It is possible to be pedantic about the plausibility of the term, but Israel has made no attempts to hide its genocidal intentions in Gaza. The Israeli military’s relentless campaign is an exemplar of the textbook definition of genocide: “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race”.

The geoeconomics—the interplay of international economics, geopolitics and strategy—of fossil fuels prevents Western powers from speaking against the country they helped create and sustain in the middle of the Arab World to protect their long-term interests. Volatile West Asia holds almost half of the known fossil fuel reserve globally.

In the early 1970s, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) refused to sell crude to the USA. The subsequent Oil Shock prompted a serious search for substitutes for fossil fuel. The petroleum lobby, however, has succeeded in scuttling most such efforts in the countries of the West.

The energy angle of the Ukraine-Russia conflict is less discussed. However, Russian natural gas continues to light large parts of Europe, and its oil supply powers the engines of economic growth in China and India. There must be a reason the USA has decided to pump in $61 billion and $26 billion aid into the foreign frontiers of the West in Ukraine and Israel, respectively. Fossil fuel supplies have to be secure, and their prices must remain stable to maintain the hegemonic order of the West. A lead in the search for alternative energy will determine the future of geoeconomics and ultimately redefine the geopolitics of the 21st century.

Alternative energy is an umbrella term encompassing everything from water, wind and the sun to the gas produced from animal waste. These green and renewable sources that do not use the earth's natural resources or harm the environment are sustainable and dependable alternatives.

Other than environmentally harmful fossil fuels and the radioactive risks of nuclear power, all sources are also relatively safer alternatives for producing, distributing, and using energy. With the supply and price of fossil fuels becoming more volatile and the hazards of nuclear power plants becoming more alarming, rethinking alternatives has become imperative. The Chinese have been putting much effort into exploring options at home and abroad as they are less invested in traditional energy sources.

Emergent Beijing

While commercial vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) still dominate the highways, electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly becoming popular as modes of personal transport. Concerns about carbon emissions and their consequences on climate change will likely push the conversion from ICE to EV even further and faster. China has emerged as the biggest producer of EVs, the largest fabricator of batteries and the processor of more than half of its crucial inputs, such as lithium, cobalt and graphite globally.

With an installed capacity of 22,500 megawatts, the “Three Gorges Dam” is the most productive hydroelectric dam in the world. China is way ahead of everyone else in developing renewable energy. In 2023, the country’s installed solar electric power generation capacity reportedly rose by 55.2 percent, and wind power generation capacity jumped by 20.7 percent. The Chinese are also world leaders in hydrogen cell production and use.

It is almost impossible to ensure energy security, let alone produce enough electricity for export, without some form of Chinese participation in financing, construction and operation of power plants in Nepal. India’s commitment to purchasing 10,000 MW of electricity over the next decade through a long-term Power Trade Agreement (PTA) has opened the door for foreign direct investment in renewable energy. Nevertheless, the latch of procedural impediments remains in place.

Buried inside a 40-page bureaucratese of the Indian Ministry of Power, the 6.3 Eligibility criteria of the “Procedure for Approval and Facilitating Import/Export (Cross Border) of Electricity by the Designated Authority” sets forth the condition that the power export entity not be “any natural/ legal personality(ies) whose effective control or source of funds or residence of beneficial owner, is situated in/ citizen of a third country with whom India shares land border and that third country does not have a bilateral agreement on power sector cooperation with India.”

In effect, the procedural guideline says without mincing its words: You can have anyone build, own and operate electricity plants in Nepal, but please keep China out of it! But it also contains a caveat: “For any relaxation in this provision, the Designated Authority will consult Ministry of Power and Ministry of External Affairs.” Perhaps it implies that political negotiations can help remove the latch and allow Nepal to benefit from Chinese participation in power projects as long as the bugbear of Indians—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—is kept out of the arrangement.

The Maoist leadership has realised that Nepal is India-locked for all practical purposes. There is a limit to what trans-Himalayan connectivity can do to transform a remittance-dependent and consumption-based economy. Finance Minister Barshaman Pun met Chinese ambassador Chen Song before embarking on his Washington trip to court the Bretton Woods sisters—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—for more funds.

If the Chinese investment in hydroelectric projects in Nepal is routed through international institutions, Indians will probably have a face-saving excuse to draw downstream benefits from the regulated water flow of tributaries of the Ganga River. Even though the funding from the Asian Development Bank has failed to change the fate of the Gautam Buddha International Airport in Bhairahawa, getting international agencies and multinational corporations involved in the hydroelectric projects of Nepal is perhaps a more workable idea than handing them over to Indian entities and face an inefficient execution or invite their ire by getting the Chinese parastatals on board.

Enigmatic Washington

Apart from both Asian countries being landlocked, there is another relationship between Laos and Nepal that is not often mentioned in polite conversations. When Americans were raining cluster bombs upon the newly independent territories of the former French Indochina in the name of saving Vietnam from communists, the US dumped “more than 2.5M tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing sorties—equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years”, the devastating campaign was partly being directed from Kathmandu.

It is said that when Ellsworth Bunker hesitated to accept the offer of being appointed the US ambassador to Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave him the authority to use a special aircraft to visit his spouse Carol Laise who happened to be the US ambassador in Nepal. Even after the war ended, the USA made little effort to help Laos stand on its feet.

Despite the risk of a possible debt trap, the Chinese have invested heavily in Laotian hydropower and turned it into the battery of Southeast Asia with an economic growth rate of 7 percent. The Laos-China Railway is a technological marvel. The possibility of Indo-Chinese cooperation with European assistance for hydropower development in Nepal must be on the agenda of the Nepal Investment Summit 2024.