Drones, Diplomacy, and the Death of Accountability: Trump’s Forever War Paradox Now
Donald Trump rode into office — again — on promises to end America’s “Forever Wars.” But within five months, he’s matched Biden’s four-year drone strike tally, reigniting conflicts across Somalia, Syria, and Iraq. Plus B2 raids on Iran with Israel. While White House statements tout “strategic precision,” the body count tells another story.
Drone warfare has become the hammer of perpetual conflict — detached, high-tech, and morally disfiguring.
Perhaps too many youths in USAF Creech or RAF Waddington are getting trigger-happy in Forever Wars on wedding parties or rebels on a motorbike essentially Call of Duty video games wars with $40M Predator drones and $2M Tomahawk missiles and real casualties.
The RAF drone strikes of just 12 in 2 years in Iraq and Syria shows restraint, and perhaps also a lack of credible targets - with questions as RAF Cyprus over what exactly are UK boots on the ground doing?
And why after 25 years of war and Occupation in Arabia drone strikes are so frequent?
The irony runs deeper when Trump receives Nobel Peace Prize endorsements from Benjamin Netanyahu - but more telling from others - for brokering ceasefires in places like Congo, Pakistan, and even Iran-Israel and Armenia-Azerbaijan. Some call it diplomatic brilliance. Others see a dangerous misdirection in still dallying with drones — a power play of optics over outcomes.
The Drone Dilemma: Precision vs War Crime
From Gaza to Mogadishu, drones now serve as the vanguard of modern warfare. Civilian homes become “targets,” and behavioural profiling, whether Palantir or not, replaces hard intelligence. Signature strikes — attacks based on suspicious movement rather than confirmed identity — risk turning every male of military age into a suspect and every mud hut into a command and control centre. And there's still those pesky wedding parties and motorbikes again. And like Texas, where everybody carries a gun in the street, miscreants and misfits are hard to spot from 30,000 feet and 3,000 miles.
Under international law, the threshold for a war crime isn’t weaponry — it’s intent and proportionality. And when drones kill wedding guests or children, the defence that “it was clean” collapses. The IDF already struggling withthat dilemma with Bibi facing an ICC jail cell.
In 2025, drones accounted for the majority of U.S. battlefield fatalities inflicted — and nearly 80% of strikes were in countries without formal war declarations.
In effect it's policing by drone. Questions asked later or not at all as an NYC policing model imported to Arabia.
Nobel Stumbles and Selective Peacemaking
Trump’s peace portfolio includes deals between Congo and Rwanda, India and Pakistan he says, and even factions in Syria. But these achievements may be symbolic, stitched together for geopolitical theatre rather than sustainable reform. Or Trump will prove us wrong. Meanwhile, more accessible conflict zones — the “lower-hanging fruit” of diplomacy — are neglected as a Nobel beacon if Ukraine and Israel prove too difficult:
Haiti is in total chaos, with Port-au-Prince under gang control and mass displacement unchecked.
Commonwealth Nigeria’s northeast bleeds under Boko Haram and ISWAP, while elections falter under violence and hostages.
Myanmar continues ethnic cleansing with UN envoy Julie Bishop struggling in releasing ASSK and credible elections and ceasefires - yet Thailand/ASEAN and India with extensive influence.
Sudan’s ceasefires collapse monthly it seems in and around Darfur.
A safer world with just 250,000 war deaths (down from Cold War-era millions) is no comfort when those deaths are buried beneath the weight of anonymity and under-reporting and secret drone strikes continue.
Arguments for aid and policing and nation building are drowned out in another drone explosion.
Forever Wars Rebranded
In Iraq, the U.S. still runs raids alongside proxy militias with dubious loyalties. In Syria, RAF drone strikes operate under joint intel agreements — but targets shift faster than policy. And both nations are now at peace. UK and USA seem to have fallen into the trap of doing those proto-nations dirty work for them, whether resolving ethnic conflict or nation building, with supposedly clean drone strikes almost on auto pilot.
What began as counterterrorism with a War on Terror has morphed into a distributed theatre of endless engagement, where war never ends — it simply changes location.
