On August 26, 2026, a catastrophic flood hit Nepal’s Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts, leaving a trail of death and destruction on the Tibet-Nepal border. Initially, the cause of the disaster was reported as an earthquake, but the US Geological Survey later said that it was likely a powerful glacier collapse that caused it. This triggered an ice-rock avalanche, which turned into a massive debris flow down the Bhote Koshi River. As of now, the massive flood has killed more than 1,450 people, with over 6,000 still missing.
On August 26, the same day the disaster hit Nepal, India quickly responded by sending 10 tonnes of emergency aid. India’s disaster response did not stop there. Later, New Delhi sent medical personnel and tunnel rescue teams to Nepal to assist in flood operations. As of today, India has sent more than 140 tonnes of emergency relief material and personnel to the neighbour in need.
The devastating flood also affected parts of China, including infrastructure around Kyirong Port. By August 30, Beijing had started extending assistance to Nepal by providing $2 million in emergency funds. China later dispatched around 50 tonnes of emergency relief supplies and multiple teams of tunnel rescue specialists to Nepal.
With the latest announcement of $31 million in long-term recovery aid, relief support to Nepal from the US has reached more than $36 million. The United States has announced that the allocated funds will be used to build bridges, address civic needs, and support the deployment of drones in future disaster recovery efforts.
India was the first nation to respond to the Nepal floods by dispatching tonnes of relief material, as well as consignments that included specialised search-and-rescue and forensic capabilities. By sending 10 tonnes of assistance on the same day the flood hit Nepal, India reiterated its first-responder status.
When looking carefully at the framing and communication by the Ministry of External Affairs and other Indian ministers, India made sure to reaffirm its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.
This is not the first time India has responded quickly to a tragedy. During the 2015 Nepal earthquake, India launched ‘Operation Maitri’, deploying the Indian Army, the Air Force and specialised teams.
‘Operation Brahma’ in 2025 during the massive earthquake in Myanmar, and ‘Operation Sagar Bandhu’ in the same year to support Sri Lanka when Cyclone Ditwah devastated the country, followed a similar pattern.
This pattern is not new and has not been without hurdles. India has faced criticism and accusations regarding its contingent allegedly hindering other countries’ aid efforts, as well as criticism over insensitive reporting by Indian media during ‘Operation Maitri’.
The ‘first responder’ and ‘Neighbourhood First’ are not just framings and wordings India has maintained during these rescue missions; they are also presented as examples of the soft-power narrative the country has been cultivating.
China entered the rescue operation a little later than India. However, that was not the criticism that put China under scrutiny during the flood. The way China handled information and data related to the disaster was where the country invited criticism.
While Nepal released information related to the deceased and missing, China delayed releasing this information for days. The tight control of the internet and media in China caused friction in data transfer.
The ‘Clean Internet 2026’ campaign in China, which regulates and censors unofficial narratives and independent reporting, suppressed disaster information from the public and media outside the country. Many videos and pieces of information were immediately taken down after they were uploaded, raising questions about transparency in information sharing, especially when thousands of families were waiting for information about missing people.
This is not the only issue that brought criticism towards China. Nepal has long complained that it receives little real-time hydrological or glacial-lake data from across the Chinese border, despite the fact that well over a thousand of the glacial lakes feeding Nepal’s river systems sit on the Tibetan side of the frontier, several of them flagged as high-risk.
However, Beijing treats this data as sensitive because, for China, Tibet is a militarised and politically fraught frontier. The absence of any functioning early-warning mechanism between the two countries was not just an information failure during the disaster; it also highlighted the need for stronger systems to provide systematic warnings to people in the future.
US diplomacy was not proactive like India’s and China’s; it was reactive after being called out and criticised for the inadequate relief support initially provided by the country.
‘Pitiful’ and ‘embarrassing’ were the words used by aid experts to describe the US’ initial $500,000 relief support to Nepal. The dissolution of USAID in 2025 by the Trump administration became a major point for experts to show the inadequacy of the government compared with what USAID could have done.
The US response eventually came under pressure at home after a public letter sent by 27 members of Congress to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. The letter demanded that the government use ‘every available resource’ to help find the missing Americans as well as help disaster-hit Nepal with rescue and relief aid.
The explicit mention of countries that had extended support to Nepal until then put the US in a contest that it had not realised it was in.
Within days, the pledge jumped to $3.6 million, and the latest development was an additional $31 million, bringing the cumulative total to more than $36 million.
The US relief aid diplomacy did not look like the confident, first-responding approach India showcased. It looked like damage control executed under domestic pressure, with relief arriving later.
While looking at the disaster aid extended by other countries, it is important to consider Nepal’s current political scenario.
Youth-led protests toppled the government of KP Sharma Oli in September 2025, and this spring, voters handed a landslide victory to Balendra ‘Balen’ Shah, a 35-year-old former Kathmandu mayor and rapper.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Balen Shah's previous decisions and actions have created friction for both neighbouring countries. He has previously circulated a 'Greater Nepal' map that claims Indian territory, as well as cancelled a trip to China over a separate border-map dispute.
With the ousting of Oli, the balancing act of the Nepali Congress, which preferred India as a partner, and the Communist parties of Nepal, which enjoyed close relations with China, has completely changed Nepal’s political landscape and foreign diplomacy.
Amid the unpredictability of the new government, disaster relief as a form of soft-power diplomacy plays a significant role. While India and China seek to showcase their support to influence an unpredictable Nepal, Washington has joined the effort to stay relevant.
The soft-power diplomacy through disaster relief by all three countries became more complicated, and also more necessary, when Balen Shah started asking India, China, and the US to take accountability for the floods.
Prime Minister Shah thanked India, China and the US for their relief measures. However, he has explicitly named the same countries as major greenhouse gas emitters and argued that the floods were caused by the same climatic conditions.
The Nepalese government asked the countries to take accountability, and Nepal’s foreign ministry has also publicly stated that it is shifting its diplomatic framework from aid to justice and compensation.
Kathmandu has already sought support through the International Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, and Shah is reportedly raising concerns about Nepal's climate crisis and disaster loss in the UN General Assembly on September 24.
So the same countries that are racing to be the first and most visible supporters of Nepal’s disaster management are also the countries that, in Nepal’s narrative, bear responsibility for the conditions behind the disaster.
What the Nepal floods make visible, more than any single act of generosity or negligence, is how thin the line has become between humanitarian response and geopolitical performance.
India got there first because arriving first is part of the policy. China provided relief but, through what the draft describes as its secrecy, undercut the story it was trying to tell. The United States initially provided limited support before increased assistance followed pressure from its citizens and Congress.
The question that matters most is not which country helped the most or raced to the scene first. The larger question is whether, amid the race to save face and assert importance through disaster diplomacy, countries are prioritising the lives affected by the disaster or whether relief is also being used as an instrument of soft-power diplomacy.