, according to Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., 2008-11, and currently the director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute (The Hill, March 18).
Every time there is an armed conflict between India and Pakistan, there is a legitimate fear of escalation to nuclear war, especially in the immediate neighbourhood.
This time around, Pakistan’s laudable restraint and India’s belated admission of its careless mishap avoided the worst scenario. Pakistan, the neighbouring countries and the international community, have a right to know what actually happened and what mechanisms India will now put in place to avoid a recurrence. Such a serious matter cannot be brushed off as an ‘internal matter’.
Regrettably, no other country has supported Pakistan’s demand for a “joint probe to accurately establish the facts surrounding the incident.” India and Pakistan currently are [ again ] not represented by ambassadors in each other’s capitals over the usual alleged support for terrorists by each side.
However, it is of the utmost necessity that nuclear-armed neighbours communicate on a regular basis with each other [like the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War].
Haqqani notes that for Pakistan, the incident offers a moment of self-reflection. Pakistan has a very reasonable case, but its demand for greater transparency has received little support from the International community. Even China, Pakistan’s closest ally and “all-weather friend” offered only a tepid response.
The Ukraine Conflict & International Law
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is “the most brazen illegal war waged by one sovereign state against another since World War II” (Onna A. Hathaway: International Law Goes to War in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs, March 15).
It is in clear violation of the core obligation in the UN Charter, which prohibits the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (ART. 2.4). Unlike the opinion of many Nepali experts, Nepal voted correctly and wisely at UNGA to condemn the blatant Russian aggression.
Contemporary international law demands that states respond to violations not with war but with “outcasting” (Hathaway/Scott Shapiro) – that is, sanctions that exclude a state that has broken the law from the benefits of global cooperation. This is what Russia is suffering at present.
Moreover, moribund international legal institutions – the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – have suddenly sprung to life in response to the illegal invasion.
“The unprecedented response may have the unexpected effect of reviving and reinforcing the international legal order in ways that Putin did not anticipate,” according to Hathaway, professor at Yale.
Most experts agree that the conflict is not simply about the future of Ukraine; it is about the future of the global legal order as we know it.
The Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak goes even further: the struggle for Ukraine is about much more than just Ukraine or Europe. “It is the struggle for the shape of the world to come,” (NYT/”A fight vs. history in Ukraine,” March 21).
Past and present leaders of the political West have been very negligent. With any sense of history, they should have seen Putin’s nefarious attempt to overturn the international political/economic/legal order coming.
Moreover, it would have been in their own interests to strengthen Ukraine militarily long ago. Today, they are still dilly-dallying with supplying really effective weapons – defensive, as well as, attacking the common enemy. Whether they like it or not, or are too faint-hearted, it is now a European War – which may very well spill over to WW III.
They are still hiding behind the fig-leaf that since Ukraine is not a member of NATO, they are NOT obliged to help directly militarily under the collective security arrangement of Article 5.
However, they very conveniently forget that internationally there is already another collective security arrangement under the UN Charter in place (Chapter VII: Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression).
It’s just a lame excuse to argue that a Russian veto [or a Chinese one] would hinder the UN Security Council from taking effective action. ‘Where there is a will, there is a way’, and the Western powers are very aware that there are ways and means to overcome the ‘veto obstacle’.
Ukraine War: Ideological Dimensions
Populism vs. Liberalism
In the last decade, there has been a hefty discussion in the West and to some extent also in many parts of the world about the battle between populism and liberalism.
It was strange that the crucible of liberalism in the world, namely, the United States brought forth such an illiberal president as Donald Trump, who personified populism. He admired authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin of Russia, and authoritarian leaders all over the world in turn looked up to Trump.
Putin’s war of choice and aggression against peaceful Ukraine brought forth an extremely embarrassing moment for populist leaders worldwide – be it in France, Hungary, Poland, the U.S., Germany, Turkey, India, Philippines. Putin had been held up as a great and alternative statesman whose statecraft had run circles around incompetent, democratic elites.
Putin has now forced them to eat their own words and to defend the indefensible.
Populism could thrive in a liberal, democratic world, but became completely at sea being confronted with Putin’s irrational action. It is easy to focus on internal corruption and elite perfidy and folly, but being completely at a loss for words in the face of naked aggression.
The majority of the US Republican Party had embraced Trump and now find themselves in a quandary.
Theories of Identity Driving Putin’s War
U.S. President Joe Biden took office with the idea that the 21st Century’s struggle would be between the world’s democracies [led by the West] and autocracies [with Russia and China in the forefront].
By waging a completely unnecessary war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin of Russia has been driven by a different ideology, ethnonationalism.
This concept of nationhood and identity is based on language, culture and blood – a collectivist ideology with deep roots in Russian history and thought.
Putin has repeatedly asserted that Ukraine is not a real state and that the Ukrainians are not an independent and separate people, but actually Russian, part of a greater Slavic heartland that also includes Belarus.
Ivan Vejvoda [senior fellow, Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna] said: “Putin wants to consolidate the civilizational border of Russia, as he calls it, and he is doing that by invading a sovereign European country (NYT/Steven Erlanger, March 18).
Ivan Krastev [chairman, Center for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, Bulgaria] argues that Putin’s war is one of re-colonization, capturing lands ruled by the Russian empire and the Soviet Union…He’s reconsolidating imperial nationalism (NYT).
Timothy Snyder [professor at Yale] said “What Russia is doing is not just making war against an innocent nation here,” but it is also attacking assumptions about a peaceful Europe that respects borders, national sovereignty and multinational institutions.
“The Russian leadership is deliberately undoing the linguistic and the moral structure that we drew from the Second World War,” he added.
Nathalie Tocci [director of Italy’s International Affairs Institute], underlines that the war is a clash of political systems, a war against liberal democracy and Ukraine’s right to self-determination.
“He’s going back to a dangerous, irredentist and ethnic nationalist view of sovereignty and self-determination,” Ms. Tocci said.
The idea of Russia as a separate civilization from the West with which it competes goes back centuries, to the roots of Orthodox Christianity and the notion of Moscow as a “Third Rome”, following Rome itself and Constantinople [modern day Istanbul]. Snyder calls it a form of ‘Russian Christian Fascism’.
In the realm of ideas, Russia has been torn for centuries between “Westernizers” and those who see the West as cancer – alien, decadent, insidious and threatening.
Putin also worked to build a more militaristic society, based on Russia’s enduring pride in defeating Nazi Germany in WW II in what is called “The Great Patriotic War”.
However, Putin’s war has solidified the unity of all Ukrainians [even Russian-speaking]. As Krastev noted, “Putin wanted to be the father of a new Russian nation, but he is the father of a new Ukrainian nation instead.”
China, the other great autocracy in Biden’s formulation, is built on similar ideas of ethnic nationalism – that all Chinese are part of the same nation, that minorities are inferior or dangerous, and that Taiwan’s separation is illusory, a crime of history that must be repaired (Steven Erlanger/NYT).
In ancient and medieval times a great civilization was built in South Asia. However, today’s India is nothing better than a pseudo-democracy-cum- crypto-autocracy.
Through the medium of three economic blockades, India tried to bring Nepal to its knees and establish its hegemony. However, it failed miserably and instead strengthened the unity of the nation.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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