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The paramount Donald Trump international policy issue as the week began appeared destined to revolve around the timing of potential US armed offensives against Venezuela. While this remains a relevant concern, the president has also signaled a readiness to strike a distinctly separate nation on the opposite side of the Atlantic, promising to deploy forces “guns-a-blazing” into Nigeria should its administration fail to forestall the oppression of Christians.
It represents the most recent illustration of how the Nobel Peace Prize hopeful and champion of “America First” foreign relations stands prepared to leverage the specter of armed force to realize his worldwide policy objectives and to meddle in the internal governance of other nations, especially when such actions are in lockstep with his domestic political imperatives.
In this vein, the menace against Nigeria mirrors the one aimed at Venezuela, albeit the latter appears considerably closer to materializing. In both scenarios, the president seemingly contradicts his repeated objections to military interventionism; nonetheless, these are involvements tied to the priorities of his political core: in one instance, preventing drugs and migrants from entering the US; in the other, safeguarding Christians.
As Trump’s second tenure progresses, it is progressively becoming evident that MAGA is not impervious to the allure of venturing abroad in pursuit of adversaries to vanquish.
What’s really unfolding in Nigeria?
The dilemma Trump is addressing is an authentic one. The extremist Islamist militant faction referred to as Boko Haram and its splinter groups have engaged in a ruthless revolt against the Nigerian government in the nation’s northern region since 2009, perpetrating numerous high-visibility massacres and abductions, notably the 2014 Chibok schoolgirl seizure that sparked an international media movement. This isn’t the solitary religious struggle taking place. Recent times have witnessed a surge in skirmishes and offensives between primarily Muslim nomadic herders and largely Christian agricultural communities in Nigeria’s Northwest and Northcentral areas. The Nigerian armed forces have been combatting the uprising for years, yet President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been criticized for overlooking the predicament of Christians, specifically, and the military endeavor has been encumbered by extensive graft and alleged violations of human rights.
Furthermore, numerous Nigerian states maintain some of the globe’s most stringent blasphemy regulations, which detractors claim are disproportionately applied toward Christians. However, atheists and adherents of minority Muslim denominations have also faced oppression.
Trump’s abrupt fascination with Africa’s most populated nation was conceivably spurred less by any specific incident there — since these are enduring problems — than by developments in Washington. Although it doesn’t garner much mainstream media exposure, the hardship of Christians in Nigeria has functioned as a unifying cause for evangelical Christians in the US recently. During my attendance at former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s lecture in Washington in 2022, demonstrators regularly interrupted the proceedings. On Truth Social, Trump referenced statistics from an account by the international Christian rights NGO Open Doors, indicating that Nigeria accounted for 3,100 of the 4,476 Christians globally murdered for their beliefs in 2024.
Furthermore, this isn’t the inaugural instance of Trump displaying involvement in this matter. When Buhari visited the White House during Trump’s initial term in 2020, the president explicitly inquired, “Why are you killing Christians in Nigeria?” During Trump’s first presidential term, the US included Nigeria in the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern due to infringements on religious freedom. The Biden administration controversially omitted Nigeria from the roster in 2021, just before a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the country, viewed by the US as a crucial counterterrorism ally and a major political and economic force in Africa.
Therefore, Trump’s initial Truth Social posting on Friday, announcing the reinstatement of Nigeria to the CPC list, was unsurprising.
The bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan federal watchdog entity designated by Congress and the White House, had been pressuring him to take that action, as had recent legislative measures proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz. (R-Tex.), a consistent and outspoken voice on the subject.
Mohamed Elsanousi, one of the USCIRF commissioners, communicated to Vox that the commission welcomed Trump’s declaration and his highlighting of the killing of Christians, but he also noted, “there are also violations and killings of Muslims and African traditional religion practitioners. So we would have loved for the President to mention all the other communities that are facing the same kind of persecutions as well.”
Nevertheless, Trump’s post on Saturday came as more of a shock, asserting that the US military:
…may very well go into that now disgraced country, “guns-a-blazing,” to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!
“Yes sir,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tweeted in response. When questioned on Air Force One on Sunday regarding whether this could entail boots on the ground or aerial assaults, Trump answered, “Could be. I mean, other things. I envisage a lot of things.”
Humanitarian intervention, MAGA style
It would be truly surprising if Trump were to follow through with his threat. Although hardly a pacifist, Trump gravitates toward swift interventions that promise conclusive triumphs and carry minimal risk of entanglement or US casualties. None of those criteria apply to Nigeria. It is likely relevant that the Nigerian government does not enjoy an especially favorable assessment from the Trump administration owing to several factors, including its resistance to accepting deported migrants from the US and its condemnation of Israel over the war in Gaza.
It also seems a bit odd to be considering whether “boots on the ground” would be the pivotal element in swaying the momentum against jihadists in West Africa. US troops have been participating in training and support assignments with Western African nations, Nigeria included, for two decades at this point. Although the destiny of those missions is uncertain as a growing number of nations in the area transition toward security collaborations with Russia and as US foreign aid reductions impede US endeavors to stabilize nations where insurgencies are proliferating.
It is worth noting that in August, the administration sanctioned $346 million in weapons sales to the same government it is currently accusing of permitting the widespread murder of Christians and of committing its own human rights abuses. There are substantial justifications for recommending the US reassess its security assistance approach to Nigeria — it has visibly failed to suppress Boko Haram’s insurgency — but scant grounds for assuming a unilateral US military involvement would prove significantly more successful.
Trump’s personal pronouncements hint that he shares this conviction. During his address in Saudi Arabia in May, he took aim at prior administrations for “intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” Speaking to military officers in Quantico in September, he pledged to reinstate “the fundamental principle that defending the homeland is the military’s first and most important priority” and contended that “Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within.”
Yet, he is now cautioning about inserting the US military into the midst of a bewilderingly intricate ethnic strife in an African nation that scarcely anyone in the US truly comprehends.
It is further proof that despite all his America First rhetoric, Trump remains fundamentally a globalist: someone who maintains that the US occupies an essential position on the global stage and should participate in resolving global exigencies, even those with limited bearing on America’s narrowly interpreted national security considerations. However, the crucial divergence between Trump and the liberal internationalists or neoconservatives who preceded him lies in the extent to which his international interventions are attuned to his domestic political goals.
That can entail funneling US economic clout behind a MAGA-sympathetic party in an Argentinian election or the legal proceedings of an ally in Brazil. It can signify overhauling US refugee policy to predominantly favor white South Africans. It may soon manifest as a regime alteration campaign in Venezuela, framed within the context of drug and migration policy. And regarding Nigeria, it signifies reviving the allegedly discredited notion of humanitarian military action — yet only in instances where it is in sync with the priorities of one of Trump’s vital constituencies.
In years gone by, the horrific spectacles emanating from El Fasher, Sudan, might have ignited dialogue concerning the imperative of American military involvement. Do not anticipate such a response in today’s Washington.
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Source: vox.com
