One of the most common claims about the Trump 45 administration is that “He didn’t start any new wars.”
This is demonstrably FALSE.
During his first term, Trump became the ultimate causal agent for every one of the current conflicts with Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela.
He not only maintained the trajectory of these conflicts as established by previous US administrations, but he dramatically raised the stakes and quickened the pace of the march to war.
Ukraine
In Ukraine, between 2017 and 2021, the already commenced preparations of #TheMotherOfAllProxyArmies were expanded and accelerated to an unprecedented degree.
Almost two-dozen covert US intelligence bases were established throughout eastern Ukraine. Large numbers of Ukrainian armed forces personnel were rotated through US/NATO training programs. Ukrainian officers were instructed in the use of US/NATO communications and intelligence / surveillance / reconnaissance (ISR) data. A chain of command was established from Kiev to US/NATO headquarters at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. US heavy weaponry was pre-staged in Poland, and preliminary deals were made with former Warsaw Pact countries (many of them now NATO members) to provide legacy Soviet artillery, armor, ammunition, and fighter aircraft to Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops were introduced to the use of Javelin Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, M-777 155mm howitzers, and HIMARS Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems.
Some of the legacy Soviet aircraft types in the Ukrainian Air Force were modified to carry and launch US/NATO missiles.
The massive fortification complex in the Donbass region was extended and strengthened.
A few thousand US/NATO “contractors” were integrated into the Ukrainian military – with preference given to the hard-core neo-Nazi brigades, who were considered to be the “elite” units in the AFU.
The strategic focus during the entire Trump 45 administration was to complete the preparation of the Ukrainian military to attack and crush the Russia-leaning separatists in the Donbass, and to then retake Crimea, which the Russians had seized in the aftermath of the 2014 American-led coup d’état in Kiev – and which was formally reassimilated into the Russian Federation as a result of an overwhelming popular referendum vote.
Trump has even bragged about the fact that he was the one who began to arm the Ukrainians to a far greater extent than Obama had ever done.
“I was the one that gave the Javelins. Remember the famous Javelins? That was me. It wasn’t Obama. It wasn’t Biden. It wasn’t anybody else. It was me. And they wiped out a lot of tanks with those Javelins. The expression was, ‘Obama gave sheets’. And I gave Javelins. That was a big deal at the time. That was at the beginning, when people said, ‘Wow, that’s something!’ Well, that was American equipment. Without American equipment, this war would have been over very quickly.”
President Donald J. Trump, Oval Office News Conference, February 26, 2025
Here is the full video clip from which the quote above is taken:
This is the irrefutable fact: the Trump 45 administration both hastened and made inevitable the war whose final fuse was lit in early February 2022 when the Ukrainians commenced a broad-front artillery escalation against what they claimed to be Donbass militia positions, but which were indistinguishable from random civilian targets.
All of these factors combined compelled the Russians to move decisively (and sooner than they wanted) to extend their strategic depth in the region.
All those who claim Trump has no culpability for the war in Ukraine are either ignorant of the abundant objective facts, or in denial thereof.
Several prominent geopolitical voices were raising the alarm about war in Ukraine even before Victoria Nuland, John McCain, Lindsey Graham et al. goose-stepped through the streets of conquered Kiev in 2014.
Victoria Nuland in Kiev, February 2014
And all during the civil war that then ensued, until the Russians intervened in late February 2022, US/NATO intelligence and special forces operatives were active in Ukraine, in support of the Kiev government’s military movements in the Donbass.
The crisis became increasingly acute over the course of the first Trump administration, even as the twin objectives of subduing the Donbass and retaking Crimea became increasingly apparent.
As I posted on Twitter in April of 2021:
Ukraine has two options: accept its role as a buffer state, or be dismembered. If the US goads them into an attempt to subjugate the Donbass, Russia will slice away eastern Ukraine and assimilate it — and there is *nothing* the US can do to prevent it.
Fact is, the big geostrategic nation-state wars are always decades in the making. So it was in the case of the war in Ukraine.
But the unavoidable trajectory of war was set in stone during Donald Trump’s FIRST rodeo in the White House. Trump owns the Ukraine War more than Joe Biden’s Autopen. At least Trump laid claim to a modest degree of cogency in his first term.
The apparition of Joe Biden, dazed and confused, simply watched dumbfounded as long-fated events flashed before his empty eyes.
China
One of Trump’s first actions after he was inaugurated in 2017 was to announce a sale to Taiwan of Harpoon anti-ship missiles, SM-2 and SM-3 naval air defense missiles, MK-48 torpedoes, and advanced radar systems.
In 2019, to much fanfare, Trump announced the sale to Taiwan of 66 F-16V fighters.
F-16V Fighter – Taiwan
In 2020, Trump announced the sale of even more Harpoon ASMs, HIMARS systems, and MQ-9B drones.
Trump also, over the course of his first term, sent a total of about 300 US Army and Marine special forces operators to Taiwan. Since Trump’s second term began, that number has been increased to over 500 – including substantial contingents on Penghu and Kinmen Island, which is just six miles from the Chinese coast.
Kinmen and Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait
This permanent basing of a full battalion of US troops in Taiwan was unprecedented prior to Trump’s first term. And, understandably, it is regarded by China as an unprecedented provocation. Consequently, Chinese preparations for a possible war in and around its home seas have greatly accelerated.
