Social media posts say former US President Donald Trump ‘was the first president in modern history’ who ‘did not start a new war’. However, there were other American presidents in modern history who did not enter the country in a new war. While it may be difficult to define military intervention, Trump is not the only president not to start a new war during his reign.
Examples of positions that make this claim are Donald Trump, Jr. (here) and others here and here.
For the purpose of this fact-checking, Reuters viewed U.S. presidents from the end of World War II until now. It regards the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan as full-scale wars (here). Given the difficulty of defining ‘war’, this article will also address other important US military interventions in foreign conflicts.
THE Korean War (1950 – 1953)
The Truman Doctrine, which stated that the United States “threatened military, political, and economic aid to nations” by external or internal authoritarian power, “for the first time before Congress on March 12, 1947, is regarded by many historians as the official beginning regard. after the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (here, here).
On June 27, 1950, two days after the North Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th parallel between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea in the south (here), President Truman issued an order US military intervention on the peninsula (here).
THE VIETNAM ERA (1955-1975)
In 1954, months after the Viet Minh defeated the French in Dien Bien Phu, and Vietnam was divided between the North and West-backed South by the Communists, President Dwight D. Eisenhower pledged his support to the South Vietnamese president. Ngo Dinh Diem (here, here). Between 1955 and 1960, Eisenhower increased the number of U.S. military advisers (here). President John F. Kennedy also increased US involvement in the war (here).
The American war in Vietnam officially began in 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. After North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 5, 1964, Johnson called on Congress to accept the resolution of the Tonkin Gulf, which significantly increased U.S. military involvement in Vietnam (here, here ).
Despite his policy of Vietnamization (a plan to gradually withdraw, here), President Richard Nixon intensified the conflict on other fronts, particularly in Cambodia and Laos (here). Nixon also approved the largest air strike of the war, and struck North Vietnam with 36,000 tons of bombs in late 1972 (here). In early 1973, he ended direct US involvement in Vietnam (here).
THE WAVE WAR (1990-1991)
President George HW Bush was the first president since Johnson to officially enter the United States in a new war, this time in the Persian Gulf. In response to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council approved the use of force against Iraq when it did not withdraw on January 15, 1991, leading to Operation Desert Storm ( here, here, here).
THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (2001 – CURRENT)
On October 7, 2001, less than a month after affiliates of the militant Islamic organization al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with hijacked commercial aircraft, President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom, an offensive in Afghanistan that was intended to destroy al-Qaeda and defeat the Taliban, who took over the country (here).
President Barack Obama has increased the deployment of U.S. troops to Afghanistan (here), but would eventually drop the troops level to about 8,400 by the end of his term (here).
THE WAR IN IRAQ (2003-2011)
In March 2003, President Bush, whose government claimed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, started war on Iraq with the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom (here). On December 15, 2011, the United States put an end to the war in Iraq, which has killed nearly 4,500 US troops since 2003 (here).
OTHER US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
Since 1945, the United States has had an active foreign policy, with its military regularly engaged abroad. While it will not be considered as ‘new wars’ of this fact tournament, it is worth mentioning.
In a report by the Congressional Research Service, you can see an extensive list of all U.S. military use abroad.
Among the most prominent military interventions abroad during the Cold War are the invasion of Pig Bay during Kennedy’s government (here), Reagan’s deployment of US marines to Beirut during the Lebanese civil war (here), the invasion of Grenada (here) and the bombing of Tripoli in Libya, both also under Reagan (here).
Under George HW Bush, thousands of US troops invaded Panama in an attempt to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega (here), and thousands of troops were sent on a peace mission (here) to Somalia.
Under President Bill Clinton, U.S. troops were sent to Haiti (here) as well as to the Balkans as part of a larger NATO deployment (here, here).
Under President Obama, the US and US allies conducted months-long airstrikes in Libya (here) and military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (here).
Trump has held US military operations to attack Syrian government targets (here, here) and recently staged the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani via US drone strike (here).
CLOSURE
Different definitions of war against military operations make the primary claim that Trump was the first president in modern history difficult to clearly examine.
If we consider the Koran War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, Trump joins Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, John F Kennedy and Dwight. D. Eisenhower because he had not officially brought the United States into a new war since 1945.
More conservatively, if we consider these five wars as well as other military operations mentioned above, the presidents who did not start a new war or were involved in the escalation or start of a new military operation would not include Trump (if we action in Syria as an extension to the presence of the Obama administration), Carter and Ford.
The claim was investigated by USA Today (here) which also found that Trump was not alone in not bringing the country into new wars, and Newsweek, which found that he was the first since Carter to not US troops in a to enter new conflict (here).
VERDICT
Untrue. Only four of the 13 presidents in office between 1945 and 2020 – Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, George HW Bush and George W. Bush – officially brought the country into new full-scale wars (Korea, Vietnam, the Pers Golf, Afghanistan, Iraq). If we consider other military interventions as well, Carter and Ford join Trump in not starting or stepping up existing foreign conflicts with U.S. military involvement.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.