In the sweltering heat of a second Trump term, the ghosts of interventionist folly are stirring once more. On October 31, 2025, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to declare Nigeria a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom violations, alleging an “existential threat” to Christianity there. By November 1, the rhetoric had escalated: Trump threatened to halt all U.S. aid to Africa’s most populous nation and ordered the Pentagon—now rebranded by the president as the “Department of War”—to prepare for “fast, vicious” military action. “If we attack,” he wrote, “it will be guns-a-blazing to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities against our CHERISHED Christians.” This saber-rattling, echoed by evangelical allies like Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), paints a picture of targeted Christian genocide in Nigeria, demanding American boots on the ground to save the day.
As a historian of U.S. foreign policy and a vocal critic of empire’s overreach, I urge restraint. Nonintervention is not isolationism; it is wisdom born of bitter experience. The notion that American military might can resolve Nigeria’s deep-seated religious and ethnic strife ignores the region’s complexities and invites catastrophe. To understand why, we must first unpack Nigeria’s fractured landscape—a mosaic of peoples, faiths, and histories that no external force can redraw without spilling rivers of blood. From there, the annals of past “humanitarian” interventions reveal a grim pattern: promises of salvation masking bids for regime change, yielding chaos that endures for generations.
Nigeria, with its 220 million souls, is a colossus straddling the equator, from the humid rainforests of the south to the arid Sahel in the north. Born in 1960 from the ashes of British colonialism, it inherited arbitrary borders that lumped together over 250 ethnic groups into a single state. The largest are the Hausa-Fulani in the north (Muslim-majority, pastoralists and traders), the Yoruba in the southwest (a mix of Muslims and Christians, urban and commercially savvy), and the Igbo in the southeast (predominantly Christian, entrepreneurial, and scarred by the Biafran War of 1967-1970, when they sought secession amid pogroms that killed tens of thousands). Religiously, the nation splits roughly evenly: about half Muslim, concentrated in the north, and half Christian, dominant in the south and Middle Belt. This divide is not merely theological but overlays economic and environmental fault lines. The north, poorer and less developed, relies on nomadic Fulani herders whose cattle migrations clash with sedentary Christian farmers in the fertile Middle Belt, sparking resource wars that kill thousands annually.
Enter Boko Haram, the Islamist insurgency that declared a caliphate in 2015 and has since metastasized into a hydra of factions. Founded in 2002, it rejects Western education (“Boko Haram” means just that) and seeks sharia law across Nigeria. Its attacks—suicide bombings, village raids—have claimed over 35,000 lives, displacing millions. But here’s the rub: while Boko Haram has targeted churches and Christian villages, it bombs mosques and slaughters “insufficiently pious” Muslims with equal zeal. Banditry, ethnic militias like the Fulani herdsmen vigilantes, and even government counterinsurgency excesses fuel a cycle of violence that defies simple religious binaries.
Amnesty International calls it a “humanitarian crisis,” but one woven from poverty, corruption, and climate stress—not a unilateral jihad against Christians, as Trump’s post implies.
Into this tinderbox, Trump proposes American fire. But history screams back “don’t.” Humanitarian interventions, those noble-sounding crusades to halt atrocities, have a track record of unraveling into quagmires. They often serve as Trojan horses for regime change, prioritizing geopolitical chess over human lives, and leave behind power vacuums that breed worse horrors.
Consider Somalia in 1992-1993. What began as Operation Restore Hope—a U.S.-led UN mission to feed starving civilians amid clan warfare—morphed into a hunt for warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid. Humanitarian aid was the hook; capturing a rival the hidden agenda. The result? The Black Hawk Down fiasco, eighteen American dead, and a hasty withdrawal that plunged Somalia deeper into anarchy. Today, al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate, controls swaths of the country, born from the very instability U.S. intervention exacerbated. Thousands more have died in the intervening decades than in the original famine.
