Convicted felon Donald Trump has overseen nearly as many air strikes in the first five months of his second term as Joe Biden launched in his entire presidency. Trump’s onslaughts on Houthi militants in Yemen and jihadists in Somalia have been more ferocious than Biden’s, and he has ordered strikes on Iraq, Syria and most recently, Iran.
After campaigning on a pledge to end American involvement in military conflicts, he has sharply escalated the country’s air campaigns, according to the data from Acled (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data), which maps conflicts. Trump has overseen 529 air strikes since his inauguration, compared with 555 over the entire four years of the previous administration.
Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia were already being targeted by the previous administration, but Trump opened up a new front with strikes on Iran’s nuclear program. “The US military is moving faster, hitting harder, and doing so with fewer constraints,” said Prof Clionadh Raleigh, chief executive of Acled, highlighting the intensity of the bombing campaigns.
This new data has been published amid tensions within Trump’s MAGA base over whether he should be pursuing foreign military interventions at all. Prominent MAGA figures, including Tucker Carlson, last month complained that striking Iran ran against Trump’s “America First” isolationist promises. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a high-profile MAGA loyalist and critic of intervention, said there was a “very big divide” in Trump’s base over the issue and that she was “sick of” foreign entanglements.
Prof Raleigh said the U.S. was not “stepping back” under Trump. “The recent air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites have been framed as a major turning point in US foreign policy. But if you take a step back, they don’t stand out – they fit." She continued, saying, “While Trump has repeatedly promised to end America’s ‘forever wars’, he has rarely elaborated on how [this will take]."
Trump's strategy comes at a cost. “For civilians, it’s a renewed danger with little warning. For U.S. allies, it raises concerns about co-ordination and unpredictability. And, for lawmakers, it deepens concerns about executive power and accountability," according to Raleigh. “So, is Trump aiming to end wars by escalating quickly and decisively, or is this a return to high-risk, low-accountability foreign policy? Is air power being used to avoid deeper conflict, or just manage from above? What is clear: the U.S. isn’t stepping back. It’s moving faster, striking first, and saving the conversations for later.”
No comments:
Post a Comment