India shouldn’t view Trump from his opponents’ perspective

For someone who avowedly slams the United States’ ‘forever wars,’ wants to be known as the ‘Peace President,’ and openly stakes a claim to the Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump has been quite bellicose. The latest US move, another round of retaliatory strikes against the Islamic State in Syria, underlines the apparent contradiction in Trump’s foreign policy. Last month, too, there was action by the US military in response to the killing of two of their soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in the country. In 2025 alone, there were seven US strikes in seven countries across the world. As the American conservative publication, New York Post, put it, Trump is “pursuing a Ronald Reagan-inspired agenda of ‘peace through strength’ with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at the helm… Renamed the ‘Department of War’ from ‘Department of Defense’ under Trump, the Pentagon this year has carried out strikes on Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, Venezuela and the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea.” And this doesn’t include the audacious raid into Venezuela and the capture of its incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife.

In short, everything about Trump’s foreign policy—from nomenclature to action—has been aggressive. This is, even though his support base, Make America Great Again (MAGA), is uneasy with the superpower’s military involvement outside the country. Imbued with a strong sense of isolationism, Trump’s aggression is not likely to please his MAGA supporters. It would, however, be misleading to regard the apparent contradiction in his policy as real or, from the perspective of anti-American intellectuals, downright hypocrisy. To begin with, and this is most important, his military actions—even the boldest ones, the attack on Iran’s nuclear facility and against the Maduro couple—have not cost any American lives. The strikes he has ordered have brought back glory to his nation, restored his country’s prestige internationally (it was severely hurt by the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan under Joe Biden), badly weakened the US’ enemies, and strengthened allies like Israel. Further, Trump’s muscular actions abroad have aligned with the ideas and ideals cherished by the MAGA base. For instance, he embarrassed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa in June at a televised meeting in which he highlighted the issue of atrocities against white people in the latter’s country.

This was the first time a top Western leader expressed solicitude for white people in recent memory. Similarly, he made it clear that the strikes in Nigeria were to check attacks on Christians—again something Western dignitaries don’t even talk about, let alone act against. Therefore, Trump’s claims of being a ‘peace’ President and his aggressive use of military power seem reconciled if regard his foreign policy as rooted in a distinct and old strategic paradigm rather than from the perspective of liberals who anyway dislike him. Either way, his approach is not conventional liberal internationalism, in its real sense. He believes that military force is neither a last resort nor an aberration; it is a central tool of statecraft, deployed swiftly, decisively, and to deter future threats rather than engage in prolonged occupations. One may not agree with his worldview, but its internal logic explains Trump’s foreign policy. India’s response to his actions and statements should be in recognition of his worldview.