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 C...

 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 dic...

 Yuba Nath Lamsal:- Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite: John Kenneth Galbraith.    Civilisation is the history of human evolution. Human species or Homo Sapiens have existed on earth for over 2, 00,000 years. Human being has arrived at the present stage crisscrossing a long trajectory and different stages of evolution. From primitive age, agricultural civilisation and industrial civilisation, humanity has arrived at the knowledge civilisation.  Now we are in the age of fourth industrial revolution. This is because of humankind’s cognitive power and inquisitive behaviour. The invention of steam engine was the first industrial revolution, electricity marked the second industrial revolution, invention of computer was the third and digitalisation is the fourth industrial revolution. The world is entering into fifth industrial revolution or the age of artificial intelligence in which, according to Yuval Noah Harari, te...

 Yuba Nath Lamsal Results of the November 20 general election are out. No single party has secured a clear majority to run the country on its own strength. The kind of outcome the election has produced is no surprise to all. A hung parliament had been a foregone conclusion even before the polls. The Nepali Congress (NC) has emerged as the largest party in the House of Representatives (HoR), whereas the CPN-UML has secured the second position. The CPN-Maoist Centre is a distant third. A brand new party Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has come up as the fourth force which is a great surprise for many. However, RSP’s sudden emergence has been greater surprise and also a threat to the main and established parties as they had earlier underestimated this party and misunderstood the mood of the voters. The other distinct feature of the election is the slight rise of the traditional Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) that demands to turn the clock of history back to the old monar...

 Yuba Nath Lamsal In the global geopolitical theatre, Europe has always played a central role throughout history. The history of Europe is the history of wars.  European geography was shaped by wars right from the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta to World War II. The present European political constellation is the making of the Second World War fought between two groups of international powers in which the Allies — a group of countries including mainly the United States, Russia and Britain — badly beat the Axis of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan. Germany was divided, Japan was demilitarized and Europe’s map was redrawn splitting the entire continent into American sphere of influence and the region of Russian dominance giving rise to bi-polar world order. The disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991 brought about a tectonic shift in the global geopolitical map in general and the geopolitics of Europe in particular with the world or...