Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has told supporters, following his successful US election campaign, that he has no taste for starting wars. The 45th, and likely 47th, US president claimed victory as projections showed that he was on course to secure the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the White House.
Trump pledged that his second administration would usher in a new “golden age of America.”
While his celebratory speech focused on domestic policies, Trump also said the country needs “a strong and powerful military, and ideally we don’t have to use it.” During his first term from 2017 to 2021, he claimed “we had no wars” in the sense that the US engaged in virtually no new major armed conflicts.
”Four years we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS, we defeated ISIS in record time,” he said, referring to the international military campaign in the Middle East against the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
”They said he will start a war. I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars,” Trump added.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he would stop the conflict between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours,” if elected, potentially even before formally assuming the presidency.
While his administration did send weapons to Kiev in the run-up to the escalation of the conflict, Trump himself was no longer in the Oval Office when Moscow published a proposal to resolve the escalating tensions in December 2021.
Trump has never made public his purported plan to end the Ukraine conflict. He reportedly intends to put pressure on Moscow and Kiev and force both to make concessions.
The Russian government has said that it would not accept any resolution that would simply freeze the status quo without resolving the core causes of the confrontation.