National/Regional/International Affairs
By N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal)
Biratnagar: An India-funded English newspaper in Kathmandu just the other day questioned the very motive of the pouring in of several US key officials in series to Kathmandu in the recent days and weeks!
It is this questioning of the India funded/sponsored English language paper that adds strength to our previous writing that it would be India but not the Chinese who would pose a real and formidable threat to the increasing US influence in Nepal of late. And in saying so, we do have ample reasons, both political and strategic ones.
Needless to say, the geopolitical element too could be added to the Indian exasperation in opposing the US activities in Nepal. Nepal’s “geopolitical location” is such that great powers wish to find a “meaningful political space” in Nepal for several reasons.
Of the many reasons, one rumored intent is to “watch and contain China”. Interestingly, China understands these tricks of ‘some willing powers’ and so it also wants to have a greater say in Nepali politics to balance the combined penetration of the US and India.
For the US and India, Nepal is the most appropriate place to hit China’s underbelly Tibet which is just close to the Northern mountains.
Unconfirmed reports say that the deposed Home Minister Rabi Lamichane was ‘to quit’ when he reportedly took the initiative to grant citizenship to the Tibetan refugees.
For India, Nepal is its colony awaiting Sikkimisation sooner than later. Conversely, the US and China have “no such designs” against Nepal.
India’s salaried and posted agents in Nepal at times act double and pose that they were “loyal” to the US. However, the fact is that these “double cross” primarily work for the Indian regime which pays in millions per month.
The said newspaper is being controlled presumably by an Indian national from Rajasthan, India, as per Rabi Lamichhane, and largely financed by the Indian regime in Kathmandu for securing its prime interests. The interests indeed include the ultimate “Sikkimisation” of Nepal.
If one were to believe political analyst Arjun Gyawali’s statement circulating in social media of late states that “ninety per cent of the Nepali media men were the agents of alien forces stationed in Kathmandu”. RAW invests billions and billions of rupees here for Nepal’s Sikkimisation. Traitors like Lhendup could well be recognized from the way these anti-nationals defend the Indian crimes in Nepal.
Adding strength to Gyawali’s rounded exposure, yet another highly intellectual lady, Ms Sushma Acharya even claims that not only the media men and bureaucrats but even Nepal’s military makeup too have the deep incursion of India’s paid and posted RAW moles who presumably sell the national secrets to Indian officials in lieu with bulky financial gains.
Senior political forecaster Madan Regmi first noticed the questioning of the US flurry of visits to Kathmandu written by an equally India-bend media man. It was Regmi’s pointed reaction that attracted our own attention. By the way, Regmi is the chairman of the China Study Center in Nepal.
Narayan Man Bijukche, a communist old hand with China and North Korea tilt openly says that “out of twenty Nepali leaders, almost two-thirds could be in the payroll of the great powers, mostly India.
Thus, he advised his audience recently that “these facts must be passed on to the students and people belonging to younger generations so that they could save the nation from the alien onslaught.
Nepal is the immediate target and the promo could be sensed in Kathmandu. As we wrote in our previous issue that the US will face problems in Nepal, not because of Nepal and China but it would surely because India and India alone will try to “limit” tooth and nail the US presence in Nepal. The US must take lessons from George Soros to understand India and its PM Narendra Modi.
Albeit, China too would wish to oppose the increasing US influence in Nepal, however, China’s diplomacy is excessively weaker vis-à-vis India in Nepal so China too depends on India in opposing the US.
It is not that China loves India or is scared but, the fact is that what compels her to seek help from India in distancing the US is the fact that India’s intervention and the interference in Nepal are colossal and so this “defeated diplomacy” has to be brought into action by the Chinese regime in Kathmandu.
China knows that it can’t oppose the US in Nepal alone and thus China’s “defeated” diplomatic trick is to use and overuse India to distance the US.
Leaving the Doklam fight on the shelves for the moment, India and China could shake hands in Nepal in distancing the US. Both do not wish the US to prevail in Nepal. In a way, both India and China could be seen as “allied forces” in distancing the US from increasing its weight in Nepal.
