Striving From Survival To Progress

For a long time, Nepal's foreign policy was couched in a struggle for survival between contesting empires. It sought to avoid a phase of “silent cry” when it found no reliable friend to support its struggle except dense forests and high mountains. The quality of survival depended on its leaders’ ability to take prudent decisions based on the nation’s core national interests and ward off adverse extension of outsiders’ ideas, culture and policies. Now Nepal is no longer cut off from the means of support of contemporary society and the world. It is utilising small state virtues attached to it and looking for peaceful coexistence and cooperation with powerful neighbours-- India and China, without giving up its syncretic culture, values and freedom-loving national character that conferred it a distinct sense of national identity in the comity of nations.