By Ammara Farooq

The US is incessantly forcing Nepal to the front position of its China policy, decreasing its flexibility. As a Nepal situated at a hot spot of power games, Nepal's foreign policy has always affected by the prism of geopolitics. This sensitivity of its location shapes Nepal's geopolitical atmosphere and affects its domestic politics.

From Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to the latest State Partnership Programme (SPP) issue, associations between the United States and Nepal have attained remarkable progress in the past two years and at the same time, it has also brought Nepal into a more vulnerable geopolitical position. Nepal received valuable aid for development from the US.

Furthermore, Nepal national disagreements on the dubious purposes behind the assistance and its impacts are ensuing in more political and social splits in the country. This relationship of internal and external inconsistencies has pressed Nepal into a dilemma and carried more vagueness to its foreign policy.

From a past perception, US policy towards Nepal has always reverberated its China policy. Since the 1950s, the US has begun to assist Nepal through the Point Four Programme to support Nepal's agricultural and rural development to prevent the increase of communist movements in Nepal and tried to keep it away from the sway of China and the former Soviet Union. Its policy judgment is that poverty leads to communism.

In the 1960s, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) supported Tibetan insurgents based in Nepal's Mustang to carry out disruption and intelligence actions against China. And as US-China relations improved in the 1970s, it slowly ended its support to the rebels.

After the end of the Cold War, competition in the ideological field distressed out of the center of international politics. US aid to Nepal also weakened expressively in the subsequent period. With the steady rise of China since the new era, the rivalry between China and the US has become increasingly ferocious. Then the US-Nepal policy also exposed more Chinese factors.

In its 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy, the US administration registered Nepal as a serious partner, seeking to enlarge its defense relationship with Nepal and escalate diplomatic resources here. This strategy, meant to halt China's economic influence, military power and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Through this way US defined China as America's number one contestant.

The US president version of the Indo-Pacific Strategy released in February this year obviously specified that its objective is not to alter the People's Republic of China but to form the strategic atmosphere in its favor. It is irrefutable that the strategic atmosphere here referred to includes Nepal.

The current US administration's style highlights collaboration and empowerment in the economic field and pays more attention to the use of US soft power. This strategic shift has been repeatedly verified in the development of Nepal-US relations in recent years. It is predictable that as the Indo-Pacific Strategy endures to spread, the US will invest more incomes in Nepal.

At the moment, the relationship between China and Nepal is more than bilateral and has regional significance. In 1957, while the two countries had not yet determined the issue of border segregation, Chinese Premier visited Nepal. During his meeting with King. The then Chinese Premier said that the great Himalaya bind China and Nepal with a border of more than 1,000 km.

The friendly collaboration between our two countries is of marvelous implication to the peace of this massive region. In the following decades, the development of bilateral relations followed the direction of this declaration. Nepal has always observed China as the main balancer to maintain its diplomatic independence. From the absolute neutrality of Nepal's Zone of Peace proposal during the Cold War to the more dynamic balanced diplomacy in the new century, it has received firm support from China.

China also puts more importance on developing relations with Nepal. In 2017, China and Nepal signed a memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Earlier to that, the collaboration between China and Nepal in trade, investment has made momentous advancement. The memorandum is more of a summary of the earlier collaboration and a complete strategy for mutual cooperation in the new era. In addition to traditional security interests, Nepal plays a main role in China's western frontiers' national safety and strength.

Nepal is also a significant entry point for China's western inland to open to the outside world, which is a unique role for other countries in this region. China expects that Nepal will take the express train of China's economic development and realize its financial freedom and divergence of foreign economic relations. This is the central way to maintain Nepal's political independence. And China can also expand its economic interests from this process, and more importantly, secure a favorable external environment for the prosperity and stability of its western region.

The alteration of the geopolitical environment is not a simple receding and flowing of nations' strength. Therefore, assessing and expressing a country's foreign policy must also be pragmatic in a larger historical dimension. From Nepal’s facing the colonial and Cold War eras and the civil war struggle to maintain independence and unity is the best reply to geopolitics and its conversion.

In this sense, Nepal's foreign policy is intended to uphold impartiality and equilibrium. Even if there will be biases on a specific issue or area, as long as the Nepali people still believe in the conclusive importance of independence for the country, there will certainly be forces to correct it.

However, it is never an easy option for Nepali leaders engage and disengage among significant powers. It is like walking on a tightrope with a heavy weight; the game with external forces will be transmitted to domestic political development and trigger a chain reaction. For now, the US is continually pushing Nepal to the forefront of its China strategy, shrinking its freedom.

At the same time, India, which has maintained special relations with Nepal for a long time, also remains highly worried about China's role in Nepal and in the rest of South Asia. However, this strategic convergence has pushed India towards US indo-specific alliance because India is also wary of the growing role of china in the Himalaya. As a result, Nepal's diplomatic tightrope walking has become even more perilous in south Asia with its effects.