By Nirmal P. Acharya
Many heads of state have visited China recently. Just after French President Emmanuel Macron left, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited China. Lula previously served as the 35th president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, but had the misfortune to offend the US and thereupon was arrested. He spent several years in prison, was acquitted, ran for President again and was elected.
The fact that a president who was deposed by the US and was imprisoned could come back and be elected president again shows that the American hegemony is on the decline. I remember when the 9/11 incident took place, my heart at that time really thought: Is it possible that the US hegemony has reached a turning point?
Now, more than two decades later, the decline of American hegemony is becoming more and more obvious. More and more countries are trading in their own currencies rather than dollars and an increasing number of countries are breaking away from the role of America’s sidekick, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia. Even India dared to disobey the US on the subject of the Russia-Ukrainian war. What’s more, the US is so divided that the current president is ready to send the former president to prison, and the former president even publicly predicted that “the United States will not exist in three years.”
It is interesting that at a time when most of the world including the US itself did not think much of the US, we Nepali politicians were so confident and loyal to the US hegemony that we struggled to meet the deadline given by the US to pass the MCC. Bear in mind that the MCC is neither governed nor audited by the Nepali government and is not subject to Nepali law.
If our politicians had not pandered to US hegemony and approved the MCC last year, would the sky have fallen apart? I personally believe that our politicians will have a much better future if we do not approve the MCC. Look at the example of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
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