At times the “defeated diplomacy” too works as is evident from China’s current diplomacy in Nepal more so after the advent of the new Chinese envoy Chen Song.
Though the newly arrived Chinese envoy, Chen Song, is pretty active comparatively since his arrival on January 8, his rush to meet the “key Nepali leaders” apparently has yielded less than what had been expected by the Chinese envoy upon his arrival. He is definitely meeting Indo-pendent Nepali leaders who dance to Indian tunes and dictates.
It is simply because the entire political space in Kathmandu has long remained under the Indian pocket through the RAW funding and thus neither the Chinese nor the US can penetrate into the India-constructed fort in Nepal. It so applies equally to even the ‘men’ from the UK and the European Union plus Germany.
We guess by this time, both the Chinese envoy, Chen Song, and the US Ambassador Dean R. Thompson may have already well understood that India’s penetration in Nepali politics remains invincible. It is as simple as that.
However, fresh news reveals that Ambassador Chen Song met India-elevated pseudo-Communist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and a desperate Chinese envoy reportedly approximately “threatened” Nepal PM and warned the latter saying that “China shall not tolerate” his Indo-USA bias that he has. The envoy almost warned PM Dahal that China has been watching his fresh political overture with utmost care. Whether PM Dahal got the point or not remains a mystery. China must be feeling the pain of Nepal without a monarchy now.
Ambassador Thompson may have now realized that to blunt the Indian “hegemony” in Nepal is an uphill task much close to scaling the world’s highest mountain Mount Everest by an untrained mountaineer and that too sans Oxygen.
The same should apply to Ambassador Chen Song who presumably landed in Nepal to assert and give a diplomatic boost to the almost dormant Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as against the MCC — the US Millennium Project.
China has twofold missions in Nepal. The first is to vie with the Indian political manoeuvring/interventions/interferences.
And the second perhaps is, as per the new Chinese envoy Chen Song, to act to preserve Nepal’s “sovereignty”.
The third could be to save the Belt and Road Initiative from the possible attack from the MCC project.
Interestingly and quite surprisingly, even the new US Ambassador Dean Thompson too in recent days talked on the same line which perhaps, encouraged the Indian regime to activate its media in Nepal to “question” the very intent of the visit of the key officials to Nepal.
India’s swift retaliation does tell that she doesn’t want to listen to words such as “sovereignty” or “national independence” simply because her ultimate aim is to “gulp” Nepal a la Sikkim.
This again means that India has taken note of the Chinese and the US envoy’s talk on preserving Nepal’s “sovereignty” as abhorrent as anything under the sun.
This then brings us back to what the South Block paid three scholars on November 16, 2022, hinted through the sponsored article that “India welcomes the United States’ engagement with Nepal, as long as such dialogue between Kathmandu and Washington either promotes New Delhi’s interests or promotes the interest of either party without causing harm to New Delhi’s interests in the region”.
The Indian message is wide and clear in that it now onwards “limits” the possible role of the US in Nepal. Its corollary would mean that the US can’t cross the limits as defined by India in Nepal.
The US is challenged by India in no uncertain terms and yet India is a “strategic partner” of the US in the Quad mechanism.
The best way is to form a joint US-China alliance to counter India. Though this option looks funny, it could work miraculously. The question thus is whether the US would wish to annoy India-its strategic partner in Quad.
As regards China, its consolation to Nepal is cosmetic as it is China which has duped Nepal in the year 2015 May when it signed a bilateral trade with India through Lipulekh, a Nepali landmass and that too without even consulting Nepal.
This means that China itself is a threat to Nepali sovereignty. China has so far not apologized and yet claims that it will safeguard Nepal’s sovereignty. This is a joke of the Himalayan dimension indeed.
Against this backdrop, how and why Nepal should trust China? Is Ambassador Chen Song listening? The answer is long due from China.
