John Bolton Slams ‘Two-Faced Pakistan’ Over Taliban Support, Proposes Taking Out Country’s Nukes

The hawkish Republican left his post as Donald Trump’s national security advisor in disgrace in late 2019 after the president dismissed his advice to start wars with Iran and North Korea.

Former senior Trump and Bush administration-era official John Bolton has emerged from retirement to call on Washington to take a hard line against Pakistan in the wake of the humiliating collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan, blasting Islamabad over its alleged support for the Taliban*, recommending sanctions and even suggesting that military strikes against the Asian nation’s nukes may be in order if certain conditions were met.

“With Kabul’s fall, the time for neglect or equivocation is over. The Taliban’s takeover next door immediately poses the sharply higher risk that Pakistani extremists will increase their already sizable influence in Islamabad, threatening at some point to seize full control,” Bolton wrote in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post.

Suggesting that Pakistan’s army and the security services, and not the civilian administration, were the real forces in charge of the country today, Bolton argued that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence service “has long been a hotbed of radicalism,” and that this radicalism has “spread throughout the military, to higher and higher ranks.”

Bolton pointed to alleged ISI sanctuary, arms, and supply support to the Taliban inside Pakistan, and suggested that the Afghan Taliban can now “return the sanctuary favour to Pakistani Taliban” after taking Kabul earlier this month.

He added that “the risk in Pakistan” of a “radical regime” coming to power was of “an entirely different order of magnitude, even compared to…al-Qaeda* or the Islamic State* gaining secure bases in Afghanistan,” because Islamabad had as many as 150 nuclear weapons at its disposal.

“Such weapons in the hands of an extremist Pakistan would dramatically imperil India, raising tensions in the region to unprecedented levels,” Bolton argued, adding that “the prospect” of Pakistan “slipping” warheads to terrorists “to detonate anywhere in the world would make a new 9/11 incomparably more deadly.”

Bolton blasted his former boss Donald Trump and President Joe Biden over their decision to withdraw the US from the Afghanistan quagmire, suggesting that the risk of a radicalised Pakistan was one of the reasons the US and NATO needed to stay in the country permanently.

People standing on a vehicle hold Taliban flags as people gather near the Friendship Gate crossing point in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border town of Chaman, Pakistan July 14, 2021. Picture taken July 14, 2021.

© REUTERS / STRINGER

In light of the Afghan government’s unexpected collapse earlier this month, the former official suggested that unless Pakistan’s civilian leaders assert control over the country from the military and security forces, America should cut off its aid to Islamabad, “strike Pakistan from the list of ‘major non-NATO allies,'" "impose anti-terrorist sanctions,” and accelerate its “tilt toward India.”

“Most important,” Bolton warned, “if a future terrorist regime in Islamabad (or even today’s government or like-minded successors) appears ready to transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, we should take preventative action. This is highly unpalatable, but the alternative of allowing these weapons’ use is far worse.”

In a podcast interview with WaPo on Friday following up the publication of his op-ed, Bolton made it explicitly clear that his comments about "preventative action" were a reference to military strikes against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

“We’ve got to absolutely focus on knowing everything we can about not just the warheads, but the delivery systems as well, and whether we get a radical regime in power in Pakistan or the current regime or one like it, if we see those weapons start to move, we’ve got to make sure they don’t go very far,” he said.

Bolton made no mention of the potential fallout of unprovoked US strikes on Pakistan, including the dangers of such an action sparking a major regional conventional or even nuclear war.

Accusing the Pakistanis of engaging in a “two-faced approach” to the US, Bolton suggested that the country has long been providing the Afghan Taliban with cash, weapons, and military advice, while “smiling” in American officials’ faces “and saying they’re not doing it at all.” He recalled that during his time as George W. Bush’s under secretary of state, US officials discovered that Pakistan was providing both the Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuary, “up to and including Osama bin Laden,” who was found living in a mansion near Islamabad when he was supposedly killed in a SEAL Team raid in May 2011.

Bolton’s comments to WaPo are part of a whirlwind string of media appearances he’s made in recent weeks in the wake of the 15 August collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Appearing on CNN, NPR, and other outlets, Bolton has attacked Trump and Biden over the Afghan pullout and indicated repeatedly that if it were up to him, US forces would stay in the war-torn nation forever.

Bolton, 72, has been an enthusiastic supporter of US regime change wars and colour revolutions throughout his adult life, with Trump once saying that he “has never seen a war he doesn’t like.” Trump had a very public falling out with Bolton after firing him from his post as national security advisor in September 2019, with the former president calling Bolton a “dope” and “one of the dumbest people in Washington” – and the former advisor retaliating by publishing a memoir in which he accused Trump of a “stunning” lack of insight into foreign policy, geopolitics, and even basic geography.

Despite his unswerving support for US wars abroad, Bolton managed to avoid being drafted as a young man to fight in the Vietnam War, which he supported, obtaining a student deferment and enlisting in the Maryland Air National Guard instead. This fact has led his detractors to refer to him as a "chicken hawk," eager to promote "hawkish" US policy abroad which might lead to the deaths of US military personnel while being too much of a "chicken" to fight in such conflicts himself.

* Terrorist groups outlawed in Russia and many other countries.