Exploiting MAGA Sentiments to Back Nigerian Intervention
A U.S. war would likely make things even worse for Christians in the West African country.
Nigeria, a country few Americans can locate on a map, may be our next foreign intervention. The Trump administration has recently taken a keen interest in the West African country, lamenting the atrocities committed against local Christians. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and 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,” President Donald Trump declared in a Truth Social post.
The Department of War has drawn up plans for a military response. The options discussed include air strikes on Islamic militants and even deploying troops to work alongside the Nigerian military. But no vital American interest is at stake, and the humanitarian argument for intervention collapses when one considers the results of prior military misadventures.
The administration’s openness to intervention earned high praise among MAGA influencers and commentators. Any skepticism of foreign intervention has been cast aside to cheerlead yet another proposed war. There’s even less skepticism or criticism over this move than there was over the administration’s decision in June to bomb Iran.
That’s because advocates found a powerful way to sell this intervention: Christian solidarity. Ordinary conservatives will pay attention if Christians are attacked for their faith in another part of the world. It’s understandable that they would be bothered by this and want it to end. It’s especially potent thanks to MAGA’s embrace of “Christian nationalism.” Intervention advocates know that a religiously-themed appeal will win over a base that is otherwise skeptical of foreign adventures.
But it violates the spirit of America First to pursue an African intervention on dubious grounds. The last thing we need is to create another quagmire in the Third World. Africa is a brutal place, and history shows we’re unlikely to solve the problem. We shouldn’t allow a suspicious exploitation of faith to dictate military action.
The plight of Nigeria’s Christians has garnered sympathy and attention from evangelical circles for a while. But the issue was popularized this year after neoconservatives decided to adopt it as a talking point to refute concerns over Gaza. If you’ve spent time on the conservative parts of X over the past few months, you’ve seen see pro-Israel conservatives point to Nigeria as a way to criticize Tucker Carlson and other Israel skeptics who, according to their critics, focus monomaniacally on the plight of Palestinians while ignoring the suffering of other groups. The posts listed below illustrate the discourse over Nigeria and why neocons became so invested in it:
The lawmaker most keen on intervention has been none other than Ted Cruz, the Texas senator eager to present himself as a throwback Republican and alternative to the Tucker Carlson wing of MAGA. Cruz is almost certainly positioning himself in preparation for another presidential run.
Trump became convinced of the need to get involved in Nigeria thanks to a Fox News segment. It testifies to the power the online sphere has over the current administration. A talking point becomes popular among conservative influencers on X and then translated into Fox News coverage. That coverage influences the president and then becomes policy. This process has led to many positive things in the administration, such as granting refugee status to Afrikaners and drawing attention to the brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska. But a possible Nigerian intervention is one of the negative results.
Experts, such as retired Maj. General Paul D. Eaton, warn that an intervention would be a “fiasco.” Hudson Institute fellow James Barnett, who lived and studied in Nigeria for several years, argues that it’s wrong to frame the nation’s conflict as explicitly anti-Christian as it “badly distorts the complicated and tragic reality on the ground.” “Shaping U.S. policy around such distortions, especially when U.S. troops may be put in harm’s way, will not yield good outcomes,” he argues in a Washington Post op-ed. Barnett also notes that many countries, including U.S. allies, discriminate against Christians, yet it’s broadly understood the national interest would be ill-served by invading them.
“A military intervention premised on the wrong diagnosis would not save Nigerian Christians. It would only deepen Nigeria’s troubles while drawing the U.S. into a set of conflicts it is not equipped to solve,” Barnett concludes.
A Nigerian adventure would undermine the administration’s realist approach to foreign policy in favor of discredited humanitarian interventionism. Realism, as espoused by Trump, puts the national interest first. It looks at the world with clear eyes and doesn’t succumb to moral blackmail. It understands that the world is a nasty place and America can’t solve every problem. Humanitarian interventionism, on the other hand, demands America get involved in every single problem based on emotion rather than facts.
We intervened in Somalia, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere based in large part on humanitarian arguments. America was supposed to make these countries safer and protect minorities from oppression. Instead, our interventions turned local crises into humanitarian nightmares and demonstrated we can’t solve these issues. We, in fact, made them worse. Take for instance what happened to Iraqi Christians following Operation Shock and Awe in 2003: Thousands of them were murdered and over a million fled the country. One of the oldest Christian populations in the world now stands close to extinction.
It’s unlikely intervention in Nigeria will be any different from these past failures.
It’s legitimate for Trump to use diplomacy to persuade Nigeria to protect its Christian population. The admin could argue the military threats are simply a way to pressure the African state to do more. But the issue is that conservative influencers seem fully on board with a military strike. They love that rapper Nicki Minaj endorsed Trump’s proposal for intervention and eagerly share the admin’s threatening videos aimed at Nigeria. Trump may not be as serious as he seems about going in “guns-a-blazing,” but too many conservatives are thrilled with the idea regardless of the president’s intent.
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This illustrates the possibility that MAGA could be exploited to back another Iraq-style intervention, if it’s sold in the right way. With Nigeria, portraying it as a crusade to save Christians was enough for people to forget about our failed interventions and America First principles.
While the violence in Nigeria is awful, history has shown America can’t solve these problems. Its interventions often make things worse for the people it tries to protect. Diplomacy is fine, but military strikes aren’t—unless a vital American interest is at stake.
MAGA was a response to conservative failures and the need for something new. The movement is supposed to learn from those failures, not repeat them.
