The President's Bogus Crusade
The president is not an emperor with a responsibility to protect Christians in other lands.
The president repeated his threats against Nigeria yesterday:
I’m 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. These are cherished people, these are great people – leave them alone. Warning: The Nigerian government better move fast before it’s too late. If they don’t there’s going to be hell to pay.
It should go without saying that the president’s demands are unreasonable and probably impossible for the Nigerian government to meet. The security problems in northern Nigeria have no ready-made military solution. The Nigerian government would be hard-pressed to give Trump what he says he wants even if they weren’t being threatened with attacks on their territory.
Trump’s threatened intervention in Nigeria’s internal affairs is not legitimate in any way. The U.S. has no international mandate to act, and it doesn’t have permission from the Nigerian government. Congress certainly hasn’t authorized any mission in Nigeria for any purpose. None of this matters to the lawless president, but it does matter for the interests and reputation of the United States.
The president is not an emperor with a responsibility to protect Christians in other lands. The U.S. should not be looking for excuses to interfere in the affairs of other countries. An administration genuinely interested in putting American interests first would not be contemplating military intervention of any kind in Nigeria.
Trump is probably putting Christians in Nigeria at greater risk by threatening the country on their behalf. European powers played a similar game with the Ottomans by extending their protection over Christian communities inside the empire. The practical result in the end was to expose Christian communities to massacres and actual genocide.
The president likes to use force to create the impression of strength. He resumed and intensified the bombing of Yemen in no small part simply so that he could appear “tougher” than his predecessor. When the air campaign yielded no results except for hundreds of dead civilians, he got bored and moved on to something else. Now he has the military blowing up defenseless boats at sea so he can boast about the murders and feel powerful. Soon he may be ordering attacks inside Nigeria so that he can pose as some sort of neo-Crusader.
None of this has anything to do with advancing the security and interests of the United States. These threats are sure to damage U.S. relations with Nigeria, and they will alarm many other states as they wonder which one of them will be next on the firing range. The U.S. is also already badly overstretched with too many commitments. Adding a random bombing campaign in Africa to the list is a stupid waste of limited resources.
Outside intervention typically prolongs and intensifies local conflicts. That is exactly what Nigeria doesn’t need. If the U.S. intervenes, the people of Nigeria will be the ones made to pay the price for this latest round of self-indulgent American do-somethingism.