[factorialboy]

First, Maldives.

Then, Bangladesh,

Now, Nepal.

An unstable Nepal allows the destabilization of two critical states in India.

Regime change in India is the big prize.

--

China and India do meddle.

But a classic color revolution, such as this one, is the signature of you-know-who.

[JumpCrisscross]

> a classic color revolution, such as this one, is the signature of you-know-who

I literally don’t.

[adgjlsfhk1]

there's a conspiracy theory that every revolution of the past 100 years was caused by the cia.

[snapcaster]

I don't like comments like this, because while you're right that many people think everything happening everywhere is the CIA. The CIA (and US gov) _has_ been involved in an absurd amount of regime changes (that we know about). CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

[seanmcdirmid]

If the CIA was even close to being that competent our foreign policy and intelligence wouldn’t be so horrible.

A lot of authoritarians just like to blame their self grown domestic problems on the CIA. China having another stock market crash? The CIA must have done it.

[bigyabai]

Yes and no. Very few contemporary governments are accusing the CIA of starting color revolutions, especially nowadays.

But historically there are definitely examples of the CIA achieving this. Iran's 1953 coup was overwhelmingly successful and a joint operation between MI6 and CIA. The consequences irrevocably tipped the balance of power away from Pan-Arabism and towards a globalist, American-driven order.

[HankStallone]

> If the CIA was even close to being that competent our foreign policy and intelligence wouldn’t be so horrible.

True, if the goal of the CIA is to provide quality intelligence to the elected US government. That's a pretty big assumption, though.

[JumpCrisscross]

> CIA involvement in something like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand

Without evidence, yes, it should be. Just as it should be dismissed, if proposed without evidence, that this was the product of Indian, Chinese or Iranian meddling. Particularly when we have credible evidence going the other way of legitimate reasons a population would flip out.

[devsda]

US with its control of social media etc can push a narrative to instigate population of friendly or unfriendly countries. There's no way to know say for sure whether the protests were organic or inorganic.

Every country has problems that atleast look worthy of an uprising. CIA has both the means and the track record of messing with countries, so its natural to be suspicious.

If Russia had control of social media narrative in US and wanted to cause trouble, nobody would know for sure if an uprising was due to their meddling or due to current political climate.

Lack of evidence doesn't prove or disprove anything.

[keybored]

How even-handed and fair.

These entities are in the business—by their very nature—to lie and hide their activities as much as possible.[1] To dismiss speculation out-of-hand because it has no evidence is ludicrous.

[1] Not only that but to actively push counter-narratives.

[snapcaster]

Please go through the article I linked and find some 20th century examples. _at the time of the conspiracy_ there was no solid evidence of their involvement. That implies your method isn't actually a good way to be aware of the ones the CIA is _actually doing_ versus authoritarians coping for their own failures

[AnimalMuppet]

When the CIA does something, we at the time don't know that the CIA is doing it (if they're doing it competently). That is true.

But run the experiment the other way. A friend of mine once said that if a light bulb burns out on Tierra Del Fuego, somebody claims that it's a CIA conspiracy. Of all the public claims (gated by some level of seriousness or authority) of CIA involvement, what fraction turned out to be true?

[JumpCrisscross]

Oh yeah, I saw it in India when Bangladesh fell. Couldn’t possibly be her incessant and well-documented corruption. I also think Barack Obama was somehow involved.

[don_esteban]

Corruption is endemic in many places, but somehow the chance of regime change is more correlated with unwillingness to follow the USA dictate than with corruption ....

[JumpCrisscross]

> somehow the chance of regime change is more correlated with unwillingness to follow the USA dictate than with corruption

What did Nepal fail to do for America that supposedly caused this?

[don_esteban]

Nepal is probably safe from US meddling (US has no interests there, India and China meddle in Nepal enough).

Pakistan/Bangladesh is another manner. The way Imran Khan was ousted...

[cherryteastain]

In their defense, quite a few were

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9ta...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9...

[JumpCrisscross]

> quite a few were

Bay of Pigs wasn't a revolution, it was a failed invasion. The others, however, absolutely were instigated by the CIA.

You can compile similar lists for Iran, Russia, France and India. Reflexively dismissing every coup, much less protest, as the product of foreign involvement without evidence isn't thoughtful.

[cherryteastain]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_2506

> Brigade 2506 (Brigada Asalto 2506) was a CIA-sponsored group of Cuban exiles formed in 1960 to attempt the military overthrow of the Cuban government headed by Fidel Castro. It carried out the abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion landings in Cuba on 17 April 1961.

