Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, amid signs of strain for the ceasefire in Iran that was announced a day earlier, Donald Trump published the latest in a series of curious items to his social media platform. The apparent point of the presidential message was to warn of the potential of reviving the paused war.
“All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with,” he wrote, adding that if there is no deal, “then the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.”
But it was the conclusion of his online statement that stood out.
“[O]ur great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest,” Trump wrote.
It was a word he rarely has used. In fact, since starting his own social media platform, he has never before published the word “conquest,” and when he relied on the platform formerly known as Twitter, he never used the word, either.
Last week, in a nationally televised address, he briefly mentioned “conquest,” though he used it as part of a condemnation of Iran’s “murderous regime.” Similarly, in 2019, Trump spoke at the United Nations General Assembly and boasted, “Americans know that in a world where others seek conquest and domination, our nation must be strong in wealth, in might and in spirit.”
In other words, the incumbent president, in the recent past, denounced tyrannical figures hellbent on “conquest.” This week, however, he argued the U.S. military he commands was “looking forward … to its next Conquest.”
The Bulwark published a brief item contextualizing the rhetoric:
It’s unusual for an American president to proclaim ‘Conquest’ as his goal. In his June 6, 1944, D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers ‘fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.’
Not so of American soldiers under the command of Trump. Like many wannabe authoritarians, he’s interested in ‘Conquest.’ Indeed, the dream of foreign conquest seems to have become a more central part of Trump’s personal sense of grandiosity, not to say megalomania, than it was earlier in his career. The prospect of more unauthorized and unjustified foreign adventures is evidently very much on Trump’s mind.
I continue to think about the Americans who supported the GOP ticket in 2024 because they believed Republicans would pursue a foreign policy based on restraint and noninterventionism, and just how spectacularly wrong they were.
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