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TRUMP PROMISED AN ANTIWAR PRESIDENCY. HE’S DELIVERED THE OPPOSITE.
 
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Khury Petersen-Smith
September 2, 2025
Newsweek
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_ Any expectation that Trump would bring a new era of reduced wars is
being dashed by the brutal, opposite reality. _

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) conducts flight
operations in the US Central Command area of responsibility on August
23, 2025 , (US Navy photo released by AFRICOM).

 

It’s hard to believe now, but Donald Trump
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antiwar president. “I’m not going to start a war,” he said when
he won reelection
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“I’m going to stop the wars.”

Instead, wars under Trump are becoming more deadly and expansive.
Trump continues to arm Israel and defend its prime minister
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country’s well-documented genocide in Gaza. 
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war with Ukraine—which Trump said repeatedly
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he would end within “24 hours” of taking office—has been as
bloody as ever.

And Trump is expanding the post-9/11 “forever wars” in three
crucial ways.

The first is escalating U.S. military
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Middle East and East Africa. The first country the U.S. bombed
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Trump returned to the White House was Somalia, and Washington has
bombed the East African nation repeatedly since. The Pentagon
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was the “largest airstrike” 
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history on the country in May.

Trump also bombarded Yemen earlier this year—only
to unceremoniously call it off
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it was clear that the U.S. was failing in its military goals
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And of course, the U.S. joined Israel’s unprovoked, devastating
12-day bombardment of Iran this summer—fulfilling the fantasies of
the same hardline hawks and neoconservatives in Washington Trump once
criticized.

Second, Trump is using the framework of the “war on terror” to
bring a new era of U.S. militarism to Mexico, Central America, and the
Caribbean.

The Caribbean has been part of the “war on terror” since the very
beginning. Starting in 2001, the U.S. began making new use of its
military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—which at that point had been
in Washington’s possession for over a century—as an extralegal
prison notorious for torture and indefinite detention without charge.
This travesty continues, despite repeated Cuban demands
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return the land.

The U.S. abduction of Muslims around the world to detain and torture
them at Guantanamo
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lowered the global floor for the treatment of people in detention. The
dehumanizing designation of these men as "terrorists"—despite not a
single conviction
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for anyone detained in the entire history of Guantanamo Bay—has been
central to their mistreatment.

Others took notice—particularly Nayib Bukele
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Salvador and self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator
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Bukele built one of the largest prisons on Earth and named it the
Center for the Confinement of Terrorism. Having gotten away with
arbitrary and indefinite detention in the name of targeting gangs and
combating "terrorism," Bukele has enthusiastically imprisoned the
migrants Trump has deported from the United States without due process
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often in horrific conditions.

Like Bukele, Trump is running with the tactic of tagging individuals
and forces as "terrorists" to justify military violence against them.
His designation
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of Mexican drug cartels and Venezuelan and Salvadoran gangs as
"terrorist organizations" enables the U.S. government to enact a set
of measures against the groups—including carrying out military
attacks. Trump also announced a similar designation
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for Haitian gangs.

Finally, Trump is aggressively expanding the domestic aspects of the
"war on terror."

Trump's recently passed budget bill increases ICE
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billion last year
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to an average annual of $37.5 billion
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than the entire military budgets of most countries on Earth
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Having deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to crack
down on protests challenging the deportations, the White House then
approved
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the deployment of 700 more Marines to three more states to assist ICE.

Most recently, Trump announced the deployment of the National Guard to
the streets of Washington, D.C., supposedly in the name of cracking
down on crime. Declining violent crime rates in D.C.
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and other cities
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suggest that sending troops has more to do with flexing authoritarian
muscle and forcing homeless people out of sight than solving a
problem.

Any expectation that Trump would bring a new era of reduced wars is
being dashed by the brutal, opposite reality. As resistance to Trump's
policies mounts across the board—from his immigration raids to his
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is critical to also challenge his militarism. Our demands for justice
must include a future where we end these wars once and for all.

_Khury Petersen-Smith co-directs the New Internationalism Project at
the Institute for Policy Studies. _

_Azadeh Shahshahani is a human rights attorney and the legal and
advocacy director of Project South._

* U.S. militarism
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* Trump foreign policy
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