“There has to be a solution to this problem of Pakistan not controlling these terrorist forces on its own territory,” Bolton said, adding that repeated attacks stemming from Pakistan, including the latest one in Pahalgam, show that “this cycle needs to be stopped at an earlier point.”
Backing India’s military action under Operation Sindoor, Bolton reiterated India’s legal right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. “It also exercised it in 2019 when I was the National Security Adviser,” he said, referring to the Balakot airstrikes that followed the Pulwama terror attack. “That right, I think, is pretty clear.”A major shift in the latest India-Pakistan flare-up, according to Bolton, is the reported use of advanced Chinese-supplied fighter jets by Pakistan. “There are many reports about the effectiveness of what we believe is probably a fifth-generation prototype of Chinese fighter planes… that is very, very troubling,” he said. He cautioned that this reflects a growing Chinese footprint in Pakistan’s military and strategic decision-making, raising concerns for India and its allies.
Bolton also noted that India’s response this time was more forceful than in 2019 and had clearly delivered a message, especially since it was Pakistan that sought a ceasefire. “It took a little bit longer than it did in 2019… but it did come to a stop. And I think that’s important.”
He also stressed the need for Washington to take a tougher line on Pakistan’s support—or acquiescence—for terror groups. “This continued threat of terrorist attacks out of Pakistan, stemming, many people believe correctly, from elements within the Pakistani military, is not something that can go on for a long period of time,” Bolton said.
When asked about US President Donald Trump’s claim that he brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, Bolton dismissed it as “self-serving.” He said, “This is Donald Trump at work… he likes to be the centre of attention. It’s not something I think most Americans experienced in national security affairs think is helpful.”
Bolton also cautioned India to be wary of Trump’s tendency to view international relations through the lens of personal relationships and trade. “Part of the problem with Trump is that trade is all he thinks about unless forced to think about other things,” he remarked.
While Bolton acknowledged that Pakistan remains the immediate threat, he made it clear that China poses the greater long-term danger to India’s national security. He warned that the difference between Pakistan’s reaction in 2019 and 2025 might indicate growing Chinese political influence alongside its military support.
Bolton also briefly touched upon the changing power dynamics in the Middle East. He said the US decision to lift sanctions on Syria was likely driven by Saudi Arabia’s concern over Turkey’s rising ambitions in the region. But he cautioned that Washington may have moved too soon, without demanding concrete actions from Syria’s new leadership.
As Indian legislators travel to 32 countries to build diplomatic support against Pakistan’s role in the recent terror attacks, Bolton’s comments reinforce India’s case: the root of the problem lies in Pakistan’s unwillingness-or-inability-to dismantle terrorist networks within its borders.
Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview.
Q: What has the India-Pakistan conflict, which began on the 7th of May, shown in terms of India’s response to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism?
Bolton: There is no doubt that India has the inherent right to individual and collective self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which it exercised a few days ago. It also exercised it in 2019 when I was the National Security Adviser. I think it is important that India always shows that this was a terrorist attack emanating from bases on foreign soil, Pakistani in both cases, to justify what it’s doing. But that right, I think, is pretty clear.
The question then, obviously, is what happens if Pakistan decides to up the ante, which happened again both in 2019 and this year. But there has to be a solution to this problem of Pakistan not controlling these terrorist forces on its own territory. I think that’s the most important place to start. But there are a number of other issues, particularly raised by this year’s attack, notably the role apparently played by Chinese-supplied fighter planes to the Pakistani Air Force, fifth-generation fighters, it appears. And what that means for the bigger picture of strategic stability on the subcontinent and really globally.
Q: India’s military response via Operation Sindoor included targeting terror camps in Pakistan, which were the hub and command-and-control centres of terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Do you think India has sent out a strong message and was able to eliminate the ability of these terror camps to carry out attacks on India?
