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By Micah McCartney
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The United States carried out more unilateral strikes on foreign soil during President Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House than in his predecessor Joe Biden's entire four-year term, according to statistics released on Tuesday by a conflict watchdog.
In the last 12 months, the nearly 600 individual U.S. military strikes ordered by the second Trump administration have spanned three continents, for operations against terrorist organizations, authoritarian regimes and drug cartels, according to data supplied by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project and reviewed by Newsweek.
Why It Matters
The U.S. Defense Department's most recent high-profile use of force came less than two weeks ago, when the U.S. struck Venezuela's key military sites in Caracas while American special operations forces captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a swift raid that critics said likely violated international law. The U.S. government is prosecuting Maduro on charges of narcoterrorism and drug trafficking.
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Trump, who ran on a campaign as the president of peace, is now escalating his threats against longtime U.S. adversaries like Cuba and Iran, while also pressuring Denmark to relinquish control of its strategic Arctic territory Greenland to counter China and Russia.
Any U.S. military action against an allied nation over Greenland would spell the end of NATO and is therefore seen as less likely than another missile strike on Iran, where nationwide protests since late December have threatened Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's rule.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump shrugged off international law and said he answers to nothing but his “own morality.”
"The President always has a host of options at his disposal, and all of his actions have put America First while making the entire world safer," White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Newsweek in an email.
What To Know
The U.S. carried out 573 air and drone strikes between January 20, 2025, and January 5, 2026, compared to 494 strikes in four years under the Biden administration, according to ACLED.
Trump’s tally rises to 658 when factoring in strikes carried out alongside coalition partners, such as those in Syria and Iraq against the ISIS terror group. The number of U.S.-involved coalition strikes is fast approaching Biden’s four-year total of 694, the data shows.
U.S. military strikes were recorded in at least nine countries in the past year, and the death toll has been difficult to assess. The second Trump administration so far has been involved in 1,008 U.S. foreign military events resulting in an estimated 1,093 fatalities, ACLED said, versus 1,518 deaths from 1,648 events under Biden.
These included the publicly disclosed killings of over 110 alleged drug traffickers in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, by order of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And anywhere between 40 and 100 military personnel, including Cuban security forces, may have died in this month's U.S. surgical strikes in Venezuela.
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While the U.S.'s June 2025 bombing of Iran's nuclear sites caused no known fatalities, American forces had supported earlier Israeli strikes that killed a number of Iranian military commanders, whose deaths were not included in ACLED's methodology.
Over 80 percent of the U.S. strikes were directed at Yemen's Houthi rebels from January and December, accounting for over 530 deaths, according to the group's data. The Red Sea crisis began during Biden's time in office on the back of the Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.
“Trump’s first year of foreign strikes shows a ‘strike first, ask questions later’ strategy,” ACLED 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."
Watchdog Warning
Clionadh Raleigh, CEO of ACLED, said: "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. The president’s own framing, that only his 'personal morality' limits what he can do, signals a shift away from law, institutions, and alliances as meaningful brakes on action."
"Recent operations in places like Venezuela and Nigeria show how quickly this approach can translate into force. But what matters just as much is where attention may turn next. Greenland, Colombia, and Cuba are not random places, but sites of likely predation….
"The danger is that these places are no longer being treated as independent states with their own political agency. They are being framed 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."
The White House Responds
Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, said: “President Trump’s first instinct is always diplomacy, and his dealmaking expertise has helped him negotiate better trade agreements, secure a 5 percent defense spending pledge from NATO allies, end eight wars, and more."
Update 1/14/26, 1:30 a.m. ET. This article has been updated with a response from the White House.
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