As Trump's Musk Falls Off At Home, US Reveals Its Two-Faced Foreign Policy
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While Trump rode to power lashing out against Islamist terror and the US Deep State's policy of nurturing it across the world, he has chosen the continuation of the same.
Billionaire Elon Musk is not the only friendly piece falling out of US President Donald Trump's chessboard. He has lost way more friends abroad.
Europeans — even many in the Right — dislike him. The Japanese, one of the US's closest allies, have recently railed against 'American extortionists" after Trump unleashed a tariff war. Israel is seething quietly after Trump started talking about being close to a 'deal' with Iran. Canada deeply resents being called a colony of the US.
Indians had widely cheered Trump's second coming. They even endured the absurd tariffs in the spirit that the US President is entitled to out his nation's interests first. But there is now a great sense of betrayal after Trump's narcissistic trumpeting for mediation during the latest India-Pakistan skirmish and then reserving high praise for Pakistan.
The Trump family's crypto-currency investments in Pakistan have apparently worked wonders. World Liberty Financial (WLF), founded in 2024, is 60 per cent owned by Donald Trump's sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, along with his son-in-law Jared Kushner. WLF founder Zachary Witkoff is the son of real estate tycoon and longtime Trump friend Steve Witkoff and now serves as a US special envoy. The Pakistan agreement reportedly marks WLF's most important international venture to date.
Pakistan's broken economy is being gifted to Trump's crypto projects, with tacit push from the Pakistan Army. The crypto deal could well be the cover for political favours and Pakistan's flourishing terror factory.
The Pakistan episode also reveals two faces of Donald Trump. While he rode to power lashing out against Islamist terror and the US Deep State's policy of nurturing it for strategic use (or misuse) across the world, he has chosen the continuation of the same.
Trump, for instance, had openly criticised Bangladesh's caretaker Muhammad Yunus government for throwing minorities to jihadi wolves. After he got elected as President, he exhorted PM Narendra Modi to have his say in the neighbourhood.
But lately the US State Department has been pushing for the Chittagong corridor in Bangladesh against India's wishes. Advance US Air Force and CIA teams have been regularly visiting Dhaka for that purpose. Also, the US government has shown no urgency in removing Yunus and restoring electoral democracy. Nor did it criticise the banning of Awami League's activities.
The Trump administration has shown the same double face in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It is hard to tell whether it is dumping Ukraine or doubling down against Russia.
As Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth has been the first to reject a 2022 Ramstein Air Base-format summit of Volodymyr Zelensky's supporters. But US weapons are still rolling into Ukraine.
🚨🇺🇸🇺🇦U.S. DUMPING Ukraine or DOUBLING DOWN?Pete Hegseth is the first Pentagon chief to bail on a Ramstein-format summit of Volodymyr Zelensky's backers – yet US weapons are still rolling into Ukraine.
What's the real story here? 🧵 pic.twitter.com/Uuvc1QlYye
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 4, 2025
Ukraine is unleashing a fire-stream from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a light, wheeled multiple rocket launcher developed by the US Army. The rockets rain on Russian energy sites, Crimea, and the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, allegedly leaving a long civilian blood trail. US military aid for Ukraine includes everything from Altius-600 UAVs to Phoenix Ghost loitering munitions.
Donald Trump's March 2025 freeze stopped new military aid. But a USD 310 million F-16 aircraft agreement was signed in May covering spare parts, software updates, and pilot training for Ukraine.
America also approved Germany's handover of 125 long-range rockets and 100 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, according to reports. This keeps the war on — something Trump ostensibly was keen to end — in spite of Russia pounding Ukraine's shrinking stockpile and knocking out Patriot systems.
And the US continues to share intelligence with Ukraine in the guise of 'defensive operations". Elon Musk's Starlink satellite Internet service still operates in Ukraine.
Incidentally, Musk has also signed a Starlink deal with the troubled and mismanaged Bangladesh.
Under the new 5 per cent GDP target, military aid to Ukraine will count as 'defense spending", Euractiv reports. In effect, NATO's budget just got a shot in the arm. A majority of Ukraine's long-range missiles, artillery, and ballistic air-defence systems are still manufactured in the US.
Even with steadfast ally Israel, Trump is trying to talk up an 'Iran deal' without Bibi's consent. He went to press forbidding Tel Aviv from scuttling his peace overture to Iran. Tehran has swiftly rejected the deal and is writing its own proposal.
In short, Trump is fast losing trust globally and at home because of his highly transactional approach, over-reliance on the power of whim and unpredictability, and willingness to sacrifice even the core ideological commitments to the slightest prospect of a business 'deal'.
At some point, the politician in him has to rein in the businessman. Else, many Trump towers will be built worldwide, but America's credibility will crumble.
