Donald Trump spent a good portion of the first year of his second term in office shamelessly promoting himself as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, going so far as to claim that he ended seven wars. Despite his unceasing efforts, backed by some of his autocratic friends in other countries, including Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Pakistan, the best he could do was receive a second-hand prize from the real 2025 winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who gave him her prize when she met with him at the White House in January 10, 2025. This symbolic, but empty gesture, came less than a week after Trump authorized an attack and raid on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolas Maduro. In return for her goodwill gesture, Trump announced that she did not ‘have the respect to lead the country” after Maduro, throwing his support to Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez. The Nobel Institute in Oslo, after Machado’s announcement that she would share her prize with Trump, wrote that “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time.”
It is unlikely that we’ve seen or heard the last of Trump’s Nobel campaign. It has been an obsession for decades, especially after President Barack Obama received it in 2009. For now, though, his desire to be known as the Peace President seems to be on hold while he burnishes his credentials as a warrior. In October 2025, Trump claimed in a social media post to have ended eight wars in eight months in office, which included one (Armenia and Azerbaijan) that had no fighting to end, one, the flare-up between India and Pakistan, that the Indians said he had no role in, and others that have not ended, such as Israel-Iran, and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ceasefire he brokered between Israel and Hamas has proven to be temporary, and the ‘war’ he claims to have ended between Ethiopia and Egypt never existed.
All the while he was taking credit for ‘ending’ wars, he was threatening military action to retake control of the Panama Canal, to attack drug cartels in Mexico, and to take Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.
During the last months of 2025 and the first two months of 2026, though, he has appeared to have connected with his ‘warrior’ self. Despite campaigning on a promise to avoid dragging the US into foreign wars, since his inauguration, he has ordered ten military operations.
1. In February 2025, he ordered air strikes against Islamic State (IS) sites in Somalia.
2. On March 13, US-led coalition forces killed a senior IS leader in western Iraq
3. From March to May, the US launched naval and airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen in Operation Rough Rider.
4. In June, in the midst of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear capabilities, the US joined an Israeli air campaign, launching strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer.
5. On September 2, 2025, the US began strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which continued into 2026, killing over 100 people whom the administration claims to be drug smugglers.
6. On December 19, Operation Hawkeye Strike was launched in Syria against IS targets in retaliation for an IS attack that killed two US soldiers and an American civilian interpreter. These were followed up by further strikes on January 10 and 16, 2026.
7. On December 25, US Africa Command, in coordination with Nigerian authorities, struck ISIS operatives in Nigeria’s Sokoto State.
8. On January 3, 2026, US special operations forces conducted a pre-dawn raid on Caracas, Venezuela, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and transporting them to the US to face trial on narco-terrorism charges.
9. On February 28, 2026, at 1:15 a.m. ET, the US Central Command, at Trump’s direction. Launched Operation Epic Fury in coordination with Israeli forces, with air, sea, and drone attacks aimed at destroying Iran’s security apparatus, nuclear, and missile facilities, and overthrowing its regime.
10. US forces, in coordination with Ecuadorian forces, began a ground operation against designated terrorist and narco-terrorist organizations in Ecuador, in the first US military ground operation in that country.
While many, if not most, of Trump’s so-called peace deals are questionable, the military operations have not only played out on TV screens and in the media worldwide, but they’ve also been the subject of numerous social media posts, White House, and Pentagon briefings.
To paraphrase the subtitle of the 1964 satirical film, ‘Dr. Strangelove, Donald Trump has learned how to stop worrying about the Peace Prize and Love War. And, suddenly, the world has become a much less safe place.