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First, Maldives. Then, Bangladesh, Now, Nepal. An unstable Nepal allows the destabilization of two critical states in India. Regime change in India is the b

First, Maldives. Then, Bangladesh, Now, Nepal. An unstable Nepal allows the destabilization of two critical states in India. Regime change in India is the big prize. -- China and India do meddle. But a classic color revolution, such as this one, is the signature of you-know-who.

alephnerd 1y ago
KP Sharma Oli is pro-China which even Nepali media has pointed out [0]. And his formative years were spent growing up in a village (Garamani) barely 30 km outside Naxalbari during the Naxalbari Uprising, and attended secondary school barely 5 miles (Mechinagar) away from Naxalbari during the uprising. In Nepali politics, Sher Bahadur Deuba is pro-India and Prachanda is pro-Prachanda (will back India some years, other years will back China). The whole Indian internet conspiracy of "CIA ki saazish" is ridiculous when the US has barely 20 India scholars at all. There is 0 domain experience in India studies in the US, and that reflects in America's South Asia strategy (there is none). [0] - https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/09/07/oli-s-diplomatic-snubs https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/09/07/oli-s-diplomati...
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  Did the departments at Berkeley, Columbia and Chicago just turn over and capsize?
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Their scholars primarily specialize in the history of South Asia, not contemporary foreign relations and strategy in South Asia. IMO, the only American program that has a good program in Contemporary Indian politics and foreign policy is Stanford, as Sumit Ganguly acts as the primary linkage between American and Indian policymakers, and the FSI and Hoover Institution tends to host Indian policymakers and career bureaucrats as affiliates and fellows. For example, during the US-India trade negotiations, the only public visit Nirmala Sitharaman and her staffers had was at the Hoover Institution [0]. Even the USIBC is hosted at Stanford, and that event has a lot of Indian and American dignitaries and policymakers coming. Other than Christine Fair and a couple Pakistani fellows at HKS, I can't think of a similar domain experts on Pakistan either in the US. If you want to study contemporary Indian foreign policy outside of India, your only options are NUS, ANU, Stanford, LSE, and maybe Oxford. It's the same reason why the best China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea scholars tend to be clustered at Harvard and Stanford. [0] - https://www.hoover.org/events/laying-foundations-developed-india-viksit-bharat-2047 https://www.hoover.org/events/laying-foundations-developed-i...
    - selimthegrim 1y ago
      I have gone back-and-forth with Christine Fair on Twitter DMs (she had an issue with a translation I wasn’t credited on) and she certainly has her strongly personal point of view, but she’s got a lot of sharp edges. Maybe Michael what’s his name who is always writing op-eds in Dawn would be another option.
      - selimthegrim 1y ago
        Michael Kugelman
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        > she’s got a lot of sharp edges Understatement of the year. > Maybe Michael I've never been impressed by Michael K. He's tends to view South Asia relations from a NatSec only view that is heavily colored by his experiences during the GWOT. He isn't the most proficient in understanding the ins-and-outs of institutions. And fundamentally, it's institutions - not interests or personas - that set strategy or goals. I think he is a good source if we want to understand KPK and transnational terrorism, but not really beyond that. ----------- And this is the fundamental problem with South Asia studies in the US - almost all academics in the space largely entered during the GWOT or the NPT, and their domain experience is largely around either transnational terror or nuclear posture. There are almost no academics in the US with US citizenship who have significant experience and knowledge about how institutions work within South Asian countries, and those who have that knowledge decide to retain their home country's citizenship becuase they know they can pull a Raghuram Rajan, Aravind Subramaniam, or a Krishnamurthy Subramanian (no relation to Aravind). Chinese studies faced the same issues before 2017-19 as well, because there were few Chinese born American naturalized academics with a background in Chinese institutions, plus when I was in college (Obama 1/2) the majority of the limited academic funding in Govt/PoliSci was devoted to Russia, Iran, and the Arabic speaking nations. China was largely viewed the same way India is today and India the same way Vietnam or Indonesia are viewed today in American academia. These academic blind spots are a major reason why American foreign policy keeps failing - there is almost no domain experience outside of Russia/CEE and MidEast studies in the US. We barely built Chinese studies domain experience but a lot of that is ex-USSR scholars pivoting to China for funding.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> a classic color revolution, such as this one, is the signature of you-know-who I literally don’t.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  there's a conspiracy theory that every revolution of the past 100 years was caused by the cia.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Oh yeah, I saw it in India when Bangladesh fell. Couldn’t possibly be her incessant and well-documented corruption. I also think Barack Obama was somehow involved.
    - don_esteban 1y ago
      Corruption is endemic in many places, but somehow the chance of regime change is more correlated with unwillingness to follow the USA dictate than with corruption ....
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > somehow the chance of regime change is more correlated with unwillingness to follow the USA dictate than with corruption What did Nepal fail to do for America that supposedly caused this?
        don_esteban 1y ago
        Nepal is probably safe from US meddling (US has no interests there, India and China meddle in Nepal enough). Pakistan/Bangladesh is another manner. The way Imran Khan was ousted...
  - snapcaster 1y ago
    I don't like comments like this, because while you're right that many people think everything happening everywhere is the CIA. The CIA (and US gov) _has_ been involved in an absurd amount of regime changes (that we know about). CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Mistletoe 1y ago
I’m hoping the one in Indonesia and this one and others catch fire. The people are starting to realize where all the money is going in the world, straight up to the top.
idiomat9000 1y ago
[dead]
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Nepal has always been somewhat of a basket case. Remember when their prince went nuts and shot the royal family up? Then the whole country went through the wringer in the mid-00s. Shame, it’s one place I really want to visit, but it seems like it will be a bit of a challenge (well, at least not Iran-level challenge, which is another place I want to visit someday and has different but even bigger problems).
- objektif 1y ago
  It is the most fascinating country I have ever been to.

