When Donald Trump called himself the “Peace President” during his 2024 campaign, it wasn’t just a slogan that my Gen Z male peers and I took seriously. But also a promise that we took personally. For a generation that grew up in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this was reassuring.
It gave us the feeling that there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its mistakes and would not send our generation to another war for regime change. This belief persisted until the United States overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to perceive Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts, the consequences of which young people had to bear. We heard how the Iraq War was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to evolve into a long conflict that shaped the early adult lives of many Millennials.
Growing up in the shadow of endless wars
Many of us grew up seeing older siblings return from deployments changed and hearing teachers or coaches talk about friends who never fully returned. When we were old enough to pay attention, the distrust of Bush-era Republicans was not ideological but a legacy of what we had heard.
As the 2024 election campaign approached, this dynamic had reversed. After the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip dominated the headlines during Joe Biden’s presidency, the Democrats were now seen as warmongers. My friends constantly told me that a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote for war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were seen as the ones my friends believed could keep us safe.
The reversal of political perception
“I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” a friend told me. “I vote for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, their voting decision boiled down to one question: Who is less likely to send us to war? The answer was pretty clear to her.
Fast forward to today, and Venezuela is beginning to shake that belief. Even without talk of conscription or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. engagement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation that my generation learned to distrust. Young men online are expressing the same concerns, fearing that Maduro’s removal will resemble the early stages of the wars they grew up watching.
Venezuela and the fear of escalation
When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared this exact sentiment. “That’s how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They may try to make it seem like it’s not a real war, but in the end it’s always people our age who pay the price.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break with interventionist policies, Venezuela is blurring the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they supported and the old one they had learned to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a central part of a broader shift in perceptions of Trump. A recent poll by Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval ratings among young men have fallen 10 percent, with just 27 percent now agreeing that Trump “delivers for you.”
Declining approval among young men
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never a matter of ideology or party loyalty, but rather the idea that he had their backs and would fight for them. But that is no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed increasing the military budget by $500 billion. Such ideas will only harm the president among young men. My friends do not want increased military spending that could entangle 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 larger military and more interventions abroad, the promise that once made him seem like a protector of young men looks increasingly unattainable. For my generation, Venezuela is not just another foreign policy dispute, but a conflict in which many young men fear they will be the ones sent to fight.
A broken promise
Generation Z men supported Trump not because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He should be a president who has their backs, fights for their interests and protects them from unnecessary wars. Now that promise seems fragile, and the fear of once again being the one to bear the consequences has returned.
For a generation that grew up with the consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war is not abstract but personal.