Bolton: Certainly the response was much more vigorous than in 2019, and perhaps that is the result. I think the fact that, at least as we understand from publicly available information, it was the Pakistani military that ultimately contacted its Indian counterparts to say, “Let’s bring this clash to a halt, let’s have a ceasefire.” So, it took a little bit longer than it did in 2019. I think people were concerned it might escalate even further, but it did come to a stop. And I think that’s important. But I think from India’s point of view, certainly, the Pakistani response in the intervening six years has not been sufficient. These terrorist groups are still able to attack and recover from whatever damage was inflicted on them.I’ve certainly argued, as have other people, that this support for terrorist groups, or at least acquiescence in terrorist groups operating from Pakistani territory, is not good for Pakistan itself. It’s not the world’s most stable government, even though in Pakistan they call the military the “steel skeleton,” it’s still at risk of falling to terrorist groups inside Pakistan, which would be bad for that country and for the neighbouring countries too. So, these issues have been there for a long time. That obviously means they’re difficult to resolve, but if this latest incident proves anything, it’s that this cycle needs to be stopped at an earlier point and that every country has a responsibility to control its own sovereign territory and prevent these kinds of terrorist assaults on its neighbours.
Q: India has said that the progression towards Operation Sindoor began on the 22nd of April, when Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks took place, and civilians were killed in Pahalgam. The attack involved religion-based segregation, which has been recounted by the victims themselves. What does this show about the intention of The Resistance Force and Pakistan’s role in this?
Bolton: This obviously has been a continuing source of difficulty, and India has felt the blow of terrorist attacks not just in Kashmir, but at its own parliament building. So, like the United States, which has also suffered attacks from radical terrorists in Southwest Asia, this is a problem that we simply cannot live with, and it is why India’s responses clearly constitute legitimate self-defence. I think it’s important to get the kinds of information you’ve just described out into the world press. Make sure that the case India can and should make is clear, it’s important to provide legitimacy for the steps it takes militarily. I think it’s something the United States government should spend more of its time talking to Pakistan about. We’ve obviously had a long and complex relationship, given the war in Afghanistan, but even after the Trump plan and the Biden administration withdrew American forces from Afghanistan, this continued threat of terrorist attacks out of Pakistan, stemming, many people believe correctly, from elements within the Pakistani military, is not something that can go on for a long period of time. This sort of thing indicates that the influence of China in Pakistan, which is growing unfortunately, is hardly beneficial to peace and security in the region.
Q: What we were really shocked by was how US President Donald Trump took credit for a ceasefire, even hours before the Indian government could announce that it had had any conversation with the US on it. In fact, there is a lot of discomfort within the Indian government that President Trump said he mediated the ceasefire. What do you make of all of this?
Bolton: I wouldn’t take it personally in the sense that this is Donald Trump at work. This is what he does with friend and adversary alike. He likes to be the centre of attention. And one way he can be the centre of attention is to announce that he was the centre of the solution. It’s not something I think most Americans experienced in national security affairs think is helpful, and indeed, I think it can sow misunderstanding. But it wasn’t particularly directed against India. He’s done it, as I say, to friend and foe alike. So, I think in future discussions, it’s worth getting the ground rules straight with President Trump at the beginning. I think the fact that he made a call, that Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo made calls trying to be helpful, was a good thing. I don’t want to discourage it, but I think he needs to understand how sensitive this is on both sides, and that in some cases, what goes on quietly out of the spotlight is a lot more important than what happens in the glare of the spotlights.
Q: Do you also think that President Trump has gone ahead to hyphenate India and Pakistan together? As he said that he’s spoken to India and Pakistan and told both of them that if they want to continue trade with the US, they need to stop fighting. President Trump also remarked that he is going to do a lot more trade deals with Pakistan. Do you think that statement by President Trump was insensitive to the Indian government, which is a close ally of the United States?
Bolton: I think it shows he doesn’t know much about the history here. Part of the problem with Trump is that trade is all he thinks about unless forced to think about other things. There’s no doubt in any country’s foreign affairs agenda, trade is important for economic well-being. There’s no way you can underestimate it. But in the big picture, it’s one of several things competing for attention. We found in efforts to advance the Asian Security Quad in Trump’s first term, the idea of Shinzo Abe to have India, Japan, Australia, and the United States cooperate more closely, that we were lucky to get any strategic discussion in at all. The meetings tended to degenerate, there were only two, I think, but they tended to become trade meetings almost immediately.
