The Political Theater Behind Trump’s “Guns-a-Blazing” Nigeria Threat

Today in Just Security, I wrote about the political theater behind Trump’s threat to go into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” to protect Christians, who he claims, are being persecuted.

I unpack the country’s longstanding, multifaceted security challenges, including some which are likely being conflated to fit the President’s narrative. I provide background as to how this has played in U.S. domestic politics over the past two decades – and how it has evolved from a fringe issue in U.S.-Africa policy into something that is deeply important to the electoral base that won Trump the White House in 2016 and 2024. (When I was a staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, this was an issue I was lobbied on by advocacy groups – and even by a few members of the Nigerian Senate when I was there on a staffdel in 2018).

I offer some context on the bilateral and regional security cooperation relationship, and evaluate some of the options that have been proposed to respond to the President’s directive. Notably, some of these options would require the U.S. military to accept risk in other AoRs, or even other parts of the continent that had been assessed as higher national security priorities, and thus creates space for adversarial actors and peer-competitors to act while our attention is diverted. I also highlight the contradiction that the very programs that were designed to address drivers of instability in countries like Nigeria had been defunded, meaning that any military options will inherently have limited long-term impact.

Finally, I suggest that South Africa’s experience may be instructive, as months of diplomatic engagement and lobbying have allowed issues in the bilateral relationship to be managed – but not resolved, as evidenced by Trump’s decision that the United States will boycott the South Africa-hosted G20 this month. The lesson for Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent and one of its largest economies, should be to further diversify their international partnerships rather than beating their heads against the wall for the next three years.