Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, when asked if she will use her House seat as a platform to run for the United States presidency in 2028, said, in her usual forthright manner, that Republicans assume her ambition is ‘positional’. She implies that the assumption that she wants a platform for herself via a high position is a deeply cynical one. Actually, her ambition is much higher. What she wants is healthcare covered by the State, living wages, workers’ rights, women’s rights—changes that will last forever, not a position that is finite.

Today’s leaders in Nepal should take note. While many of us continue to believe that RSP leaders have good intentions, it is also important to keep in mind that politics is not just about position and the heady power that comes with it. It is about bringing about real change. Recently, another outspoken young woman, Sobita Gautam, the current Law Minister, was interviewed at length, where she also emphasised that politics is not about glamour; it is about putting in real work towards change.

As the RSP’s 100 days are over and we are looking towards the upcoming five years, the commitment to strengthening Nepal’s social and economic landscape is crucial to its global and geo-political situation. Our foreign policy has long been dictated by men who have wielded kompromat and used the excuse of realpolitik to fulfil their own interests. With a brand new set of more principled leaders, one hopes that kind of warped behaviour evolves into a more dignified modus operandi.

Regardless of this clean slate, without a long-term strategy of strengthening Nepal itself, our foreign policy will continue to remain feeble. Although landlocked between two behemoth superpowers, Nepal is no longer quite the squishable yam it used to be. To become an economic bridge or ‘buffer’, however, this country must hone its outward strategy with a common-sense approach of multilateralism, shrewd understanding of psychology underscored by strategic intelligence, leading to a steady action-based, long-lasting approach, executed with integrity. These aspects are essential to any sound foreign policy plan but are not nearly enough. Nepal has to be able to generate products that are worth trading so that we can finally negotiate on our own terms.

The obvious options, such as electricity production and export, are not the no-brainers they appear to be. Corruption, transmission infrastructure, procurement challenges, third-country investors and geopolitics, all play a role. The biggest elephant in the room is climate change. Adverse changes in hydrology have already affected many hydropower projects that have come online, and this trend will only continue without an urgent national and global shift in climate policy with actual provisioning, not just sham diplomacy and COP summits in problematic host countries.

Digital transformation is essential, but a thorough SWOT analysis must be conducted before extending that transformation to include exporting processing power and cloud storage. With data centres guzzling water, even with our monsoon surpluses, an investment like this without adequate research could adversely affect Nepal’s water security.

Which leads, of course, to food security. For a country that has so much agricultural promise, Nepal is now importing more food than it exports, and farmers are constantly at the mercy of fertiliser shortages in an increasingly volatile global supply. With no signs of the climate crisis easing, without serious thought towards solutions for securing our water and food supplies, Nepal, already vulnerable, will become cripplingly so. This unpreparedness will only make us ever more malleable on the global political scene, not to mention leaving us without the option to trade for power. The chance to become an agricultural export powerhouse—although decades behind due to malignant short-sightedness—is still possible with the right kind of strategic planning and infrastructure.

The weak education system contributes greatly to our economic situation. Without an outward-looking education plan that concentrates on producing a workforce with global skills, like proficiency with languages, digital familiarity, practical and out-of-the-box thinking (instead of rote skills that will swiftly be rendered obsolete by AI), Nepal will never be able to compete with a far better-trained global workforce. Our youth will go on spending more than they can afford to study abroad, or jump ship the moment they find any, even menial, opportunities abroad, weakening both our output and our communities.

Nepal needs to fully overhaul its byzantine, STEM-heavy education system to prepare for a future where original, ethical, critical and creatively trained minds will be the essential 21st-century skills. These qualities are also vital in the citizens of any country to create a national ethos that is truly liberal, even as it is civic-minded. This is the kind of training that will produce future entrepreneurs and diplomats who are profoundly engaged with Nepal’s languages, culture, domestic intricacies, strengths and weaknesses, in addition to being able to assess complex situations and sift fake news from facts—all crucial now to function at an international level.

Take Korea’s unparalleled soft power in the form of K-Pop, K-Drama and K-Beauty. These homegrown creative industries, drawing on Korea’s historical cultural strengths, have now provided that country with employment, worldwide recognition and an enormous boost in its balance of trade, all the while shoring up their resilience. Such creative industries require very little aside from ideas and intellectual property development for success. Little is imported; everything can be exported.

Investment in these domestically strong industries created an opportunity for strong export and diplomacy. Everyone knows who they are, thanks to these exports. Korea is now recognised for positive creativity instead of its endemic problems of misogyny and low birth rate. One only has to shudder through Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning, searing meta-fable of domestic abuse and women-hating toxic masculinity, to see that Korean culture is not just fresh-faced glass skin, K-pop demon hunters, and happy romances.

With this new government and sincere leadership from the likes of people like Foreign Minister Sishir Khanal, whose pedigree of civil society activism is hard to match, one hopes for more space for marginalised women in diplomatic positions who will represent those who have been historically sidelined, making them the face of the country. Nepal must look inwards to strengthen its own inclusiveness and society even as it navigates the complexity of its geographical and global position by shoring up its own strengths instead of flexing wildly against forces that cannot be matched without doing our own exercises first.

Foreign policy is not about building one’s own social and political capital for personal ambition. It is not about position or glamour. It is about investing in Nepal’s culture and communities, researching and strategising on how to leverage this country’s human, social, natural, financial and physical capital for the benefit of all its 30 million people to negotiate and compete on par with the world in an increasingly globalised landscape.