Pompeo’s claim that India-Pakistan was on brink of nuclear war typical US fiction: Experts

“Pompeo’s claim is far from truth. It’s part of a typical US fiction on South Asia in which India and Pakistan are projected as antagonists constantly at war.
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (File photo| AP)
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (File photo| AP)

BENGALURU:  Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s claim in his memoir, Never Given an Inch, that India and Pakistan came to the “brink of nuclear war” post the Balakot strike on February 26, 2019, and the US intervention that prevented the situation from escalating has been rubbished by top sources, who were privy to the affairs and India’s response to Pulwama attack for which the banned Pakistan-based-terrorist outfit - Jaishe- Mohammed (JeM) had claimed responsibility.

“I don’t think the world knows just how close India- Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019,” Pompeo wrote in his autobiography. “Pompeo’s claim is far from the truth. It’s part of a typical US fiction on South Asia in which India and Pakistan are projected as antagonists constantly at war.

Pompeo has spun the same narrative to gain more traction for his book. Pakistan, which has been using the threat of its nuclear power as deterrence, didn’t even strike back militarily against India in response to Balakot,” sources told TNIE, on condition of anonymity.

‘Air strike called Pakistan’s bluff’

“The next day, on February 27, they came up to the Pakistan-occupied- Kashmir (PoK) and returned without hitting any target in India,” said sources. Pakistan had denied Balakot strike and took defence attaches to what they identified as Balakot aerial strike location 48 days after the IAF ops. Balakot strike was not a military operation against the Pakistan army or state, said sources.

“It was a precise air strike to destroy the JeM training camp and seminary on Jabba Top - a hill top - in Balakot in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa (KP) after the terrorists claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were martyred on February 14, 2019. The air strike called Pakistan’s bluff on the nuclear threshold threat,” they added. While India follows the doctrine of No First Use (NFU) of its nuclear weapons, Pakistan claims to have a low threshold of nuclear deterrence.

“They use it more as a threat. The underlying code behind nuclear deterrence is to avoid what military strategists call, mutually agreed destruction (MAD). In a nuclear war there are no winners,” said a strategic expert. The IAF could not carry the initial bomb damage assessment of the air strike because of inclement weather on February 26 and the following days, they did an evaluation of the air strike and found that the Spice 2000 penetration bombs that were released by the Mirage 2000s to hit the targets at Balakot had “worked exactly as advertised.

The IA F was very clear where the weapons went,” said sources. Spice 2000, manufactured by Israel, belongs to the family of precision guided munition with an advanced data link and DSMAC (digital scene matching area correlator) - an autonomous missile guidance concept based on area correlation of sensed ground scenes. “Spice 2000 was imported from Israel in 2013 and first used in the Balakot air strike codenamed Operation Bandar,” added sources.

“Balakot was an operation to send a strong message to Pakistan that India will retaliate massively if they mess around with us. It was one of the main reasons why we didn’t have major trouble from across the border after the Articles 370 and 35(A) were abrogated in August 2019,” said sources.

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