Geopolitical rivalry brings tussle: A seminar was recently held in Pokhara, Nepal, wherein eminent political scientists spoke on the continuing global power rivalry that has affected several countries to make alignments and realignments suiting their national interests.
For example, the Russian military operation in Ukraine last year February has given momentum to this alignment and realignments.
The seminar topic was “Global Power shift: Geopolitical Complexity of Nepal” wherein the attending educators of political science (to name Professor Than Bahadur Chetri and Dr Khadga KC) agreed that the world power has in the recent years shifted from the West to South Asia.
Our own assessment is that the shift has already approached Nepal as is evident from the rush followed by the competition seen among the three great powers, for example, the US, China and India to increase their respective influence in this India-tamed Nepal.
Add this to what the Pakistani senator Moshahid Hussain said in a Nepal Council of World Affairs (NCWA) program some years back in Kathmandu that the political center of gravity has shifted to Asia more so to South Asia.
Senator Hussain also forcefully said that with the shift of center of political gravity to South Asia, the “Great Game” too has come into play side by side which, as per the Pakistani senator, intends to “contain China”.
Perhaps Senator Hussain was referring to the US-designed ‘Quad Security Mechanism’ which primarily aims at containing China. This is how the men in the China lobby interpret the Quad.
The Quad affiliate rebuke dismisses this perception and says that it is only the views of those who presumably were close to China.
Albeit Senator Hussain is said to be close to Beijing and appreciates China’s mega project-China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a game changer for Pakistan.
While India has its deep penetration in Nepal already then the US and China too appear more than willing to secure a significant “political space” in Nepal.
Pakistan’s ace diplomat Ambassador Masood Khalid says that China’s rise makes the United States apprehensive and that the US’s China containment strategy is, in fact, more to arrest the decline of the US pre-eminence in world affairs rather than reverse China’s rise, which is now an established reality”.
Ambassador Masood says that the pre-eminence of China now is a reality which can’t be altered. Masood served as a Pakistani envoy in China for several years. It is by the way Ambassador Massod’s views as regards the US’s China containment policy.
In the process, the conflict of interests of these three powers (US, India and China) is visibly increasing to an alarming extent. It is so because the foreign policy veterans in Nepal have a clear and distinct preference, people believe it to be so, to the enemy regime, which India is.
High-placed sources say that Indian “moles” are seated in the highest echelons at the Nepali foreign ministry. If so then it is a matter of utmost shame and is equally dangerous.
Adding strength to the comments, what is for sure is that Nepal’s foreign policy too is “pegged” with India’s much the same way the Nepali currency is.
If it is so then the almighty is only the savior of this near an “Indian protectorate”.
Nepal’s India bend media which questioned the US purpose in recent days did so as India saw the flood of US officials (Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power and Afreen Akhtar in series) coming to Kathmandu may give an “unwanted” jolt to its “guaranteed space” in Nepal and so it hinted its paid media to pose a question as mentioned above.
Learn India from George Soros: Hungary-born George Soros (92) is a billionaire from the USA. He, in recent days, has made some hair-raising but “ear-pleasing” comments for some on Indian Prime Minister Modi and his business tycoon, now bankrupt Gautam Adani.
Pakistan Observer report on February 22 writes that prominent financial investor George Soros while addressing the Munich Security Conference took up the issue of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s secret relationship with his close ally and business tycoon Gautam Adani who was accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards”.
Several international agencies report that George Soros said that the Modi-Adani nexus will eventually “significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government” and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms. “I may be naive, but I expect a democratic revival in India,” said Mr Soros. In plain words, Soros hints that India is not a democracy.
Soros, having Jewish roots, is a Hungary-American national who recently accused PM Modi and Adani were close allies and that PM Modi has been silent ever since Adani Enterprises was accused of financial irregularities”. India’s Godi media have been pouncing upon this old US national.
Concluding remarks: Nepali observers see substance in George Soros’ outbursts on India and its Islamophobic PM Modi whose atrocities on Muslims remain no longer a secret. Soros too has mentioned the pains of Indian Muslims under PM Modi. That’s all.
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