By Conor Friedersdorf
Thursday, March 05, 2026
Donald Trump campaigned on the idea that electing him was
the best way to avoid wars. He has referred to himself as the “peace
president,” going so far as to complain that he hadn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet Trump has governed as a hawkish interventionist whose
approach better aligns with his neoconservative secretary of state, Marco
Rubio, than with the anti-interventionists in his administration, such as J. D.
Vance and Tulsi Gabbard. The United States is now enmeshed in so many conflicts
that its foreign policy is closer to “world police” than “America First.”
The newly launched war against Iran is the most
significant. Operation Epic Fury begins less than a year after the United
States and Israel partnered to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. At the time,
Trump declared that operation a success, and Vance
defended it by stating, “I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted
after 25 years of foreign entanglements … But the difference is that back then,
we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to
accomplish America’s national-security objectives. So this is not gonna be some
long, drawn-out thing.”
The Trump administration has now launched a “long,
drawn-out thing” in Iran with no end in sight. U.S. military personnel have
already been imperiled at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Ali Al-Salem Air Base in
Kuwait, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. Navy
headquarters in Bahrain, and facilities in Iraq. American interests around the
world are at risk of Iranian retaliation.
All alone, this war would make a mockery of MAGA claims
that Trump is an anti-interventionist. But it is one in an extensive list of
Trump-era entanglements.
Even as America’s military expands its focus in Iran, it
launched a new operation this week against drug cartels in Ecuador. “Together,
we are taking decisive action to confront narco-terrorists who have long
inflicted terror, violence, and corruption on citizens throughout the
hemisphere,” U.S. Southern Command announced in a press release.
U.S. forces in Africa have been carrying
out air strikes over Somalia against the Sunni Islamist terrorist
organization al-Shabaab. As recently as last month, U.S. forces carried out
multiple strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria, according
to U.S. Central Command.
Earlier this year, the United States launched Operation
Absolute Resolve, a military campaign that successfully removed the Venezuelan
leader Nicolás Maduro from power. After the operation, Trump said that the U.S.
would run Venezuela at least temporarily. This week, Reuters reported
that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum traveled to Venezuela and met with its
acting president, Delcy Rodríguez.The United States is both negotiating
contracts with Rodríguez and threatening
to indict her.
The Trump administration concluded last year with a
Christmas Day attack on Islamist militants in Nigeria. Earlier in 2025, the
United States carried out air strikes in Iraq,
waged a
roughly seven-week offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen, and carried
out the aforementioned attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This year and last,
the Trump administration has been blowing up boats in the Pacific Ocean and the
Caribbean Sea, many off the coast of Venezuela, that it suspects of drug
smuggling. The boat strikes have killed
at least 150 people.
Ukraine is the one place where the Trump administration
appears to be trying to draw down U.S. involvement, though the United States
has supplied the country with intelligence as it resists Russian aggression.
During the run-up to the 2016 election, I wrote
that “if you’re a voter who believes that Donald Trump is against foreign wars
and regime change, unlike the globalist elites in Washington, D.C., you have
been misled.” At the time, I noted that Trump released a video in 2011 that
sought to pressure President Obama to invade Libya. Trump also argued that
George H. W. Bush should have ousted Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and wrote
in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, “We still don’t know what Iraq
is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons.” He added,
“Am I being contradictory here, by presenting myself as a deal-maker and then
recommending preemptive strikes? I don’t think so.” In 2011, he urged the Navy
to wage war on Somali pirates.
Now Trump has proved his proclivity for interventionism,
without congressional approval or the support of the public. And there’s no
evidence to suggest that he will stop here. If Congress continues allowing him
to deploy force unilaterally, he may pursue land strikes on drug cartels in
Mexico, a
prospect that he raised early this year in an interview with Fox News;
regime change in Cuba,
a longtime dream of Rubio’s; and God knows what else. He is an impulsive man
who gambles, especially when the most significant risks are borne by others.
There is no way to know how exactly he will surprise Americans next.
Trump could even make the United States a pariah among
its Western allies by revisiting his on-again, off-again threats to take
Greenland by force, a move that parts of his base have been urging
ever since Trump first raised the possibility, or by seizing the Panama Canal,
as he has also threatened
to do.
Had Americans known that Trump was going to undertake wars of choice and assorted military strikes all around the world, they may not have elected him. At this point, with a majority of voters opposed to Trump’s interventions, congressional action is the only way to disentangle the country from these conflicts. Until then, the list is likely to only grow longer.re
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