By any measure, Nepal has been a political tinderbox for decades. But what unfolded this past week — a youth-driven revolt that left more than 20 dead, torched the homes of senior politicians, toppled a prime minister, and sent the army onto the streets — isn’t merely a domestic implosion. It’s a case study in how decades of foreign influence, naïve aid politics, and strategic complacency can fertilize instability until one social spark ignites an inferno.

Let’s start with the spark. The government’s abrupt ban on 26 social media platforms — including the ones that connect Nepal’s vast diaspora to their families — was like dousing gasoline on already simmering resentment. TikTok, ironically spared from the ban, became the organizing hub for what would become Nepal’s Gen-Z revolt. But the fire was fed by years of corruption, nepotism, and political paralysis — thirteen governments since 2008, each as feckless as the last.

Add to that the viral “Nepo Kid” campaign, in which the children of the political class flaunted luxury cars, foreign degrees, and lavish weddings while ordinary youth took one-way flights to the Gulf for menial jobs. The anger wasn’t merely moral. It was existential: a generation realizing that the system wasn’t broken — it was working exactly as designed, just not for them.

But to stop there is to see only the surface. Nepal’s tragedy is not merely that of corrupt elites. It’s a story of how Western intervention, dressed as development aid and democracy promotion, often leaves countries brittle, exposed, and vulnerable to collapse — and then pretends innocence when the inevitable reckoning arrives.

Consider the $500 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact, billed as an infrastructure lifeline but widely perceived in........

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