America's new NSA: What can Pakistan expect?

WASHINGTON: The new United States National Security Advisor (NSA) John Bolton, known for being a hawk in diplomatic circles, may not be as hard on Pakistan as President Donald Trump expects him to be.

Several media interviews with Bolton suggests that while he believes Pakistan does need to be dealt with firmly, the US needs to strike a delicate balance in the matter and leave the heavy lifting to China.

Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, believes that Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state, is perpetually teetering on the brink of embracing Islamic extremism and terror. And pushing it too hard could well lead to it becoming “a terrorist country with nuclear weapons”, or as Bolton described it last August to Breitbart, “Iran or North Korea on steroids”.

Bolton’s interview with Breitbart took place right after Trump announced his administration’s new policy on Afghanistan, which entailed putting pressure on Pakistan to end what Trump described as “safe havens to agents of chaos and terror”.

Bolton said he believes the US goal should be preventing the Taliban from taking back control and a key ally in the fulfillment of that goal, whether anyone likes it or not, is Pakistan.

“Let’s come to the Pakistan point: it’s clear the President wants to pressure Pakistan more. Well, I agree with that, and I think Obama didn’t pressure them enough. But there’s a real problem with simply saying, ‘By God, we’re going to squeeze Pakistan until they finally push the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmati out of the privileged sanctuaries they’ve had in Pakistan, push them back into Afghanistan, and stop supplying them, stop giving them weapons, stop giving them money’ “, said Bolton to Breitbart.

Bolton said the problem with such an approach is that it might lead to a situation where anti-US sentiment fuels popular support for Islamist radicals and the Taliban.

“If you push too hard, this government in Pakistan is fragile. It has been since the partition of British India …The military in Pakistan itself is at risk, increasingly, of being infiltrated through the officer ranks by radical Islamists,” he explained.

Bolton said it is the “the ultimate risk” if radicals take over the Pakistan government completely.

“…if Pakistani Taliban or other radicals took control of that country, it wouldn’t just be another base to launch terrorist operations against us or Western Europe. It would be a terrorist country with nuclear weapons, so it would be Iran or North Korea on steroids right now,” he warned.

Bolton wrote last August in The Wall Street Journal that too much pressure on Pakistan could backfire.

“Putting too much pressure on Pakistan risks further destabilising the already volatile country, tipping it into the hands of domestic radical Islamists, who grow stronger by the day. In this unstable environment, blunt pressure by the US – and, by inference, India – could backfire,” said Bolton in a column for the Journal.

The new NSA said that here is where China can step in and should be pressured, as it is the key to keeping the house of cards from collapsing in Pakistan, and has greater influence in Pakistan than the US.

“If American pressure were enough to compel Pakistan to act decisively against the terrorists within its borders, that would have happened long ago. What President Trump needs is a China component to his nascent South Asia policy, holding Beijing accountable for the misdeeds that helped create the current strategic danger,” wrote Bolton.

Bolton had expressed similar views before last year as well after the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2011, saying there was a lot of opposition in the US Congress about continuing aid to Pakistan.

“There are few recipients of foreign aid that attract more opposition in Congress than Pakistan,” said Bolton on Fox News in 2013.