alephnerd 1y ago

KP Sharma Oli is pro-China which even Nepali media has pointed out [0]. And his formative years were spent growing up in a village (Garamani) barely 30 km outside Naxalbari during the Naxalbari Uprising, and attended secondary school barely 5 miles (Mechinagar) away from Naxalbari during the uprising. In Nepali politics, Sher Bahadur Deuba is pro-India and Prachanda is pro-Prachanda (will back India some years, other years will back China). The whole Indian internet conspiracy of "CIA ki saazish" is ridiculous when the US has barely 20 India scholars at all. There is 0 domain experience in India studies in the US, and that reflects in America's South Asia strategy (there is none). [0] - https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/09/07/oli-s-diplomatic-snubs https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/09/07/oli-s-diplomati...

selimthegrim 1y ago
Did the departments at Berkeley, Columbia and Chicago just turn over and capsize?
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Their scholars primarily specialize in the history of South Asia, not contemporary foreign relations and strategy in South Asia. IMO, the only American program that has a good program in Contemporary Indian politics and foreign policy is Stanford, as Sumit Ganguly acts as the primary linkage between American and Indian policymakers, and the FSI and Hoover Institution tends to host Indian policymakers and career bureaucrats as affiliates and fellows. For example, during the US-India trade negotiations, the only public visit Nirmala Sitharaman and her staffers had was at the Hoover Institution [0]. Even the USIBC is hosted at Stanford, and that event has a lot of Indian and American dignitaries and policymakers coming. Other than Christine Fair and a couple Pakistani fellows at HKS, I can't think of a similar domain experts on Pakistan either in the US. If you want to study contemporary Indian foreign policy outside of India, your only options are NUS, ANU, Stanford, LSE, and maybe Oxford. It's the same reason why the best China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea scholars tend to be clustered at Harvard and Stanford. [0] - https://www.hoover.org/events/laying-foundations-developed-india-viksit-bharat-2047 https://www.hoover.org/events/laying-foundations-developed-i...
  - selimthegrim 1y ago
    I have gone back-and-forth with Christine Fair on Twitter DMs (she had an issue with a translation I wasn’t credited on) and she certainly has her strongly personal point of view, but she’s got a lot of sharp edges. Maybe Michael what’s his name who is always writing op-eds in Dawn would be another option.
    - selimthegrim 1y ago
      Michael Kugelman
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      > she’s got a lot of sharp edges Understatement of the year. > Maybe Michael I've never been impressed by Michael K. He's tends to view South Asia relations from a NatSec only view that is heavily colored by his experiences during the GWOT. He isn't the most proficient in understanding the ins-and-outs of institutions. And fundamentally, it's institutions - not interests or personas - that set strategy or goals. I think he is a good source if we want to understand KPK and transnational terrorism, but not really beyond that. ----------- And this is the fundamental problem with South Asia studies in the US - almost all academics in the space largely entered during the GWOT or the NPT, and their domain experience is largely around either transnational terror or nuclear posture. There are almost no academics in the US with US citizenship who have significant experience and knowledge about how institutions work within South Asian countries, and those who have that knowledge decide to retain their home country's citizenship becuase they know they can pull a Raghuram Rajan, Aravind Subramaniam, or a Krishnamurthy Subramanian (no relation to Aravind). Chinese studies faced the same issues before 2017-19 as well, because there were few Chinese born American naturalized academics with a background in Chinese institutions, plus when I was in college (Obama 1/2) the majority of the limited academic funding in Govt/PoliSci was devoted to Russia, Iran, and the Arabic speaking nations. China was largely viewed the same way India is today and India the same way Vietnam or Indonesia are viewed today in American academia. These academic blind spots are a major reason why American foreign policy keeps failing - there is almost no domain experience outside of Russia/CEE and MidEast studies in the US. We barely built Chinese studies domain experience but a lot of that is ex-USSR scholars pivoting to China for funding.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> a classic color revolution, such as this one, is the signature of you-know-who I literally don’t.

adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
there's a conspiracy theory that every revolution of the past 100 years was caused by the cia.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Oh yeah, I saw it in India when Bangladesh fell. Couldn’t possibly be her incessant and well-documented corruption. I also think Barack Obama was somehow involved.
  - don_esteban 1y ago
    Corruption is endemic in many places, but somehow the chance of regime change is more correlated with unwillingness to follow the USA dictate than with corruption ....
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > somehow the chance of regime change is more correlated with unwillingness to follow the USA dictate than with corruption What did Nepal fail to do for America that supposedly caused this?
      - don_esteban 1y ago
        Nepal is probably safe from US meddling (US has no interests there, India and China meddle in Nepal enough). Pakistan/Bangladesh is another manner. The way Imran Khan was ousted...
- snapcaster 1y ago
  I don't like comments like this, because while you're right that many people think everything happening everywhere is the CIA. The CIA (and US gov) _has_ been involved in an absurd amount of regime changes (that we know about). CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Mistletoe 1y ago

I’m hoping the one in Indonesia and this one and others catch fire. The people are starting to realize where all the money is going in the world, straight up to the top.

idiomat9000 1y ago

[dead]

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

Nepal has always been somewhat of a basket case. Remember when their prince went nuts and shot the royal family up? Then the whole country went through the wringer in the mid-00s. Shame, it’s one place I really want to visit, but it seems like it will be a bit of a challenge (well, at least not Iran-level challenge, which is another place I want to visit someday and has different but even bigger problems).

objektif 1y ago
It is the most fascinating country I have ever been to.