And, in what is arguably his most strategically ill-advised move of all, Trump 45 started the trade and rhetoric war with China that continues to the present day.
There are now even widespread rumors that the US Department of War is preparing a naval blockade of energy imports into China — an act of utter madness.
Iran
Trump, in concert with the Israelis, started the major war with Iran that continues to this day — albeit currently in one of its typical intermissions.
In what I consider to have been the most brazen act of war in his first administration, Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, on January 3, 2020, at the Baghdad airport.
Iranian General Qasem Soleimani
Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission to Baghdad at the invitation of Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who had been acting as the intermediary between the Saudis and the Iranians, who were working to de-escalate drone and missile attacks by Iraqi militias against American bases in Iraq, and the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Soleimani was traveling to deliver Iran’s official response to a Saudi Arabian mediation proposal.
On December 31, 2019, ostensibly in support of these Saudi-Iranian moves to defuse the situation in Iraq, President Trump made a personal call to Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi. The Iraqi leader then called Soleimani to arrange a meeting in the Green Zone in Baghdad, scheduled for the morning of January 3, 2020.
Soleimani and his small entourage traveled openly on a commercial flight, and were met at the airport by Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and a few other Iraqis. As Soleimani, al-Muhandis, and eight others were traveling from the airport to the Green Zone in two vehicles, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired Hellfire missiles and blew them all to smithereens.
President Trump directly ordered the attack, and afterwards publicly gloried in his perfidy.
Soleimani was considered a national hero in Iran, and was arguably the second-most powerful and influential political figure in Iran at the time, behind only the Ayatollah Khamenei.
The Iranians were justifiably outraged.
On January 8, 2020, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack against the American Ayn al-Asad airbase in Iraq. About 15 Iranian ballistic missiles targeted the base with shockingly impressive accuracy, although it was clear the strike was mostly demonstrative in nature, and the Iranians deliberately avoided killing US troops.
Even so, the potency of the strike clearly astounded both the Americans and the Israelis, and resulted in a diminution of both US and Israeli strikes against Iranian targets until April 1, 2024, when the Israelis killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers in a missile strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
Two weeks later (April 13-14, 2024), the Iranians launched a massive and unprecedented missile strike against Israel. This then led directly to the series of exchanges between Israel and Iran which took place over the course of the ensuing months, culminating in the so-called 12-Day War between the US/Israel and Iran from June 13-24, 2025.
Of course, it must be understood that this war between the US/Israel and Iran is NOT over yet. It is just on a brief hiatus, and there are indications in recent days that Israel is planning new strikes against Iran.
But make no mistake, the catalyzing event for this greatly escalated war with Iran was Trump’s treacherous murder of Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020.
Venezuela
Trump began publicly expressing his desire to go to war against Venezuela, and to seize its oil, no later than July 2017. It became a recurring theme for him, ultimately resulting in the failed 2019 coup d’état against Nicolas Maduró, when the US attempted to install clown puppet Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader.
Trump is quoted as saying:
“I don’t understand why we’re not looking at Venezuela. Why are we not at war with Venezuela?”
“That’s the country we should be going to war with. They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.”
Trump’s bellicose language towards Venezuela continued all through his first term, and as a result, Venezuela’s longstanding friends Russia, China, and Iran began to more aggressively strengthen Venezuela’s military capabilities in anticipation of an eventual US attack and potential invasion of the South American country that holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
Now, as I write here on Thanksgiving Day 2025, the United States has positioned a massive naval fleet and Marine landing force off the coast of Venezuela, and it appears almost certain that military operations against the Maduro regime will commence imminently, with the overt aim of installing a new puppet government whose putative leader, CIA-groomed Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, has explicitly called for an American invasion of the Bolivarian Republic, and pledged to permit the US to take control of Venezuela’s oil, gold, and other mineral wealth.
María Corina Machado
SOUTHCOM has even provided a slick promotional video for the upcoming war against Venezuela:
Peace through strength:
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) November 17, 2025
Carrier Strike Group Twelve is making a powerful impact in the #SOUTHCOM region—standing strong to deter illicit networks, disrupt transnational threats, protect the Caribbean, and defend our homeland with purpose and presence. @CVN78_GRFord @USNavy pic.twitter.com/LTEt3iFB1v
The Imaginary Peace President
Trump, consumed by his own lust to become a celebrated recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been claiming for months now to have ended no fewer than eight imaginary wars.
In reality, President Donald J. Trump has exhibited one of the most itchy trigger fingers of any US president in my lifetime (Eisenhower was still president when I was born).
Incredibly, he has chosen to pick fights with the most powerful adversaries the US has faced since the Second World War: Russia, China, and Iran. And, worst of all, he has catalyzed the formation of an unbeatable military and economic alliance between those three ascendant civilizational powers, even as American military power has eroded to its post-WW2 nadir.
Of course, most Americans possess a knowledge and understanding of war and US military might as it has been portrayed for decades in Hollywood movies and video games. And therefore, when Trump waxes grandiloquent about the United States being the greatest military force in human history, American vanity is easily persuaded that there is no nation on earth the US cannot trample underfoot with one hand tied behind its back.
Neither Donald Trump nor many Americans realize there are no easy wars left to fight. But that sobering truth will be laid bare for all to see between now and the end of the final term of The Imaginary Peace President.
Reprinted with permission from imetatronink.
Subscribe and support here.
