WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — The United States carried out more air and drone strikes abroad in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term than during former President Joe Biden’s entire four-year term, said a survey published on Tuesday.
From Jan. 20, 2025, to Jan. 5, 2026, the United States conducted 573 air and drone strikes, and 658 when operations with coalition partners are included, compared with 494 strikes and 694 coalition operations during Biden’s four-year term, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
The nonprofit conflict watchdog said the United States was involved in 1,008 foreign military events in at least nine countries over the past 12 months, resulting in an estimated 1,093 fatalities, compared with 1,518 deaths from 1,648 events under Biden’s entire term.
The fatalities under Trump included at least 110 alleged drug traffickers killed by the U.S. military in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific, said a Newsweek report, noting that the number of deaths from U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in June remained unknown.
More than 80 percent of the strikes were directed at Yemen’s Houthi rebels from between last January and December, accounting for over 530 deaths, ACLED said.
“Trump’s first year of foreign strikes shows a ‘strike first, ask questions later’ strategy,” the watchdog said in its analysis.
“The numbers show that the Trump administration has leaned hard on rapid, high-impact military action as a first response, moving quickly and with fewer constraints than in previous years.”
“What we are seeing in U.S. foreign activity right now is striking not just for its speed, but for how openly it is challenging the idea that power should be constrained by shared rules,” said Clionadh Raleigh, CEO of ACLED.
The recent operations in countries such as Venezuela and Nigeria show how quickly this approach can translate into force, but warned that attention may turn next to places like Greenland, Colombia and Cuba, which should be treated as independent states with their own political agency rather than as targets for control, he said.
Raleigh accused the second Trump administration of framing the places “as problems to be managed, and as places that also hold assets the U.S. would benefit from controlling, whether that’s oil, territory, or strategic position.” (Namibia Daily News/Xinhua)
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