Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated in a book published on Tuesday (January 24) that India and Pakistan were on the edge of a nuclear war in 2019, but that US involvement prevented the situation from worsening.
“I do not think the world properly knows just how close the India and Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019,” the likely future presidential contender wrote in “Never Give an Inch,” the memoir of his time as Donald Trump’s top diplomat and earlier CIA chief.
According to Reuters, India stated that the deadly attack on an Indian police convoy in Kashmir in February 2019 was carried out by the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Jaish-e Mohammed, and urged its neighbor to take action against militant groups operating on its territory.
“He believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, was contemplating its own escalation,” Pompeo wrote.
According to Pompeo, US authorities persuaded both Pakistan and India that they had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
In an allusion to the vulnerability of civilian regimes, Pompeo claimed to have spoken with “the actual leader of Pakistan,” the country’s then-army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, after saying that Pakistan “probably aided” the Kashmir attack.
Pompeo explicitly supported India’s ability to respond at the moment. In his book, Pompeo complimented India and, unlike New Delhi officials, made no secret of his desire to build an alliance with the South Asian democracy “to counteract Chinese aggression.”
Both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear bomb tests in 1998, making it a pivotal year for both South Asian countries. Kashmir, which is divided between the two countries, was dubbed “the most dangerous place in the world” by former US President Bill Clinton.