Nepal is too tiny for that to work and not a strategic threat to China in the way Ukraine is to Russia. They have the Himalayas between them which makes for a good barrier.
What they can do is impede connectivity infrastructure projects between China and India going through Nepal. It’s a nuisance but it’s not existential, and the pendulum will eventually swing the other way because China and India just hold too many cards here. Economically Nepal has to be tied to either India or China’s sphere, it cannot sustain itself otherwise.
In fact i think that this causes more issues for India than it does for China, because they are closer culturally and economically to Nepal and have more interests and investments there.
Yeah, but i think in the long run this is a bit like fighting gravity. You can cause temporary setbacks but the force of gravity exerted by the rise of China, the rise of the global south, and the economic reorientation of the world away from the West is going to pull countries like Nepal back into the orbit of the larger economies in their immediate neighborhood. Even a regime that comes to power via a western orchestrated coup or color revolution has no choice but to work with China, because they are the biggest game in town.
Exactly, these kinds of maneuvers slow down the process, but they don’t change overall direction of travel. They also tie up finite resources the US has.
Nepal is too tiny for that to work and not a strategic threat to China in the way Ukraine is to Russia. They have the Himalayas between them which makes for a good barrier.
What they can do is impede connectivity infrastructure projects between China and India going through Nepal. It’s a nuisance but it’s not existential, and the pendulum will eventually swing the other way because China and India just hold too many cards here. Economically Nepal has to be tied to either India or China’s sphere, it cannot sustain itself otherwise.
In fact i think that this causes more issues for India than it does for China, because they are closer culturally and economically to Nepal and have more interests and investments there.
I think that’s exactly it, the plan is to just make it harder to move good around by creating instability in the region.
Yeah, but i think in the long run this is a bit like fighting gravity. You can cause temporary setbacks but the force of gravity exerted by the rise of China, the rise of the global south, and the economic reorientation of the world away from the West is going to pull countries like Nepal back into the orbit of the larger economies in their immediate neighborhood. Even a regime that comes to power via a western orchestrated coup or color revolution has no choice but to work with China, because they are the biggest game in town.
Exactly, these kinds of maneuvers slow down the process, but they don’t change overall direction of travel. They also tie up finite resources the US has.