Libya 2011 offers a fresher scar. NATO, led by the United States and under the banner of protecting civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s supposed crackdown on Arab Spring protesters, bombed the country into “regime change.” The humanitarian pretext—averting a Benghazi massacre—quickly gave way to arming rebels and toppling the dictator. Gaddafi’s death was celebrated, but the aftermath? A failed state splintered by militias, human traffickers, and jihadists. Slave markets revived in Tripoli; ISIS gained a foothold, launching attacks across North Africa and into Europe. Libya’s oil, once a Western prize, now funds endless warlords. The UN estimates over 500,000 displaced and a death toll in the tens of thousands since, with no functioning government in sight. What started as “Responsibility to Protect” ended as a textbook case of blowback.
Then there’s Iraq, the mother of all modern interventions. In 2003, the George W. Bush administration sold the invasion not only as necessary to stop Saddam Hussein giving Osama bin Laden nukes but as just liberation for the Kurds and Shiites from Hussein’s tyranny—a humanitarian gloss on the real aim, toppling the regime. No weapons of mass destruction were found, but the human cost was biblical: over 200,000 civilian deaths, per conservative estimates from Brown University’s Costs of War project; the rise of ISIS from the ashes of a disbanded Iraqi army; and a sectarian civil war that pitted Sunnis against Shiite-led governments backed by Iran. Iraq’s “democracy” is a corrupt kleptocracy, its Christians—once 1.5 million strong—now a dwindling remnant, fleeing the very chaos U.S. bombs unleashed. Long-term? A trillion-dollar tab for America, empowered Iranian proxies, and a Middle East redrawn in blood.
Even Kosovo in 1999, often hailed as a “success,” unravels under scrutiny. NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia aimed to stop alleged mass ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. Humanitarian? Yes, on the surface, though the numbers had been grossly inflated. But it also carved out a U.S.-friendly satellite in Europe’s backyard, sidelining Russia. The consequences were a frozen conflict with Serbia, organized crime syndicates flooding Europe with heroin and humans, and ethnic Serbs in Kosovo living as second-class citizens amid unresolved tensions. Over 13,000 dead in the war, and NATO peacekeepers still patrol a territory that no one fully recognizes as a state. The “humanitarian win” masked a power play, leaving a legacy of division.
These are not aberrations but the rule. As Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell inadvertently chronicles, interventions framed as moral imperatives often conceal strategic ulterior motives—securing resources, toppling adversaries, or projecting power. In Nigeria, while Christians are under siege, it is difficult to ignore that literally beneath the surface is a lot of oil. The Niger Delta’s black gold accounts for 90% of Nigeria’s exports, much of it flowing to Western markets. Boko Haram’s chaos already disrupts pipelines and U.S. troops could “secure” them under humanitarian guise, echoing how Iraq’s invasion “liberated” its fields for Halliburton contracts. Regime change whispers follow: Tinubu’s government, wobbly amid economic woes, might be next if it doesn’t align with Washington’s demands.
The long-term fallout? In Nigeria’s ethnic powder keg, “guns-a-blazing” would ignite a conflagration. Arming Christian militias against “Islamic terrorists” ignores that Boko Haram recruits from impoverished Muslims radicalized by poverty and drone strikes—much like ISIS drew from Iraq’s humiliated Sunnis. U.S. involvement would radicalize moderates, fracture the military (already riven by north-south divides), and invite Russian or Chinese counter-meddling. The Biafran ghosts would rise; Igbo separatists, emboldened by American backing, could reignite civil war. Millions more displaced, economies shattered, and al-Qaeda affiliates spreading southward. As in Libya, we’d trade short-term “victories” for decades of terrorism exported globally.
Nonintervention isn’t callous; it’s the only policy that respects sovereignty and spares lives. Nigeria needs trade, not troops; diplomacy, not drones. The U.S. should lift sanctions that punish the poor and work through the African Union to bolster local forces—Hausa troops know the terrain better than Marines ever could. Trump’s “America First” bravado rings hollow when it drags us into Africa’s heart, bleeding treasure and moral standing.
Let the history books, stained with the ink of Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and Kosovo, be our guide. To intervene is to play God in a land we scarcely understand, birthing monsters from the hubris of saviors. Stay out, Mr. President. The world is safer that way.