[JumpCrisscross]

Fair enough, the U.S. tried to be clandestine.

[keybored]

Calling theories about the CIA conspiracy-theories is like calling General Relativity a physics-theory. Well, yeah, you are correct.

[seanmcdirmid]

Nepal has always been somewhat of a basket case. Remember when their prince went nuts and shot the royal family up? Then the whole country went through the wringer in the mid-00s.

Shame, it’s one place I really want to visit, but it seems like it will be a bit of a challenge (well, at least not Iran-level challenge, which is another place I want to visit someday and has different but even bigger problems).

[objektif]

It is the most fascinating country I have ever been to.

[alephnerd]

KP Sharma Oli is pro-China which even Nepali media has pointed out [0]. And his formative years were spent growing up in a village (Garamani) barely 30 km outside Naxalbari during the Naxalbari Uprising, and attended secondary school barely 5 miles (Mechinagar) away from Naxalbari during the uprising.

In Nepali politics, Sher Bahadur Deuba is pro-India and Prachanda is pro-Prachanda (will back India some years, other years will back China).

The whole Indian internet conspiracy of "CIA ki saazish" is ridiculous when the US has barely 20 India scholars at all. There is 0 domain experience in India studies in the US, and that reflects in America's South Asia strategy (there is none).

[0] - https://kathmandupost.com/columns/2025/09/07/oli-s-diplomati...

[selimthegrim]

Did the departments at Berkeley, Columbia and Chicago just turn over and capsize?

[alephnerd]

Their scholars primarily specialize in the history of South Asia, not contemporary foreign relations and strategy in South Asia.

IMO, the only American program that has a good program in Contemporary Indian politics and foreign policy is Stanford, as Sumit Ganguly acts as the primary linkage between American and Indian policymakers, and the FSI and Hoover Institution tends to host Indian policymakers and career bureaucrats as affiliates and fellows. For example, during the US-India trade negotiations, the only public visit Nirmala Sitharaman and her staffers had was at the Hoover Institution [0]. Even the USIBC is hosted at Stanford, and that event has a lot of Indian and American dignitaries and policymakers coming.

Other than Christine Fair and a couple Pakistani fellows at HKS, I can't think of a similar domain experts on Pakistan either in the US.

If you want to study contemporary Indian foreign policy outside of India, your only options are NUS, ANU, Stanford, LSE, and maybe Oxford.

It's the same reason why the best China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea scholars tend to be clustered at Harvard and Stanford.

[0] - https://www.hoover.org/events/laying-foundations-developed-i...

[selimthegrim]

I have gone back-and-forth with Christine Fair on Twitter DMs (she had an issue with a translation I wasn’t credited on) and she certainly has her strongly personal point of view, but she’s got a lot of sharp edges. Maybe Michael what’s his name who is always writing op-eds in Dawn would be another option.

[alephnerd]

> she’s got a lot of sharp edges

Understatement of the year.

> Maybe Michael

I've never been impressed by Michael K. He's tends to view South Asia relations from a NatSec only view that is heavily colored by his experiences during the GWOT.

He isn't the most proficient in understanding the ins-and-outs of institutions. And fundamentally, it's institutions - not interests or personas - that set strategy or goals.

I think he is a good source if we want to understand KPK and transnational terrorism, but not really beyond that.

-----------

And this is the fundamental problem with South Asia studies in the US - almost all academics in the space largely entered during the GWOT or the NPT, and their domain experience is largely around either transnational terror or nuclear posture.

There are almost no academics in the US with US citizenship who have significant experience and knowledge about how institutions work within South Asian countries, and those who have that knowledge decide to retain their home country's citizenship becuase they know they can pull a Raghuram Rajan, Aravind Subramaniam, or a Krishnamurthy Subramanian (no relation to Aravind).

Chinese studies faced the same issues before 2017-19 as well, because there were few Chinese born American naturalized academics with a background in Chinese institutions, plus when I was in college (Obama 1/2) the majority of the limited academic funding in Govt/PoliSci was devoted to Russia, Iran, and the Arabic speaking nations. China was largely viewed the same way India is today and India the same way Vietnam or Indonesia are viewed today in American academia.

These academic blind spots are a major reason why American foreign policy keeps failing - there is almost no domain experience outside of Russia/CEE and MidEast studies in the US. We barely built Chinese studies domain experience but a lot of that is ex-USSR scholars pivoting to China for funding.

[selimthegrim]

Michael Kugelman

[Mistletoe]

I’m hoping the one in Indonesia and this one and others catch fire. The people are starting to realize where all the money is going in the world, straight up to the top.