He wasn't pro-war when he had power.
Trump
pardoned convicted war criminals, assassinated Iran’s top general, and deployed troops to seize Syria’s oil deposits — openly admitting he wanted to hand them over to ExxonMobil.
A second term promises more of the same: He has already asked advisers for “battle plans” to invade Mexico in an effort to combat drug cartels.
He has challenged the pillars of the post-World War II international order, like NATO and free trade, which they believe ensure global stability — and his alternative is a foreign policy based on America’s unrestrained violent id.
He ordered missile and drone strikes in Iraq & Syria.
In 2017, Trump became the first US president to order an attack on the Syrian government, bombing an airfield in retaliation for chemical weapons strikes, something Obama famously refused to do.
In 2019, Trump approved airstrikes on Iranian soil, only to call the planes back literally while they were in the air. And in 2020, he had General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds force, assassinated while the Iranian leader was near the Baghdad airport.
Trump
dramatically increased US airstrikes on Islamist groups in Somalia over Obama levels, and approved the sale of
unguided “dumb” bombs to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen (something the Obama administration blocked). Though Trump frequently stated his opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and eventually did negotiate a withdrawal agreement, he began his presidency by escalating it — sending
3,000 new troops to fight the Taliban, a more than 25 percent increase from the pre-Trump presence. He also
openly bragged about relaxing rules of engagement for bombings in Afghanistan, a policy that
nearly doubled civilian casualties per year over the Bush- and Obama-era average.
In 2017, before he became friends with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Trump nearly started a war with his country — deploying an “armada” (his words) to the region, and threatening the North with “
fire and fury like the world has never seen” in the midst of mounting tensions surrounding Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
In 2018, Trump threatened to
invade Venezuela to topple leftist dictator Nicolás Maduro. In 2019, he launched
a broad-based sanction policy explicitly designed to collapse the Maduro government — an
open regime change operation.
During that same time, Trump significantly escalated tensions with China over Taiwan — taking provocative actions deliberately designed to send a message of US commitment to the island’s defense.
In reality, Trump did little to seriously strip down America’s war machine. This is a president who proposed
the largest inflation-adjusted defense budget since World War II and declared “
we have to have, by far, the strongest military in the world.”
He also threatened to leave NATO and got pally with Putin.
He was not sitting in the Oval office making daisy chains.
