Democracies snubbed, dictators courted: Inside Trump’s embrace of Pakistan

On July 31, 2025, Lara Loomer launched a broadside against billionaire Tom Barrack, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria. Loomer, whose outside vetting of Trump appointees has led to waves of firings across his national security bureaucracy, pulled no punches.

“His [Barrack’s] appointment to high-level diplomatic posts is alarming, given that his primary expertise lies in leveraging political connections for financial gain,” she wrote. His actions have enabled Islamists to thrive, even at the expense of US national security.

“Barrack has a history of opaque financial dealings and what many view as political influence peddling,” she continued. “His real estate empire, intertwined with Gulf investments, has long raised concerns about conflicts of interest and whether he is truly serving America or if he is flashing his political access.” She included in her tweet a copy of Barrack’s 2018 indictment for acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of Middle East interests.

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Barrack is the rule rather than the exception in Trump’s inner circle. Many of the most influential people in the Trump administration have pre-service financial entanglements with Qatar. The US magazine Newsweek reported that, in addition to Trump himself, five major Trump administration officials have financial ties to Qatar: Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles, FBI Director Kash Patel; Attorney General Pam Bondi; Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff; and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin.

Democrats remain up-in-arms over Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million jet from Qatar, alleging it amounts to a bribe; given Republican concern that a desire to influence motivates the $20 billion in assistance that Qatar provides American universities, it is hard to deny that Qatari money is not altruistic.

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For almost a quarter century, successive American presidents have cultivated relations with India. The development of US-India ties has coincided with perhaps the most contentious period in US foreign policy since the debate between isolationists and internationalists in the 1930s. Israel, Russia, NATO, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and China each became political footballs. India, however, stood out as a rare example of bipartisanship. Every US president from George W Bush to Joe Biden worked to cultivate US-India ties. That commitment to a US-India partnership included Trump, at least in his first term.

In his second term, Trump has staked out an opposite position. He approached Pakistani terrorism and its Indian victims with moral equivalency and even dined with Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir, mastermind of the Pahalgam massacre, at the White House. Just as intelligence operatives recruit and compromise targets with either blackmail, bribes, or buffeting ego, so too did Islamabad handle Trump, telling him how much he deserved a Nobel Prize and entrancing Trump with notions of gas deals.

The numbers do not lie. On July 31, 2025, Trump slapped 25 per cent sanctions on India, greater than Pakistan (19 per cent), Bangladesh (20 per cent), Sri Lanka (20 per cent), and Afghanistan (15 per cent). Trump treats India with disdain, belittling its economy and privileging countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka that are Chinese satrapies and Bangladesh and Afghanistan that are hubs for Islamist terror. Each of those countries to which Trump offers better terms ranks well below India on Transparency International’s annual corruption index.

There is no proof that Pakistan, Qatar, or Turkey bribed Trump, though a commonality of Trump’s two terms is the conflict of interest between public policy and personal business. Trump’s reference to gas deals with Pakistan, his Qatari involvement, and his and Barrack’s repeated endorsements of Turkish President Recep Erdogan are coincidences that no Indian should ignore, especially given the coincidences, Trump’s policy choices, and the lack of any other logical policy-driven explanation.

India must respond in the only way Trump will understand, by denying opportunities to American businesses until Trump or his successors change US policy and again ground it in a partnership of democracies and consensus against terrorism rather than a partnership with corrupt, terror-sponsoring dictatorships.

Here, India’s decision to abandon the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter makes sense. The US defence industry purposely spreads itself across states and Congressional districts in order to immunise itself from cutbacks by ensuring it always has several dozen, if not hundreds, of lawmakers willing to protect the corporate interest for the sake of their employees.

According to the Congressional Research Service, F-35 components are produced across 250 different districts in 45 US states. The same pattern holds true with other platforms that the United States would like to sell to India. Cutting contracts makes single headlines, but sending diplomats to each Congressional district to explain why New Delhi made its decision will augment pressure on Trump, especially as midterm elections loom. Trump might even reverse course. While some politicians double down to save face, Trump knows no shame, and if the pressure is great enough, he might simply change policy and try to scrub his recent past in an Orwellian frenzy of sycophantic press and statements.

This still leaves India with a problem in the short term: Given the threat China poses to India, some Indian politicians may wish to replace the F-35 with Russia’s fifth-generation Sukhoi-57E; this would be a mistake, given Russia’s failure to honour previous contracts. Rather, India might shift toward European aircraft until such a time that Trump departs and the United States can right its present wrongs.

Even if New Delhi abandons Lockheed Martin because Trump’s antics have raised questions about American reliability, such systems represent not only a lethal combat platform but also a decades-long partnership of training and maintenance. Whatever animus New Delhi might have toward Washington, the long-term stability of Moscow remains a bad bet given the political vacuum that will develop after Putin’s death.

Trump treats India unfairly, but Trump is an old and, frankly, corrupt man whose time is limited. India will soon be the world’s third largest economy; Trump’s failure to recognise the benefits of that and the wisdom of choosing democracies over dictatorships and kleptocracies is America’s loss.

The current crisis, though, can be the stress test to prove the strength of US-India ties. Trump can become the exception that proves the rule. The US Congress still favours India over Pakistan, and every politician motivated more by national security than side business deals will remember which country sheltered Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and which country will drive the international economy through the 21st century.

Bribery can never provide a solid base for bilateral ties like democracy and mutual interests do. Pakistan, like Turkey, will ultimately fall into the dustbin of past American partners no longer worth a future administration’s time and energy. India must fight back but should not go scorched earth out of animus toward a man for whom the curtain of power is already closing.

Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.