I think Prime Minister Modi has a very good personal relationship with Trump, and that, in Trump’s mind, is critical. He sees most of international affairs through the prism of whether he has a good personal relationship with his counterpart in another state. So, the Prime Minister has built up a significant asset there, and it would be worth using that to try and explain to Trump a little more of the complexity of what’s involved here and the legitimate sensitivities.
Q: Can we still trust President Trump, is the question?
Bolton: What you can trust is that he will look for the most publicity he can get out of almost anything. I would say you should try and establish ground rules. Don’t necessarily have complete faith he’ll follow them once you set them. But in this kind of affair, we know that what really triggered the ceasefire was communication from the Pakistani military to their counterparts on the Indian side. That’s the kind of thing done without public attention, and sometimes that can be extremely important. If the effort at a ceasefire is diverted by public statements by one country concerned about the outcome, it can wreck an awful lot of work that’s been done behind closed doors.
Q: Just to speak about China, you’ve referred to China earlier, what role do you think China played in this conflict between India and Pakistan, and what is the big worry?
Bolton: I think the biggest news about China out of what just happened is the presence of sophisticated Chinese fighter planes on the Pakistani side. There’s some disagreement about exactly what they did, but there are many reports about the effectiveness of what we believe is probably a fifth-generation prototype of Chinese fighter planes, and the accompanying information in the public domain that Pakistan may be buying as much as 80% of its sophisticated weapon systems from China, a real reversal from decades ago, when much of it was bought from the United States. I view these indications of increased Chinese influence over Pakistan, particularly on the aerospace and defence side, as very, very troubling. I think that is something that obviously should be troubling to India as well, given the geography you face with the shared border with Pakistan to the west and what we know about China’s hegemonic aspirations all around its periphery. So, I think that is something we need to give very careful thought to.
Q: Trump has said that he now favours direct talks with Iran and that they are very close to a nuclear deal with the nation. Where does this leave Israel, the traditional ally?
Bolton: I don’t think they’re close to a deal. I think this is salesmanship at work. If they are close to a deal, it would be a duplicate of the 2015 Obama nuclear deal, which was unsatisfactory, and Trump was right to withdraw from it back in 2018. My guess is that in Steve Witkoff, the President’s personal envoy, you have somebody who knows nothing about nuclear weapons, nothing about Iran. I think the Iranians are just outmanoeuvring him. And my guess is they’re really not that close to a deal at all.
Q: Donald Trump has announced cessation of sanctions against Syria during his Gulf tour. He also recognised Syria’s new ruler, Ahmed al-Sharaa. What kind of message does this send to US allies?
Bolton: I think he did it at the insistence of Saudi Arabia, which has grave concerns about the potential expansion of Turkey’s influence in northern Syria and in the Middle East as a whole, given the Erdogan regime’s neo-Ottomanist imperial ambitions. So, I can see why the Saudis wanted it, and I think that’s an interest the US shares. But Trump made a mistake in lifting the sanctions before he got more indications of performance from Ahmed al-Sharaa, as you say, the new Syrian leader. He can trim his beard, take off his combat fatigues and put on a coat and tie, and abandon his nom de guerre and pick up what he says is his real name, that’s all well and good, good public relations. But I would like to see action to show that he’s no longer really the Al-Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and that he wants to turn the page on terrorism. There are a number of practical things he could do: release all the archives and information from the Assad regime about American and all foreign hostages; open their archives and facilities to international inspection on Assad’s chemical and biological weapons programmes; and make full disclosure of everything the Assad regime did with Iran during the Assad period in power, including the building of the nuclear reactor at Deir ez-Zur, a reactor being built by North Koreans and financed by Iran, obviously part of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. That, to me, is real, concrete action, as opposed to just talk, needed to justify lifting the sanctions.
Q: What is the biggest threat for India going forward, considering China and Turkey’s support for Pakistan?
Bolton: Pakistan is the immediate, imminent threat, given the actions of the past few weeks. I think it’s really China that’s the bigger threat. One course of study in the near term is the difference between Pakistan’s reaction in 2019 and in 2025, the growth of Chinese influence. In other words, this is not simply the material contribution China has made to Pakistan’s military, but possibly an indication of much greater political influence as well. That would indicate a very serious problem. It would take the Pakistan issue to a much higher, more dangerous level if Chinese influence is really responsible.
