When donald trump called himself “the president of peace” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my colleague Generation Z The men and I take it seriously, but also a promise we take personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars Iraq and AfghanistanIt felt reassuring. He told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and would not ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief remained strong until the United States overthrew The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan influenced how my generation learned to view Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that left young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a protracted conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older brothers return home after their changed deployments and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully returned. When we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans was not ideological, but inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 elections approached, that dynamic had changed. After seeing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate the headlines while Joe Biden was president, Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me that voting for Kamala Harris was voting to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not going to vote for Trump because I love him,” a friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: who was least likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was quite clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on US involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation that my generation was taught to distrust. Young people online have been expressing the same concerns, worried that Maduro’s overthrow reflects the early stages of the wars they feared. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared the same sentiment. “That’s how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They can try to make it seem like it’s not really a war, but people our age always end up being the ones who pay the price for it.” For young people who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break with interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they supported and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young people, Venezuela has become an important part of a broader shift in how they view Trump. TO recent survey of Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, and only 27 percent agree with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you.”
Gen Z men’s support for Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, but rather the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that is no longer the case. Trump recently proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends do not want more military spending that could involve us in foreign wars; They want a president who will keep them at home and fight for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and greater intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young people now seems out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela is not just another foreign policy dispute, it is a conflict that many young people fear they may be sent to fight. Gen Z men did not support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would support them, fight for their interests and prevent them from waging unnecessary wars. Now, that promise seems fragile and the fear of being the ones who have to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war is not abstract, it is personal.
