New Delhi: Former national security advisor John Bolton’s new book has sparse pickings about India – and even those are largely related to either multilateral agreements or other foreign policy priorities like Iran.

The book, The Room Where it Happened, went on sale on June 23, but not before the White House had attempted to block the publication on grounds that it contained classified information. Bolton was also the target of President Donald Trump’s tweets, with the president calling his former advisor “grossly incompetent and a liar”.

The clearest anecdote in the book, which throws some light on Trump’s relationship with India, is set on the sidelines of the Trump administration’s campaign against Iran, following Washington's withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

In order to pressurise Iran, the US had imposed sanctions on the sale of Iranian crude, but had granted waivers to eight countries, including India, in November 2018. Bolton claimed that State Department officials were advocating for an extension of waivers to these countries, rather than working to stop their purchases.

“One of the worst cases involved India, which, like the others, was buying Iranian oil at prices well below the global market because Iran was so desperate to make sales,” Bolton wrote.

He said that India had complained that it would have to pay more for new sources as they would insist on market prices. “India’s making this argument was understandable, but it was incomprehensible that US bureaucrats echoed it sympathetically.”

Bolton recounts that from March to April 2019, Trump became increasingly adamant on removing all waivers – and was not interested in listening to partners.

“In a phone call with (US Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo, Trump had not been sympathetic toIndia’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying, “He’ll be okay.”" The former NSA recalled this as part of his description of Trump’s “indifferences” to notifying allies about waiver decisions.

Also read: John Bolton Memoir: Excerpts Complicate White House Demand to Halt Publication, Judge Says

In other parts of the book, Bolton talks about his pet subject about the various multilateral agreements that the US had signed, which apparently restrict Washington’s decision-making and gives undue advantage to other countries.

Referring to the Paris climate change agreement that US withdrew from, Bolton said, “As in many other cases, international agreements provided the semblance of addressing major issues, giving national politicians something to take credit for, but made no discernible real-world difference (in this case giving leeway to countries like China and India, which remained essentially unfettered).”

Similarly, he claimed that one of the arguments for withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was that it didn’t limit other countries' missile programmes. “Iran’s intermediate-range ballistic-missile force threatened Europe and was poised to expand, as were North Korea’s, Pakistan’s, India’s, and those of other would-be nuclear powers.”

Bolton also mentioned India – and China – in connection with his advocacy for the US to ‘unsign’ the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). “Other nuclear powers like China and India have either not ratified or not signed the treaty, which is why it has still not entered into force.”

The only standalone reference to a foreign policy issue directly related to India was a short mention of the February 2019 crisis that erupted following the Pulwama terror attack.

India had conducted air strikes at a Jaish-e-Mohammad facility at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on February 26. This was followed by Pakistan doing a tit-for-tat airstrike the next day, into Indian territory in Kashmir. When Indian warplanes engaged Pakistani planes, an Indian pilot was taken into custody after his plane was shot down and he landed across the Line of Control.

Bolton records that he was planning to turn in for the evening, when acting US secretary of defence Patrick Shanahan and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Genera Joseph alerted him to a “ballooning crisis between India and Pakistan".

He claimed that that the “crisis” had not been worth the hype. “After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one.”

However, Bolton appended that his lesson from the interlude was that not dealing with nuclear proliferation would lead to continuous threats like the possibility of a war between India and Pakistan. “But when two nuclear powers spin up their military capabilities, it is best not to ignore it. No one else cared at the time, but the point was clear to me: this was what happened when people didn’t take nuclear proliferation from the likes of Iran and North Korea seriously.”

Bolton left the White House in September 2019, after the US president asked for his resignation.

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