President Donald Trump’s announcement early Saturday that India and Pakistan have come to an immediate ceasefire came as good news, but Pakistan must now control the terror groups operating from inside its country, retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt said.
“If you start to take a look at what they need to do internally now, they absolutely have to button down the terror groups that operate from Pakistani soil,” Holt, a former U.S. deputy military representative to NATO, commented on Newsmax’s “America Right Now.”
The role of other countries in the hostilities between India and Pakistan must also be examined, including from the Chinese, the People’s Liberation Army, and Turkey, Holt said.
“Turkey was supplying Pakistan” and wanted to “resupply drones,” he added. “They announced that yesterday so that’s not really helpful.”
Still, the news about the ceasefire, confirmed by India and Pakistan, was a welcome surprise, said Holt.
“I thought I’d wake up to see that we had something far worse on our hands,” he said. “It got really steep really quickly on the conflict escalation scale … I think both powers in the countries understand how explosive and devastating this could get really quickly.”
Holt also discussed the ongoing work dealing with Iran, and said Trump is “backed up by a very big stick.”
“There was some sort of social media excitement about the B-2s leaving Diego Garcia to go to their home base,” he said. “That’s just a rotation. There are B-52s all over the planet, and we can strike Iranian targets straight from Whiteman Air Base. So they shouldn’t take comfort in that.”
Still, “nobody should mistake kindness for weakness” in Trump’s approach, said Holt.
“He’ll do diplomacy, but there’s a firewall end to that,” he said.
Holt added that there is a “diplomatic schism” that seems to be developing between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump that must be watched.
“There’s something there of an intelligence quality that we can’t see, but we have to watch it very carefully as the president goes forward into the Middle East to work with the Arab nations,” he said.
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