The United States is scaling up its aggression and conflict in the world with little to show for it but likely war crimes. It is inflicting pain and suffering on many communities and doing so in the name of the American people. Even if causing such civilian harm were achieving some U.S. national security goals, U.S. law, international law and basic morality say we shouldn’t be doing these things. What is even more horrifying now is that what the United States is doing isn’t even making us safer. For President Donald Trump’s administration, the brute aggression appears to be an end in itself.

In Iran, our military is burning through tens of billions of dollars in weapons stocks, and Americans are paying far more at the pump as a consequence of Trump’s war of choice. We’ve seen four more U.S. service member deaths in the past two weeks, bringing the total since the start of the war to 18. Nearly 100 service members have also been injured in the recent escalation.

This war is costing the American people plenty, but we are enduring far less than the Iranian people or the citizens of our allies in the region, all of whom live with accumulating tragedies under severe economic hardship and the constant threat of death from the sky.

The war began with a U.S. strike that destroyed a girls’ school in February, killing more than 175 children and teachers. In April, Trump threatened genocide. After he declared the recent shaky ceasefire “over” earlier this month, Trump threatened to “knock out” Iran’s power plants and “all their bridges.” The subsequent campaign of U.S. attacks has continued for nearly two weeks straight. It’s unclear what all the U.S. military has targeted, since the Pentagon is no longer open about what it’s doing, but reports suggest that strikes have killed dozens and injured hundreds; destroyed a desalination plant, which cut some 20 villages off from their water supply; and destroyed critical bridges and energy facilities, putting Iran’s power grid under strain.

None of this has brought the war closer to conclusion, and no matter how it ends, the United States and the world will be worse off.

The United States is imposing pointless suffering on the people of Cuba too. America’s embargo, in place for nearly 70 years now, has placed a heavy toll on the island but completely failed to achieve its long-standing goal of regime change. Since January, the United States has imposed a total oil blockade on Cuba too, accompanied by threats of military aggression. Trump seems to believe that the Cuban people simply haven’t suffered enough to bring about that change themselves, but all it has done is trigger a humanitarian crisis and massive suffering in a country where sustenance of daily life depends heavily on foreign oil. Cuba’s electric grid keeps collapsing, and blackouts are shutting down hospitals and fresh water sources. Food supplies and transport have been disrupted, causing soaring inflation and food insecurity. United Nations human rights experts have condemned the blockade as a “ serious violation of international law.”

Don’t forget that the U.S. military is also continuing an illegal campaign in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. At least 66 U.S. strikes on boats have killed more than 220 people since September. The Trump administration claims that the boats were all trafficking drugs and the men killed were all criminals, but it has provided literally no evidence to prove that. In many cases, family members and countries whose citizens have been killed dispute the claims. Even if they were true, the targets are not militants in a lawful war. Trump may have determined that this is a formal armed conflict, but he doesn’t have the authority to do so, and as such it remains simply a campaign of unlawful killing of civilians who pose no immediate violent threat. To use common terminology, that’s just murder.

Like the others, this campaign, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, has failed to achieve anything for U.S. national security. The administration claims it is disrupting deadly drug trade, but experts say there have been no signs that the flow of lethal drugs into the United States has been affected.

Why, then, is the Trump administration acting so aggressively and illegally, if its actions are not only failing to achieve their stated goals but also don’t seem designed to accomplish them? Because this administration, and specifically the U.S. military under its leadership, pursues aggression and violence for its own sake.

Look no further than Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department, where he spends more time talking about brute strength and manliness than he does discussing America’s national defense and strategic interests. His recent announcement that all U.S. service members over 30 (women included) will now have annual testosterone testing is one case in point. The fact that modern warfare is fought with brains and technology rather than brute force seems lost on our top defense official.

This administration’s unjustified aggression toward the world isn’t just embarrassing, wasteful and harmful to our place in it. It is shameful. All those who knowingly participate in it should one day be held accountable for these crimes, and all Americans should speak out against it.

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Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior adviser with the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She is also a distinguished lecturer with the Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of“The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”

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