News, Views From Nepal

 Yuba Nath Lamsal After the World War II, US president Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin And British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in the resort town of Yalta , presently Ukrainian territory, in February 1945 to chart out the future of Europe. Europe was cut like a birthday cake based on the US and Soviet sphere of influence. Countries were divided and families were separated. Berlin Wall was the symbol of this division. But another American president Ronald Reagan pointing out to the Berlin Wall made an appealing speech in February 1987 and asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall.  That marked the beginning of the end of the post-World War II European order. Europe‘s map was redrawn. Germany was reunified, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were disintegrated. A new Europe emerged. In the words of Fareed Zakaria, “the Berlin Wall wasn’t the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War b

 Yuba Nath Lamsal The 33rd US president Harry Truman, in an address to a joint session of Congress (parliament) on March 12, 1947, said “At the present moment in world history, nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one”.  He highlighted the geopolitical compulsion and reality of that time, with which US foreign policy priorities and approaches were shaped and dictated. Geopolitics is the study of the relationship between politics and geographical conditions based on which a particular country or countries adopt policy and strategy to assert position on the global or regional issues.  It is to do with intermingling of geography and other dynamics like history, economics, politics, demographic nature, culture, military capability and recently technology. All nations are sovereign and are, in principle, free to make their own choices in policy formulation. But nations’ choices are often dictated by geop