Trump says he doesn't like war — but he's got missiles and he's not afraid to use them

U.S. Chairman Donald ruff earned plaudits from war-weary Americans when he promised during his first campaign to stop dragging the country into conflicts overseas he framed as a waste of money and personnel.

But his latest foray into hotspots on other continents, including launching strikes in Africa on Christmas Day, has some supporters questioning whether he really meant it when he said he's "not going to start wars."

In his second inaugural address in January, Trump said his presidency's success would be measured "not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into."

While past presidents like George W. Bush and later Barack Obama started or continued what came to be known as "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump vowed he'd take a radically different approach.

"We are ending the era of endless wars," Trump said at the 2020 commencement address for West Point military academy.

It's not the job of American forces "to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of," he told the next generation of officers.

Trump laid the groundwork for a withdrawal from the Afghan conflict by negotiating with the Taliban, America's sworn enemy. The plan was later enacted by his successor, Joe Biden, but the messy withdrawal tragically left more than a dozen U.S. Troops dead in Kabul.

Trump has since started calling himself the "peace president," boasting about his role in helping end, by his count, eight wars so far this year.

"THE PRESIDENT OF PEACE: 8 wars ended in 8 months," the State Department said in a recent social media post with a picture of a triumphant Trump. The U.S. Institute for Peace was renamed in Trump's honour at the direction of his officials.

Despite that rhetoric and posturing, Trump has shown he's not afraid to wade into conflicts with military force in places some Americans couldn't find on a map.

And observers note that his multi-country bombing campaign is not exactly peaceful.

The peace talk is all "PR," Raleigh said.

"Trump doesn't like the idea of boots on the ground — but everything else is fair game," she said. "The Department of Defence is hyper, and they're trying to show they can get involved in messy conflicts without getting bogged down like other presidents."

According to ACLED's data, Trump launched more airstrikes on foreign nations in the first six months of his second term than Biden did in all four years he was in office.

While Raleigh says the Biden team was "paralyzed" by a fear of stepping wrong at a time when violence was surging around the world, she noted that Trump officials are "doing the exact opposite," bombing whatever seemingly worthy target pops up.

"They're saying, 'We've got this military, we have all these guys and all of these bombs, we might as well use them.' I think that's the extent of their thoughts," she said.

So far in 2025 there have been well over 500 U.S. Bombings around the globe, according to ACLED figures.

Iran's nuclear program was pummeled and Trump launched a large air and naval campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen.

American forces have struck Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying drugs destined for the U.S., blowing them out of the water — part of a campaign to put pressure on President Nicolás Maduro, the socialist strongman that runs the South American country Trump calls a narco-state. Trump has provocatively said he's not ruling out a war with Maduro.

While he previously claimed to have "defeated ISIS," the radical Islamic group that has terrorized people in the Middle East and around the world for more than a decade, Trump's been busy hitting them with American firepower in the closing days of the year as they show signs of a revival.

On Thursday, Trump launched airstrikes on what he called ISIS "terrorist scum" that he said had been brutalizing Christians in Nigeria.

U.S. Launches airstrikes in northwest Nigeria, targeting ISIS: Trump

Days earlier, Trump had authorized strikes on Islamic State operatives in Syria — military action that one U.S. Official said was "a large-scale" strike that hit 70 targets in retaliation for an ambush attack that killed two U.S. Troops and an American civilian interpreter.

In November, American forces hit ISIS targets in Somalia, too.

These are shows of strength, but Raleigh says it's questionable if they've helped curb conflict, especially in Nigeria, where the strikes were limited and sectarian violence is widespread.

The more extensive attacks against the Houthis in Yemen, meanwhile, have been more productive.

"The intermittent actions of the U.S. Are not a deal breaker for any of these conflicts," Raleigh said. " 'We'll do something about Christians. It's Christmas Day. Let's do it.' That's the level of thought that I think went into that in Nigeria."

The frequency of these bombings has prompted angst among some supporters who believed Trump when he said he'd put America first, embrace isolationism and do away with military incursions abroad.

Trump's June strike on Iran to neutralize its nuclear weapons program — an attack that some experts say was successful in taking away the immediate threat the Islamic republic posed to the region — led to some cracks in the MAGA foundation.

That's when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a diehard Trump supporter until recently, started to speak up about what she feared was a president becoming too trigger happy.

She said she wants Trump to focus on spiking health-care costs and affordability concerns — not what's going on overseas.

"No one cares about the foreign countries. No one cares about the never-ending amount of foreign leaders coming to the White House every single week," she said in a recent interview with NBC News.

But for Trump's war secretary, Pete Hegseth, there is no contradiction between selective military intervention and putting America first.

These incursions are examples of "peace through strength brought to you by the warrior ethos," he said.

"President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment."

As for Venezuela, the strikes there continue — the latest being earlier this week, one of 29 known bombings in the southern Caribbean or eastern Pacific since September.

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and first-term Trump appointee to the State Department, said Americans deserve answers on how much further the administration is willing to go, given its past promises to avoid war.

"There are some lingering questions and I think many Americans are alarmed," he said.

Senior reporter

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