Seemingly out of nowhere, at the beginning of November, President Donald Trump started musing about taking military action in Nigeria to save the Christians from the Islamist terrorist groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. These groups, which operate in the northeastern part of the country has been the subject of a lengthy and unsuccessful counter-terrorism operation by the Nigerian government, which has received U.S. backing. The issue is being framed as one where the the Nigeria has not tried to deal with the problem or is complicit in the killing of Christians, which is not true outside of any civilian casualties due to counter-terrorism operations. Trump, however, is threatening to unilaterally “solve the problem” if Nigeria can’t, but there are severe logistical challenges to operating in this region and there is no evidence such a thing would work.

It seems that for the benefit of a domestic political audience President Trump’s plan is to switch from Nigeria’s aid being contingent on some degree of respect for human rights to becoming contingent on producing body counts, a strategy adopted without any meaningful success by the military governments of the Sahel. Any serious escalation of American involvement in Nigeria is unlikely to be successful while further risking destabilization of an immensely complex country that few in the United States have even attempted to understand.

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is roughly split between Christians and Muslims, with perhaps as many as 110 million Christians in the country. Trump claims that Christians in Nigeria are “at risk of extinction,” despite this having no relationship to reality. In fact, Nigeria has one of the world’s fastest growing Christian populations, though the growth is relatively slower than the growth of the Muslim population. However, Christians are a minority in the part of the country where Boko Haram operates, and the terrorist group, which attacks both Christians and Muslims, does make their lives perilous. Overall though, the narrative that Christians are oppressed by the government in Nigeria is made up; the country has constitutional freedom of religion and it is followed.

The biggest threat to Christians in Nigeria is not targeted religious violence but simply the fact that the country’s security situation is bad overall. Christians and Muslims in Nigeria do have fairly bad relations, but this is in the context of everyone in Nigeria hating every other group. The country, which is even more “artificial” than most countries left behind by colonialism, relies on a variety of formal and informal regional, ethnic, and religious power sharing arrangements to maintain some semblance of domestic peace. With a rapidly growing population already numbering over 220 million, if Nigeria unravels it has the potential to create an outpouring of humans such as the world has not yet seen.

It is into this volatile situation that the Trump administration is pouring gasoline for no good reason. The United States is a long time supporter of Nigeria’s government in the form of weapons and training. On October 1 of this year, Responsible Statecraft published an article by Taiwo Hassan on U.S. funding to Nigeria, arguing that Washington’s policy is “becoming a crime against humanity” due to Nigeria’s failure to limit civilian casualties in its military operations. According to Hassan, U.S. arms sales to Nigeria are already illegal due to reports about the bad human rights situation. This is the allied government that President Trump is now claiming is not doing anything to fight Boko Haram and the only way to convince him and American right-wingers otherwise is going to be highly publicized destruction with even less concern for civilian casualties and human rights.

While Trump is threatening to “Go in guns a-blazing,” the reality is that U.S. military options, outside of simply continuing to support Nigeria’s military, are extremely limited. Trump prefers bombing campaigns, but the United States has poor air access to this region since we were kicked out of Niger following the coup in that country in 2023. The primary option would be to operate from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Guinea, which is around six hundred miles from the territory in which Islamist militants generally operate, a round trip just outside of the range of a standard Reaper drone, though well within the range of U.S. bombers. The other potential option would be to get access from a neighboring state, but being as Nigeria is the heavyweight of West Africa and Lagos is the regional center of banking and commerce, it is unlikely that neighboring states would allow themselves to be used to violate Nigeria’s sovereignty, even if it was to please the United States. Besides some special forces assisting the Nigerian military, ground troops are nearly impossible without a full-scale invasion that involves setting up bases in which to house them; this of course would put American troops at great risk of harm in yet another terror war with no clear tie to U.S. national security. It’s not evident either of these things would accomplish anything, and further, any bombing campaign would have to spread to neighboring states as terrorists will simply cross borders in this troubled region.

On all counts—strategic, financial, reputational, and moral—increasing our involvement in Nigeria’s troubled northeast is an appallingly bad idea. It will accomplish little but appease Americans who hate Islam and who are disingenuously pretending to care about the troubles of Christians in Nigeria. It would also greatly weaken the legitimacy of the Nigerian state, which for all of its problems, still does have its independence and status as a regional power as a source of pride for the public. It is true that successive governments of Nigeria have failed at making the country more secure or protected the lives and property of Nigerians at risk from terrorism and other forms of violence, but violating the sovereignty of Nigeria is almost certain to make things much worse, particularly for the Christians who Trump is currently claiming to care about.