John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and former White House national security adviser, said on Tuesday that he had helped plan attempted coups in foreign countries.
Bolton made the remarks to CNN after the day's congressional hearing into the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The panel's lawmakers on Tuesday accused former President Donald Trump of inciting the violence in a last-ditch bid to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
Speaking to CNN anchor Jake Tapper, however, Bolton suggested Trump was not competent enough to pull off a "carefully planned coup d'etat", later adding: "As somebody who has helped plan coups d'etat — not here but you know [in] other places — it takes a lot of work. And that's not what he (Trump) did.apper asked Bolton which attempts he was referring to."I'm not going to get into the specifics," Bolton said, before mentioning Venezuela.
"It turned out not to be successful. Not that we had all that much to do with it but I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president and they failed," he said.
In 2019, Bolton as national security adviser publicly supported Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido's call for the military to back his effort to oust socialist President Nicolas Maduro, arguing that Maduro's re-election was illegitimate. Ultimately Maduro remained in power.
"I feel like there's other stuff you're not telling me [beyond Venezuela," the CNN anchor said, prompting a reply from Bolton: "I'm sure there is."
Many foreign policy experts have over the years criticised Washington's history of interventions in other countries, from its role in the 1953 overthrowing of then Iranian nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Vietnam war, to its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan this century.
But it is highly unusual for US officials to openly acknowledge their role in stoking unrest in foreign countries.
"John Bolton, who's served in highest positions in the US government, including UN ambassador, casually boasting about he's helped plan coups in other countries," Dickens Olewe, a BBC journalist from Kenya, wrote on Twitter.
After the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first prime minister, in 1951, rumors circulated that the CIA had played a role as punishment for Khan refusing to secure oil contracts in Iran for American corporations. In 1958, Pakistanis again accused the United States of orchestrating Iskander Mirza’s constitutional coup to install a pro-U.S. regime. In neither case did substantive evidence exist of such meddling.
But that did little to dampen the prevalence of such claims. In 1977, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto even went public with such accusations. He alleged that the CIA funded opposition forces in response to the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program and Bhutto’s ostensibly nonaligned foreign policy positions — including his refusal to support the Vietnam War.
A tilt toward nonalignment in the Cold War and away from allegiance to the United States had been a cornerstone of Bhutto’s foreign policy. However, many observers of Pakistani politics saw Bhutto’s allegations of a foreign conspiracy theory as intended to carve out domestic political space in a tense standoff with opposition parties.
Although there was scant evidence to substantiate rumors about these particular instances of U.S. interference, U.S. behavior has, at points, fueled them. For example, some CIA activity in Pakistan has been well documented, such as the collection of DNA samples through a fake vaccination campaign as part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the 2000s. These operations have undermined Pakistanis’ trust in the United States to do anything other than safeguard its own interests.
Much like Bhutto about a half-century ago, Khan, prime minister since 2018, also advocated nonalignment. At multiple points, he has held up India’s foreign policy during the Cold War as a model to emulate — surprising, given the enmity between the two countries.
Given this backdrop and the country’s ongoing economic crisis, it becomes easier to see why, as most of the world rushed to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Ukraine, Khan instead took a long-planned trip to meet with Putin. Khan’s two-day visit to Russia was the first by Pakistan’s premier in more than two decades, and his government hailed it as a much-needed breakthrough for Pakistan’s economic and energy stability. While in Moscow, Khan secured a major trade deal with Russia to import 2 million tons of wheat and to buy natural gas.
Soon after, Pakistan became one of 35 countries that abstained from voting against the Russian invasion at the U.N. General Assembly.
These moves reflected how, with the United States leaving Afghanistan and deepening ties with India, Khan turned toward an emboldened Moscow-Beijing axis, which is increasingly flexing its muscle. While Pakistan shares a historically strategic friendship with China, the country’s relationship with Russia has vacillated over the past few decades. For his own part, in speeches, Khan often situated Pakistan’s neutrality as a potential tool for avoiding a new Cold War, offering to broker improved diplomatic ties between the United States and China.
Critics see Pakistan’s behavior over the past two months as a clear demonstration of the country moving away from its traditional U.S. alliance. Khan’s government, by contrast, claimed it was pursuing a “balanced and independent foreign policy” that centered the needs of Pakistani citizens over geopolitical concerns.
This context shapes Khan’s accusations of a U.S.-backed ploy to oust him from power. Anti-American rhetoric has long been a potent tool in Pakistani politics. Many of Khan’s predecessors also latched on to anti-U.S. conspiracy theories to gain political clout or to preserve power when faced with domestic political upheaval. Social media only makes the dissemination of these ideas easier.
Deploying these historical tropes made sense for Khan, because charges of a U.S.-backed conspiracy theory let him brand his opponents as “traitors” to national interest and security — rather than just as corrupt politicians. Although this wasn’t enough to stay in power, it may give him a key weapon in Pakistan’s next elections.