First Published:
June 06, 2025, 11:12 IST
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'He looks very similar," said al-Abbasi, who had scrolled through hundreds of photographs on Syrian orphanages' websites before finding this one. 'The nose, even the mouth." More than 112,000 Syrians arrested since the start of an uprising against Assad in 2011 remain unaccounted for, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. That figure is comparable to the number of people who have disappeared in Mexico's drug wars, though Syria's population is only a fifth the size. Children are often used to punish or pressure opponents in war. Russia has taken thousands of children from Ukraine. Decades after Argentina's military dictatorship ended, families are still finding missing relatives seized as newborns and adopted by military couples. Dealing with this brutal legacy is a crucial challenge for the new Syria, whose government, led by an Islamist group that cut its past ties with al Qaeda, is trying to assert its control over a country riven by sectarian tensions. Syria's presidency said in May that it will set up commissions to probe crimes committed under Assad, compensate victims and trace the missing. But it is a huge and complex task for a government beset with other pressing issues, including a battered economy. Failure to address the issue of missing people 'could contribute to cycles of violence," said Kathryne Bomberger, director general of the International Commission on Missing Persons. At the time of their abduction, the Yaseen children were living in the relatively affluent Dumar neighborhood of Damascus. Their mother, Rania al-Abbasi, was a national chess champion who ran a successful dental clinic. In photographs Rania posted on social media, the children are pictured smiling alongside SpongeBob and Spider-Man performers during a trip to Syria's coast. Other pictures show Ahmed on a playground swing; wearing a cardboard crown; and with his hair gelled neatly into a crest. When the uprising against Assad began, relatives urged them to leave Syria. The family had a history with the regime: Rania's father—a prominent religious scholar—had spent 13 years in prison under Assad's father, President Hafez al-Assad, because of his oppositional views. Islamists were often considered a threat by the secular Assad regime. After Rania's father was released, the family went into exile in Saudi Arabia, where Ahmed was born. But his parents wanted to raise him and his sisters where they had roots and returned to Damascus in 2009. 'She thought she was safe," said Rania's younger sister, Naila, a doctor who remained in Saudi Arabia with much of the family. Between six children and work, Rania had no time to get involved in political activity or protests, even if she supported their demands. But she did give generously to Syrians displaced by the government's crackdown. And her father, from abroad, had voiced support for the uprising. It was enough to bring the regime's fist down on the family. On March 9, 2013, Syrian intelligence agents came for Rania's husband, Abdurrahman Yaseen. Two days later, they returned and took Ahmed and the other children, between 1 and 14 years old, along with their mother. The father's fate eventually came to light in a cache of 50,000 images smuggled out of Syria by a forensic photographer who defected in 2013. The grim catalog contained photographs of some 6,786 Syrians who had died in custody, some with their eyes gouged out. Among the images was one of Abdurrahman. Still, there was no sign of Ahmed, his siblings or Rania. The strongest lead came from another mother who had been detained with her children the year after al-Abbasi and her family. Freed in a prisoner exchange in 2017, Rasha al-Sharbaji revealed that security services had seized her five children and placed them in an orphanage run by SOS Children's Villages, an international charity with several locations in Syria. She said she recovered her children from the charity after being released. Asking around, relatives learned that four sisters with age gaps similar to four of the Yaseen girls were living in one of the centers of SOS Children's Villages. But orphanage staff were too afraid to speak, according to family members, and a lawyer appointed to ask the authorities received no answers. After the regime crumbled in December, thousands of prisoners stumbled out of fetid prison cells as Syrians celebrated in the streets. Scattered abroad, members of the extended family mobilized a fresh search, including approaching SOS Children's Villages again. In a statement, its Syria operation acknowledged it had received 139 children 'without proper documentation" between 2014 and 2018, when it demanded the authorities stop placing such cases in its care. Most of those children were returned to authorities under the former regime, SOS Children's Villages said, citing an audit into past records. The Journal couldn't determine what happened to them later. 'We regret the untenable situation we found ourselves in when receiving the children and unequivocally disapprove of such practices," it said. The group said it had taken steps to ensure it didn't happen again. The organization has since filed a claim with Damascus's public prosecutor to open an official investigation into the Yaseen children's disappearance. It said there was no record they had ever been placed in SOS Children's Villages' care. The family expanded their search to other orphanages. Baraa al-Ayoubi, director of the al-Rahma orphanage in Damascus, said Syrian security agents had placed 100 children of detainees in her care over the course of the war, but none of them belonged to Rania. The orphanage was forbidden to disclose details about the children, even to their relatives, when Assad was in power, she said. Eventually, all the children were handed back to their parents, she said. 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