The historian Pál Engel once wrote that one clever trick Matthias Corvinus used was writing long letters to the Papal States about the necessity of a crusade against the Ottomans that always ended on an amusing note of considered helplessness: “In his letters he was at pains to point out that he could do nothing against the sultan without help.”
The inevitable logical end to any “civilizational politics” is a crusading foreign policy. Unfortunately, crusades tend to require hegemonic leadership, a coordinated, sustainable long-term effort, manpower willing to die for a hallowed cause, and most importantly, enormous amounts of money.
It is not clear that grand history is a favored academic discipline among the connoisseurs of “civilizational” politics within the upper echelons of the current administration, but in recent days there has been a significant movement towards “doing something” in Nigeria to defend Christians under attack from Muslim terrorists.
The push has congressional support in the House and the Senate; it recently even got the characteristically subtle nod from the president, who called simultaneously for using the American military in Nigeria and cutting off all foreign aid to save “our CHERISHED Christians!” who are being killed by “Islamic Terrorists.” Within moments, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted on X, that “The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”
It is interesting, to say the least, how information travels within the White House, or how the Department of Defense decides on what constitutes a strategic priority or threat to the way of life or prosperity of the United States. But certainly there is no question that Nigeria’s Christians are having a challenging time. A widely cited report, often used by Senator Ted Cruz, states that over 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009. (Granted, evidence that this is a targeted attack specifically on Christians, and not a generic Islamist problem against everyone, both Christians and Muslims, is sparse.)
A recent essay in UnHerd partially explains the problems. Consider that Nigeria is a large state, with a population that is almost two-thirds that of the United States and half of the European Union’s. With approximately 230 million people, the state is roughly divided into Muslims and Christians; the northern half is populated by Muslims, who also form the majority of the ruling elite. For a country that large, the state capacity is immensely small: The police force of Nigeria is around 370,000 in total.
Nigerian Christians are also more pacifistic historically than their Muslim conationals, and naturally invite more predatory attacks. The relative pacifism attributed to Christian communities renders their victimization more tolerable within the elite’s pragmatic risk assessment, as such incidents pose minimal threat to regime stability.
Yet it will be difficult to find rational defenders of the history of American interventions based on either ideology or humanitarian concerns, from Bosnia to Somalia to the Middle East. The first two changed the demographics of many American cities, especially in Michigan and Minnesota. The last one, in some regards still ongoing, is a case study of how not to waste blood and treasure.
American foreign policy was not always this ideological or crusading. One need not go back to the founders: John Quincy Adams, for example, would have had a heart attack to hear that the U.S. is planning to embark on saving Nigerians from their domestic terrorism problem. As recently as 1971, Richard Nixon refused to intervene in Bangladesh. When asked, Henry Kissinger said that helping Soviet Jews emigrate to America was “not an objective of American foreign policy” but rather, “a humanitarian concern,” a statement that caused significant heartburn among neoconservatives who still hold Kissinger as a figure of special contempt.
The rational, realist, and possibly the best courses of action for Nigeria are thus:
One, the U.S. spends an enormous amount of capital to build up Nigerian state capacity, which then deals with the problem within. The risk is that Nigeria is also a corrupt country, and all that money will be stolen in a manner similar to that seen in the 20 years in Afghanistan.
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Second, the U.S. allows a private mercenary company to provide order, in exchange for local governance and collecting taxes. Consider that Ron Paul once suggested a similar course of action against terrorists. Erik Prince’s company is already planning to do that in Haiti. The Russians also have recently used a similar template to provide order and buy influence and resources in Africa.
Third, the U.S. can organize a local Christian militia and allow the CIA to arm it. The risk here is a full-scale civil war in the largest country in Africa.
Whatever the preferred course of action should be, it is not an American military intervention and the destruction of whatever is left of the state capacity of a nominally aligned country. Given recent American history, however, one cannot be too optimistic.
