Donald Trump, who once pledged to end America's 'endless wars,' has become the first US president in history to authorise military strikes in seven countries within a single year.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump told voters that the job of the US military was 'not to wage endless regime change wars around the globe.' Less than 12 months after his January 2025 inauguration, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) had recorded more than 620 overseas strikes authorised under his watch in countries including Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
As of Feb. 28, 2026, US forces have now extended that record further, launching fresh attacks on Iran that the Iranian Red Crescent says have so far killed at least 201 people. The president who declared his 'proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier' has, by any measurable standard, presided over the most geographically dispersed American military campaign in modern history.
The Doctrine Behind the Strikes
The cornerstone of Trump's military posture is his administration's 2025 National Security Strategy, which explicitly revives the Monroe Doctrine, last codified in 1823, to reassert US dominance across the Western Hemisphere.
The document describes Latin America as a US sphere of influence and frames narcotics trafficking as the legal equivalent of armed conflict, a classification rejected by the United Nations and international law scholars alike.
That legal framing has underpinned some of the most controversial operations of Trump's second term. Since September 2025, US forces have carried out at least 45 strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least 151 people, according to the UK-based conflict monitor Airwars. None of those killed have been publicly identified by the US government.
Human Rights Watch, in a December 2025 legal analysis, concluded that the strikes constitute extrajudicial executions and have no credible basis under international law, because no armed conflict exists between the United States and drug-trafficking organisations in international waters.
The Counterterrorism Expansion
The first strike of Trump's second term targeted Islamic State (IS) operatives in Somalia on Feb. 1, 2025. A US Africa Command statement confirmed that the attack killed 14 IS-Somalia operatives in northern Somalia, including Ahmed Maeleninine, described by the Pentagon as a key recruiter and financier.
What followed was unprecedented in scale. The New America Foundation found that the US carried out at least 111 strikes in Somalia in 2025 alone, more than the combined total under the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations. Despite the intensity of operations, both al-Shabaab and IS-Somalia remain active. Al-Shabaab, which controls large swathes of south-central Somalia with an estimated 7,000 fighters, has continued to gain ground against Somali government forces since the campaign began.
In Iraq, US Central Command carried out an airstrike on March 13, 2025 in the al-Anbar province that killed Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, the self-styled Islamic State's second-in-command, referred to by his nom de guerre 'Abu Khadijah.' Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' Al-Sudani described al-Rifai as 'one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world.'
Trump announced the kill on Truth Social: 'His miserable life was terminated, along with another member of ISIS, in coordination with the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Regional Government. PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!'
On Dec. 19, 2025, the US launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in Syria, hitting more than 70 IS positions across the country in retaliation for a shooting in Palmyra that killed two US soldiers; Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard and Sergeant Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, and civilian interpreter Ayad Mansoor Sakat. The Syrian government's Interior Ministry later said the gunman was a state security employee who had been marked for dismissal over his extremist views. No group has claimed responsibility.
Earlier today, U.S. forces commenced OPERATION HAWKEYE STRIKE in Syria to eliminate ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites in direct response to the attack on U.S. forces that occurred on December 13th in Palmyra, Syria.
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) December 19, 2025
This is not the beginning of a war — it is a…
On Christmas Day 2025, Trump announced airstrikes in Sokoto State, north-western Nigeria, describing them as a response to alleged persecution of Nigerian Christians by Islamist militants. US Africa Command confirmed Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a Navy ship struck 16 targets. Nigeria's Foreign Minister stated publicly that the joint operation had 'nothing to do with a particular religion,' contradicting Trump's stated rationale.
A Civilian Toll That Shocked Rights Groups
Between March 15 and May 6, 2025, the Trump administration ran Operation Rough Rider, the largest US military operation in the Middle East of Trump's second term. The campaign targeted Yemen's Houthi rebel group, which had been conducting attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes in response to Israel's war on Gaza.
Under President Trump's leadership, U.S. naval vessels have exercised freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Bab al Mandeb multiple times in recent days.
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) June 10, 2025
These transits occurred without challenge and demonstrate the success of both Operation ROUGH RIDER and the President's…
According to the Yemen Data Project, US forces conducted 339 strikes in 53 days, killing at least 238 civilians, including 24 children. To put that number in context, the operation's civilian death toll in its first 48 hours matched the entire civilian toll of the 12-month US-UK campaign that preceded it under President Biden.
The single deadliest incident was the April 17, 2025 strike on the Ras Isa fuel port in Hodeidah, a port through which roughly 80% of Yemen's humanitarian aid passes. Airwars documented 84 civilians killed, including three children and 49 port workers, with over 150 more injured.
The Hodeidah Branch of the government-owned Yemen Oil Company published photographs of its 49 employees killed in the attack. Human Rights Watch called the strike 'an apparent war crime,' with researcher Niku Jafarnia stating that the US government had demonstrated 'callous disregard for civilians' lives.' The Pentagon wrote to the US Defence Department on May 8, 2025 with preliminary findings but received no response.
Amnesty International separately found that an April 28, 2025 US airstrike on a migrant detention facility in Sa'ada Governorate killed at least 68 Ethiopian civilians. Amnesty concluded the strike 'may have violated international humanitarian law.' A ceasefire brokered by Oman was announced on May 6, 2025, with the Houthis committing to halt attacks on US ships, though they stated it did not apply to Israel.
Regime Change by Any Other Name
The most dramatic and legally contested operation of Trump's second term came in the early hours of Jan. 3, 2026. Codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve, the mission involved more than 150 aircraft launching from 20 bases across the Western Hemisphere.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken 'completely by surprise,' Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine told reporters at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Trump watched the operation unfold in real time on screens set up at his Florida residence.
Maduro and Flores were transported to New York, where they pleaded not guilty on Jan. 5, 2026 to narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and weapons charges in the Southern District of New York before Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein.
Trump told reporters that the United States would 'run' Venezuela until a formal transition, while declining to rule out longer-term military involvement, a statement Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to walk back the following day. Multiple Democratic senators, including Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, publicly accused Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth of lying to Congress during a Senate briefing weeks earlier, when both officials stated that regime change was not the objective.
The New York Times editorial board condemned the operation as 'dangerous and illegal,' comparing it to US interventions in Libya and Afghanistan. A Congressional Research Service report to Congress noted that members of both chambers have since introduced resolutions, including S.J.Res. 98, which the Senate voted to advance on Jan. 8, to direct the president to remove US forces from Venezuela without congressional authorisation. None have yet passed.
An April 2025 report by the US National Intelligence Council found no evidence that Maduro directed the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to operate inside the United States, directly contradicting one of the central justifications Trump publicly offered for the intervention. The Council on Foreign Relations, in an expert brief published in early 2026, concluded that Trump's foreign policy 'smacks of neo-imperialism, not neo-isolationism.'
Now, with fresh US-Israeli strikes hitting Iranian nuclear sites and population centres for the second time since June 2025, the full scope of this presidency's military record is still being written, and the cost is still being counted.
