Ex US Secretary of State Pompeo: India, Pakistan Came Close to Nuclear War in 2019

[RiazHaq]

#India, #Pakistan came close to a #nuclear war, claims ex US Sec of State Mike Pompeo. His Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj called, told him that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack after #Balakot strike in February 2019 & India ready to retaliate

https://www.thehindu.com/news/natio...tary-of-state-in-new-book/article66429650.ece


Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that he was “awakened” to speak to his then Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj who told him that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack after the Balakot surgical strike in February 2019 and India is preparing its own escalatory response.

In his latest book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love that hit the stores on Tuesday, Mr. Pompeo says the incident took place when he was in Hanoi for the U.S.-North Korea Summit on February 27-28 and his team worked overnight with both New Delhi and Islamabad to avert this crisis.

 

[Path-Finder]

maybe if few sparks were exchanged, who knows maybe it would have woken up the people and made them better. maybe!

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

Pakistan wasted an opportunity to strike big and hard.

 

[RiazHaq]

Stimson Poll: Vast Majority of Indians Believe Nuclear War Against Pakistan is Winnable

Vast majority of Indians, including those who oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi, believe that nuclear war is "winnable", according to the ...

www.southasiainvestor.com

Vast majority of Indians, including those who oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi, believe that nuclear war is "winnable", according to the results of a Stimson Center poll released recently. They want their country to build a bigger nuclear arsenal than China and Pakistan combined. Responding to the clamor for more nukes, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in 2019 that Indian nuclear weapons were not kept as mere showpieces. Strong belief about India's ability to win a nuclear war against Pakistan cuts across party lines with 91% of those who support Mr. Modi and 85% of those who don't. Recently, a group of researchers at Rutgers University considered a hypothetical nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan as they believed such a conflict was the most likely. The group warned that an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange will be catastrophic for the region with tens of millions of immediate fatalities in the war zone, followed by hundreds of millions of starvation deaths around the globe.

Indians Believe Nuclear War is Winnable. Source: Stimson Center

The poll also finds that the overwhelming majority of Indians are confident their military can defeat both China and Pakistan. They expect that the United States military would come to India's aid in the event of a war with China or Pakistan. Stimson Center analysts believe that "Indian self-confidence may lead to mistaken popular views of Indian military prowess: India has considerable military capabilities against its most likely regional opponents. Yet Indian confidence that India would likely defeat China or Pakistan may exceed what a careful net assessment might warrant".

Nuclear Arsenals of India, Pakistan and China. Source: The Economist

The nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan and China are small but growing faster than those of other nuclear-armed countries, according to a report in The Economist magazine. The combined nuclear stockpiles of China (350 warheads), India (160) and Pakistan (165) now exceed British and French arsenals in Europe (around 500 in total). All three countries are now building their own nuclear “triads”: nukes deliverable from land, air and sea.

The Stimson survey was conducted by phone with a random sample of 7000 Indians between April 13 and May 14, 2022. Below are its key findings as reported by Christopher Clary, Sameer Lalwani, Niloufer Siddiqui and Neelanjan Sircar:

1. High levels of support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who likely remains among the most popular national leaders in the world today;

2. Extraordinary nationalist sentiment among Indians, at high levels compared to prior cross-national surveys using identical question wording;

3. Troubling signs of intolerance toward India’s large Muslim minority, which helps provide context to recent controversies;

4. Strong confidence in the Indian government’s ability to defend India against potential domestic and foreign threats;

5. Expectations among a majority of Indian respondents that the U.S. military would support India in the event of a war with China or Pakistan; and

6. Large majorities in favor of Indian numerical nuclear superiority against its adversaries.

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[Wesen Hunter]

Mortal blow to Pakistani claims that a Su-30 was shot down:

“After an Islamist terrorist attack in Kashmir - probably enabled in part by Pakistan’s lax counterterror policies - killed forty Indians, India responded with an air strike against terrorists inside Pakistan. The Pakistanis shot down a plane in a subsequent dogfight and kept the Indian pilot prisoner,” he said.


“In Hanoi, I was awakened to speak with my Indian counterpart. He [referring to Swaraj] believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, was contemplating its own escalation. I asked him to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out (sic),” Mr. Pompeo writes in his book.

“I began to work with Ambassador (then National Security Adviser John) Bolton, who was with me in the tiny secure communications facility in our hotel. I reached the actual leader of Pakistan, (Army chief) General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, with whom I had engaged many times. I told him what the Indians had told me. He said it wasn’t true,” Mr. Pompeo says.

“As one might expect, he believed the Indians were preparing their nuclear weapons for deployment. It took us a few hours — and remarkably good work by our teams on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad — to convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war,” the 59-year-old top former American diplomat writes in his book.

 

[Avicenna]

This book should probably be in the fiction section.

 

[Erieye]

Mortal blow to Pakistani claims that a Su-30 was shot down:

“After an Islamist terrorist attack in Kashmir - probably enabled in part by Pakistan’s lax counterterror policies - killed forty Indians, India responded with an air strike against terrorists inside Pakistan. The Pakistanis shot down a plane in a subsequent dogfight and kept the Indian pilot prisoner,” he said.


“In Hanoi, I was awakened to speak with my Indian counterpart. He [referring to Swaraj] believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, was contemplating its own escalation. I asked him to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out (sic),” Mr. Pompeo writes in his book.

“I began to work with Ambassador (then National Security Adviser John) Bolton, who was with me in the tiny secure communications facility in our hotel. I reached the actual leader of Pakistan, (Army chief) General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, with whom I had engaged many times. I told him what the Indians had told me. He said it wasn’t true,” Mr. Pompeo says.

There's no mortal blow, unlike you they are neutral and professional observers. They won't mention any unverified claims that are not concrete.

Notice how the magical F-16 hasn't been shot down outside of bollywood

 

[Smoke]

Pompus pompeo is peddling fiction as facts

 

[RiazHaq]

Sushma Swaraj "Wasn't Important Player": 5 Top Quotes From Mike Pompeo Book

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/mik...ming-us-stopped-india-pak-nuclear-war-3722522

Mike Pompeo's "Never Give an Inch," his memoir of his time as Donald Trump's top diplomat and earlier CIA chief, was published on Tuesday.

Here are the top five points Mike Pompeo made his new book:​

1. Mr Pompeo claimed he was awakened some time in 2019 to speak to his then Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj who told him that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack in the wake of the Balakot surgical strike and India is preparing its own response.
2. "I do not think the world properly knows just how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019. The truth is, I don't know precisely the answer either; I just know it was too close," Mr Pompeo wrote.
3. The former US official said he spoke to Ms Swaraj who "believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he (sic) informed me, was contemplating its own escalation". "I asked him to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out... No other nation could have done what we did that night to avoid a horrible outcome," he wrote.
4. Mr Pompeo said Pakistan "probably enabled" the attack on security forces in Pulwama, which triggered the Balakot strike, said he spoke to "the actual leader of Pakistan," then army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in an allusion to the weakness of civilian governments.
5. In comments critical of Sushma Swaraj, Mr Pompeo wrote, "On the Indian side, my original counterpart was not an important player on the Indian foreign policy team. Instead, I worked much more closely with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, a close and trusted confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi".

 

[Destranator]

There could have been a nuclear war if F-16s and Su-30s were actually shot down and not just fancied.