The term "Forever Wars" suggests stasis. But in truth, these wars evolve: ground raids in Iraq, cyber ops against Iran, and drone campaigns in the Sahel as the Pentagon and its $1TN budget needs A New Enemy. DOGE quickly raising the white flag on kneejerk bloated budgets. And all conducted without full congressional oversight, and often with local allies who operate in moral grey zones.
Congress doesn't yet have a MENA Drones Committee of specialists to both micromanage and see the big picture of the Pentagon sandbox stretching from Gaza to Yemen and from Afghanistan to Niger.
The Moral Ledger Revisited
Trump may chase a Nobel through ceasefire deals with Netanyahu or Putin, but genuine global safety requires confronting neglected battlefields. For the cost of three F-35 jets — roughly $500 million — the U.S. could vaccinate 7 million zero-dose children and save 1 million lives as per my earlier post. Instead, funds go toward weaponised theatre, not humanitarian precision.
Drones, once hailed for minimizing boots on the ground, now resemble the war crime hammer of techno-imperialism — striking without presence, responsibility, or context. An easier choice than B52 strikes or commando raids. And if the 21st century wants peace, it must define war not just by tactics, but by values.
During his Autumn 2025 visit to London, Trump can ignite a heated debate over the ethics of drone warfare, and MPs from multiple parties could call for new limits on lethal autonomous strikes, especially outside declared war zones.
The proposed framework could restrict operations in Ukraine, Africa, and unmanned theatres like Somalia unless governed by formal oversight or international mandate. With civilian deaths mounting and diplomatic norms fraying, the moment could be a crossroads: a chance to redraw the boundaries of war before drones become not just tools of policy, but instruments of silence.
And even tackling War Crimes such as White Phosphorous and chemical tear gas weapons in Ukraine, or even USA cities.
In the Autumn 2025 visit to the UK, Donald Trump could unveil a “New Forever War Agenda” — a sweeping 21C doctrine that echoes the strategic ambition of the original Yalta Conference of 1945, where Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin defined the post-war world.
But unlike the wartime unity of that historic summit, Trump’s vision is still rooted in fragmentation, transactional diplomacy, and a redefinition of global spheres of influence - requiring a great leap forward. The scourge of nuclear weapons is an open goal for Trump Diplomacy especially with Putin as the Ukraine War collapses into a Chechnya war on cities.
Trump could propose a framework that would limit drone warfare to declared zones — notably Ukraine and Africa — while expanding covert operations and proxy alliances elsewhere.
The proposal could include:
A “No-Fly Mandate” for NATO drone operations in Africa unless sanctioned by regional blocs - a similar structure for Ukraine and Russian missiles
A reduction in direct U.S. troop deployments in MENA and Africa, replaced by intelligence-sharing and militia support - more an FBI than CIA role on terror
A Global 21C Ceasefire summit modelled on Yalta, with Putin and Xi floated as potential attendees on redefining Drones, White Phosphorous, Missiles, Laser/Energy weapons - and especially Nukes
North Korea perhaps higher up the agenda with its Nukes on China's flanks, and troops and arms deployed to Ukraine - Xi's modern China taking a dim view of his 1950's Little Brother?
A LatAm summit on Haiti (even Mexico Cartels and the Darien Gap bottleneck) for an updated version of Operation Power Play with USMC and a Coalition of the Willing (with UK and Carib Commonwealth?) on the streets of Port au Prince rather than LA - Trump even grasping the nettle of Gitmo and the dated Cuba Embargo
A Monroe Doctrine revisit with the last fragments of Danish, Dutch, French and UK colonies in the New World gone in 2026 - even UK tax havens subject to FBI scrutiny with The City. And rather than an invasion of Canada perhaps some Pacific border-straightening and the Bering Tunnel
The clarity of Trump’s doctrine, could be undermined and risks legitimizing authoritarian regimes and denying international law, as drone strikes rebound in Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger and Iraq with minimal oversight.
The UK’s opposition parties surely will call for a Commons inquiry into drone ethics, and civil society groups urge Parliament to push for UN-backed limits on autonomous weapons?
The Trump Doctrine moment could be a pivot from managed instability — to a world where peace is negotiated through values, and through visionary leverage.
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