Trump promised no wars. Now he’s a Bush-style regime change president | Mohamad Bazzi

The America First president who built his political brand on opposing foreign military adventures has unleashed a war of choice aimed at regime change

It turns out that Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed candidate of peace," is just as eager to start new wars. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as the antithesis of his Democratic opponents Joe Biden, and later, Kamala Harris. Trump insisted he would use his deal-making skills to end multiple global conflicts that started under the Biden administration, including Israel's war on Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars." Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end - and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into," he said.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University