Donald Trump returned to office vowing to be the peace president. Nearly a year later, he is embracing war on multiple fronts.
Trump on Saturday ordered large-scale military strikes in Venezuela and announced that leftist leader Nicolas Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country.
The raid to kick off the new year comes after the US military on Christmas Day hit Nigeria, in what Trump said was an operation targeting jihadists who had attacked Christians.
And hours before the attack in Venezuela, Trump warned of another US intervention in a third region, saying US forces were “locked and loaded” if Iran’s clerical state kills protesters who have taken to the streets.
The enthusiasm for war would seem at odds for a president who has loudly declared that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for supposedly ending eight wars, a claim that is highly disputable.
In his second inaugural address on January 20 last year, Trump said: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
But soon after, Trump rebranded the Defense Department as the “Department of War.”
Both Trump and his aides insist that military muscle is the path to real peace.
“We’re making peace through strength. That’s what we’re doing,” Trump told a rally last month in Pennsylvania.
“Peace through strength” was famously a catchphrase of Ronald Reagan, as he promoted a massive military build-up at the end of the Cold War, and was attributed to the Roman emperor Hadrian who built up defenses.
But the strategy was generally understood as a way to prevent war from beginning.
Making his love of force even more striking, Trump has not only described himself as a peacemaker but has spoken for years against US interventionism.
Declaring “America First,” he cast himself as a different kind of Republican than the party’s last president George W. Bush, whose administration he castigated as warmongers over the Iraq invasion of 2003.
In a speech in Riyadh in May, Trump said that “so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built” and failed to understand countries where they intervened.
In one key difference with Bush, Trump has made no pretense of long-term commitment.
He last year ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites in support of an Israeli attack as well as strikes in Syria in retaliation for the killings of US forces.
But like Bush, Trump cares little about UN or other international conventions on war.
The Trump administration argues that Maduro faced a warrant for drug charges in the United States, but Maduro’s government is a UN member, even if most Western countries consider him illegitimate following elections riddled with irregularities.
Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat and Iraq war veteran, called Venezuela the “second unjustified war in my lifetime,” although he agreed Maduro was a dictator.
“It’s embarrassing that we went from the world cop to the world bully in less than one year. There is no reason for us to be at war with Venezuela,” he said on X.
In one irony, the latest Nobel Peace Prize, so coveted by Trump, went to Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whose name the US president did not appear initially to know.
Trump, however, has won one peace prize since taking office.
FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, presented Trump last month with a prize from football’s governing body ahead of the US co-hosting the World Cup.
Infantino said that Trump, who has taunted migrants from developing countries and threatened violence against domestic opponents, was being recognized for his “exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world.”
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