Mike Pompeo’s book: What the former Trump diplomat said about Sushma Swaraj and other big claims

Mike Pompeo is making headlines with his new book. From his opinion of Sushma Swaraj to saying that the United States stepped in to prevent nuclear war between India and Pakistan in 2019, and calling murdered Saudi Arabia dissident Jamal Khashoggi an activist, the former US secretary of state’s book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love is full of biting comments and startling claims. Pompeo, who wrote a memoir of his time as Donald Trump’s top diplomat and being CIA chief earlier, has not ruled out running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, though early polls show little support for him. Let’s take a closer look at the book’s biggest claims: Sushma Swaraj not an ‘important political player’ Pompeo in his book stated that he never saw his former counterpart Sushma Swaraj as an “important political player”. Swaraj, who served as external affairs minister in the first Modi government from May 2014 to May 2019, passed away in August 2019. Pompeo in his book demeaned Swaraj as a “goofball” and “heartland political hack”. [caption id=“attachment_11020661” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Swaraj, who served as external affairs minister in the first Modi government from May 2014 to May 2019, passed away in August 2019. News18[/caption] “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 confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” 59-year-old Pompeo wrote in his book. “My second Indian counterpart was Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. In May 2019, we welcomed “J” as India’s new foreign minister. I could not have asked for a better counterpart. I love this guy. English is one of the seven languages he speaks, and his is somewhat better than mine,” wrote the former top American diplomat, who is now exploring the possibility of a 2024 presidential run. Pompeo called Jaishankar “professional, rational, and a fierce defender of his boss and his country.” “We hit it off immediately. In our first meeting, I was bemoaning, in very diplomatic speech, that his predecessor had not been particularly helpful,” he said. “He (Jaishankar) said that he could see why I had trouble with his predecessor, a goofball and a heartland political hack. “Careful, I’m a heartland political hack!” I replied in jest. He laughed, noting that if that were true, it would make me the first heartland political hack who had ever been an editor on the Harvard Law Review. Well played, J,” Pompeo said. J here stands for Jaishankar. Jaishankar, responding to Pompeo’s claims, told PTI, “I have seen a passage in Secretary Pompeo’s book referring to Smt Sushma Swaraj ji. I always held her in great esteem and had an exceptionally close and warm relationship with her. I deplore the disrespectful colloquialism used for her.” ‘India-Pakistan nearly went to war in 2019’ Pompeo also claimed India and Pakistan were on the brink of nuclear war in 2019 and that the US had to intervene to prevent escalation. “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,” Pompeo claimed. “The truth is, I don’t know precisely the answer either; I just know it was too close,” he wrote, as per BBC. Pompeo, at the time in Hanoi for a summit between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said he was woken up with an urgent call from a senior Indian official. “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. “I asked him to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out,” Pompeo said. Pompeo said that US diplomats convinced both India and Pakistan that neither was preparing to go nuclear. “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,” he wrote, as per Al Jazeera. “No other nation could have done what we did that night to avoid a horrible outcome,” Pompeo wrote. Pompeo, who wrote that Pakistan “probably enabled” the Kashmir attack, 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. Pompeo at the time publicly defended India’s right to act. India, followed by Pakistan, tested nuclear bombs in 1998, a watershed moment. Then president Bill Clinton famously would say that Kashmir, divided between the two nations, was “the most dangerous place in the world.” ‘Jamal Khashoggi an activist’ Pompeo in his book criticised the media’s coverage of the murdered Saudi Arabian citizen and Washington Post columnist. NBC quoted Pompeo as writing, “He didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was — and too many in the media were not.” “Much of the disproportionate global uproar was fueled by the media, which hammered the story extra hard because  Khashoggi was a ‘journalist,’” Pompeo wrote.

“To be clear, Khashoggi was a journalist to the extent that I and many other public figures are journalists.”

Pompeo further derided the media “for making Khashoggi out to be a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred." “In truth, Khashoggi was an activist who had supported a losing team in a recent fight for the throne in Saudi Arabia, and he was unhappy with having been exiled. And as even the New York Times reported, Khashoggi was cozy with the terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood.” [caption id=“attachment_8558661” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The CIA concluded that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered on the orders of MBS. AP[/caption] Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan responded by accusing Pompeo of “outrageously” misrepresenting “the life and work” of Khashoggi. “It is shocking and disappointing to see Mike Pompeo’s book so outrageously misrepresent the life and work of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi,” Ryan said. “As the CIA — which Pompeo once directed — concluded, Jamal was brutally murdered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.” It is shameful that Pompeo would spread vile falsehoods to dishonor a courageous man’s life and service — and his commitment to principles Americans hold dear — as a ploy to sell books, India the next great political ally Pompeo in his book spoke highly of India, calling the country America’s next great ally. “We are natural allies, as we share a history of democracy, a common language, and ties of people and technology. India is also a market with enormous demand for American intellectual property and products. These factors, plus its strategic location in South Asia, made India the fulcrum of my diplomacy to counteract Chinese aggression,” he wrote. “In my mind, a counter-China bloc made up of the United States, India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the European Union would have an economic weight at least three times that of China. I chose to devote serious quantities of time and effort to help make India the next great American ally,” he added. ‘I’m still trying to kill you’ Pompeo writes extensively in the book of his diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, which included preparing three meetings between the young totalitarian leader and Trump. He recalled a chilling first conversation as he flew into Pyongyang in March 2018 on a clandestine trip as CIA director. “‘I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me,’” Pompeo quotes Kim as telling him.

“I decided to lean in with a little humour of my own: ‘Mr Chairman, I’m still trying kill you.’”

But Pompeo described a budding understanding with Kim as the Trump administration offered incentives to lower tension. Pointing to Kim’s smoking habit, Pompeo wrote that he told Kim he would take him to “the nicest beach in Miami and smoke the best Cubanos in the world. He told me, ‘I already have a great relationship with the Castros.’ Of course, he did.” As for their substantive conversation, Pompeo said Kim spoke candidly on concerns about China, usually viewed as North Korea’s main ally. [caption id=“attachment_12041522” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Mike Pompeo shared an unsettling encounter with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un. AFP.[/caption] Told that China believes North Korea wants US forces out of South Korea, “Kim laughed and pounded on the table in sheer joy, exclaiming that the Chinese were liars.” Kim “said that he needed the Americans in South Korea to protect him from the CCP, and that the CCP needs the Americans out so they can treat the peninsula like Tibet and Xinjiang,” Pompeo wrote, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. Pompeo became known for his hawkish stance on China, controversially accusing Beijing of spreading the “Wuhan virus.” He said that Trump told him with an epithet that Chinese President Xi Jinping “hates you” and asked Pompeo to “shut the hell up for a while” as the United States needed health care equipment from China. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.