Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is a critic of President Donald Trump’s military track record and his decision to attack countries across the Middle East, parts of Africa and Venezuela without congressional approval. In a Senate floor speech, Warren criticized Trump’s explanations for beginning the Iran war and for backtracking on a campaign promise.
“He said he would be a president to stop wars, not start them. And Americans believed him. But now we face an ugly reality: In the modern era, no American president has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump,” Warren said March 3. “None.”
We wondered if Warren’s statement was accurate, and how she defines the “modern era.” When we reached out to Warren’s office for her evidence to support her statement, a spokesperson sent PolitiFact several news stories, including:
A March 2 Axios article with an opening that nearly matches Warren’s statement: “No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.” The Axios story defines “modern era” as presidents post-9/11: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden.
An article from The Washington Post about Trump’s 2025 military strikes, including those against alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The Post reported that Trump authorized almost as many military strikes in 2025 as Biden did over his four-year term.
An Instagram graphic posted by The Recount, a politics-focused news organization, listing various countries, including in the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela, and faces of the 21st century president who ordered bombs there; Trump’s face appears next to each country. The outlet shared the graphic on Feb. 28, after Trump announced the U.S. and Israel’s Iran strikes.
After reviewing these sources and additional reporting, we found that Trump has authorized the highest number of strikes and targeted the most countries compared with other 21st century presidents.
Countries targeted by president
So how many countries did each president target for military strikes?
Trump’s count is the highestaccording to many news sources.
From the start of his first term to now, Trump struck 10 countries. Since starting his second term in January 2025, he has struck seven countries and boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Biden’s military strikes hit five countries.
Obama’s strikes hit seven countries over two terms.
Bush’s strikes hit five countries over two terms.
For context, Bush launched long-running wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Obama ended the Iraq military operation in 2011but introduced new military operations in Iraq and Syria after the rise of the Islamic State. The Afghanistan war continued through Trump’s first term, with Biden ending it — amid a chaotic withdrawal and suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. military members — in 2021.
Most presidents’ military strikes have been focused on counterterrorism, including Trump’s 2025 strikes against groups such as the Islamic State in Syria and the Houthis, an Iran-backed military group in Yemen, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Here are the countries targeted by each president:
Trump: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran.
Biden: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen.
Obama: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria.
Bush: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Defense and Security Department, said the countries targeted were not surprising, even if Trump’s tactics were. For example, presidents have criticized Iran and Venezuela for years.
“It’s been unpredictable, although his targets have been long discussed, both by him and by previous presidents,” Cancian said.
Cancian recommended looking at the number of ground troops in combat zones as a more revealing metric of a president’s military use.
Trump has — so far — kept military activities to mostly air attacks. Cancian said the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq invasion were much larger military operations compared with Trump’s activities in Yemen, Venezuela and Iran. The U.S. deployed more than 150,000 troops at the outset of the Iraq invasion.
What about overall strikes?
Warren mentioned “more military strikes against as many different countries,” so we compared the presidents’ strike numbers.
Military strikes encapsulate various tactics, including unmanned drone and precision missile strikes and air strikes, which requires dropping bombs or ballistic missiles from a manned aircraft.
During Trump’s first term, he drastically increased airstrikes on Somalia and Yemen compared with Obama, who already increased strikes on those nations significantly during his presidency.
Trump carried out more drone strikes during his first term than each of Obama and Bush’s presidencies.
In 2017, Trump authorized over 10,000 more bombings on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan than Obama and Bush did in each of their years with the highest military activity, 2016 and 2003according to the U.S. Air Forces Central Command.
Biden was involved in the least military activity, authorizing 694 air and drone strikes during his four-year term, significantly fewer than those in Trump’s first term and slightly more than the number of 2025 Trump strikes.
Our ruling
Warren said, “In the modern era, no American president has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.”
From the start of his first term to now, Trump has ordered strikes on 10 countries, which is three more than the next-highest president in the 21st century, Obama.
We rate Warren’s statement True.
Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this fact-check.
