Lessons from Nepal: Patriotic Armed Forces foiled foreign plot
In the early 19th century, the East India Company dominated not merely through superior weaponry, but through its ability to exploit division, corruption, and the ambitions of local elites. Two centuries later, the parallel is unmistakable. Washington’s “deep state”—a fusion of intelligence bureaucracy, diplomatic muscle, and corporate lobbying—functions today as the modern East India Company in South Asia. The instruments have changed: gone are the gunboats and monopolies, replaced by NGOs, cultural programs, and social media campaigns. But the mission has scarcely shifted. It remains one of securing resources, installing pliable governments, and denying rivals—China most of all—a secure foothold in the region.
Sri Lanka’s economic implosion in 2022, Pakistan’s cyclical implosions, Bangladesh’s recent unrest, and the aborted uprising in Nepal all bear traces of foreign interest disguised as benevolent reform. The rhetoric is familiar: democracy, human rights, youth empowerment. Yet the reality is more transactional, more calculated. In Nepal, unlike its neighbors, the attempt faltered. The difference was not in the scale of discontent or in the grievances of the protesters, but in the patriotic resolve of Nepal’s armed forces, which chose to guard sovereignty rather than surrender it.
The method of foreign intervention in our time is subtle. Instead of soldiers landing on foreign shores, there is the slow infiltration of funding streams labeled as capacity-building projects. NGOs champion anti-corruption campaigns, cultural initiatives flourish, and youth movements are amplified. On the surface, none of this appears malign; indeed, many of the grievances raised by protesters are genuine. But the larger question is not what the protesters believe, but whose agenda their anger ultimately serves. The answer, more often than not, is that of foreign powers seeking to bend fragile states to their strategic needs.
The South Asian theater offers a pattern. In Nepal, the unrest was fueled by legitimate anger at corruption, nepotism, and repression, yet soon attracted the attention of Washington, New Delhi, and Beijing. For the United States, support for youth and civil society groups dovetailed with its Indo-Pacific strategy, offering a convenient way to counter Chinese influence under the Belt and Road Initiative. India, always wary of instability on its borders, sought to reassert its regional primacy. China, for its part, maneuvered to protect its infrastructure projects. The protests thus became less about accountability in Kathmandu and more about the maneuvers of rival powers.
A similar dynamic unfolded in Sri Lanka, where the 2022 uprising emerged from the Rajapaksa regime’s catastrophic mismanagement. The anger in Colombo was authentic, but external actors quickly positioned themselves to shape the outcome. Western creditors saw an opportunity to demand sweeping reforms, many of which benefitted external markets rather than ordinary Sri Lankans. In Bangladesh, last year’s student-led Monsoon Revolution was also rooted in real frustration with authoritarian governance and corruption. But the movement overlapped with Washington’s ties to Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and with strategic calculations about military access to the Bay of Bengal. What began as a domestic struggle became entangled with a foreign playbook.
Pakistan has long been a case study in such manipulation. Its repeated political crises, the military’s dominance, and experiments with cryptocurrency regulation intersected neatly with American concerns about Beijing’s growing influence through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. What unites all these episodes is not the fabrication of grievances—those were real—but the opportunism of foreign powers to leverage them for their own ends.
Under Donald Trump, the blending of personal ambition with national strategy has made this opportunism even more explicit. Trump, long described as a “billionaire in name only,” approaches statecraft as he once approached real estate: as a series of deals designed to maximize personal advantage. With no heir apparent in American politics from his family and no reelection to worry about, this is his final act. That makes his priorities at once urgent and transactional. He has sought to outshine Elon Musk not in rockets or cars, but in global influence. His ventures range from cryptocurrency in Pakistan to opaque dealings in the Middle East, speculative plays in Africa, and whispered financial interests in Ukraine and Russia. For Trump, foreign policy is less a matter of American security than of personal legacy. He intends to leave office not merely as a two-term president but as a global tycoon, a twenty-first century East India Company embodied in a single man.
Nepal, however, charted a different course. Its salvation came from its armed forces. Unlike their Bangladeshi counterparts, Nepal’s military leaders recognized the dangers of foreign-engineered upheaval. They had studied Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq—societies where foreign-backed protest movements promised freedom but delivered collapse. They understood that leaderless rage, however justified, could be commandeered by outsiders with very different agendas. When the streets of Kathmandu filled with anger, the army acted decisively to preserve sovereignty. Their loyalty was not to any political party but to the idea of Nepal itself. In doing so, they may have spared their country the fate of becoming just another pawn in the region’s great game.
The similarities across South Asian uprisings are clear. Youth and students, with their sense of idealism and indignation, are always the spark. Entrenched elites—dynasties, bureaucrats, and oligarchs—remain the perennial villains. Social media accelerates the spread of anger, transforming local grievances into global spectacles. And international actors, though quick to speak the language of reform, typically prefer stability over genuine change, particularly when their interests are at stake. Yet the divergences are just as telling. Nepal’s armed forces chose patriotism and sovereignty. Sri Lanka’s crisis became an opportunity for creditors. Bangladesh’s institutions faltered, surrendering to external influence and leaving the country vulnerable.
Bangladesh’s failure is especially painful. The courage of its youth was undeniable, but the army, once the symbol of independence, chose to stand down. In doing so, it allowed foreign interests to reshape the narrative. The result is confusion, instability, and the looming threat of Dhaka becoming a bargaining chip in the Trump–Modi relationship. Trump, transactional to his core, would not hesitate to trade Bangladesh’s strategic autonomy for a more lucrative deal with India. The upcoming summit between the two leaders is therefore more than diplomatic pageantry; it is a crucible for Bangladesh’s very sovereignty.
The lesson from Nepal is clear. Sovereignty in the twenty-first century does not collapse through invasion; it erodes through complacency. Foreign deep states, whether in the guise of development aid, NGOs, or business partnerships, will always seek to exploit vulnerabilities. Domestic corruption and misrule provide the opening. Only patriotic vigilance, particularly from institutions like the armed forces, can close it.
South Asia’s upheavals are not isolated dramas. They are chapters in a larger struggle where global powers advance interests with little regard for the people whose lives are disrupted. Nepal’s army saw through the façade and acted. Bangladesh’s army did not—and the consequences are already unfolding. If there is one enduring moral for the region, it is this: patriotism is not a relic of the past. It remains the final defense against becoming a client state in someone else’s empire.
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