The United States is an empire that preaches virtue while sowing instability in a blatant display of interference masked as humanitarianism.
Mohamed Lamine KABA
Indeed, Trump’s threats are part of a broader political logic than his impulsive statements on Truth Social might suggest. By claiming that ‘Christians are being massacred in record numbers’ without providing any verifiable data, the US administration is repeating a narrative already used in Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and certain operations in Latin America: the fabrication of a moral emergency to justify coercive action.
However, as Daniel R. Caruncho points out in his article (published in La Vanguardia on 3 November 2025), regional experts and independent databases directly contradict these claims. The violence committed by Boko Haram* and Islamic State in West Africa* is indiscriminate, targeting entire villages, often predominantly Muslim. Christian victims do exist, but they do not constitute a ‘genocide’ or a ‘record massacre.’ Washington knows this full well: all US intelligence agencies active in the Sahel have been cross-checking these facts for more than a decade.
The legacy of American interference: geopolitical divisions and structural inconsistencies
Since the official launch of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, the United States has claimed to be containing Soviet expansion while legitimising a series of clandestine operations and direct interventions. The overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, that of the Congo in 1961, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, and then Guatemala in 1954, not to mention the CIA’s subversive actions against other Latin American and Caribbean regimes in the 1970s, are evidence of a systematic practice of domination. The Vietnam War, triggered after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, illustrates a policy based on fear, lies, and destruction.
Later, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, justified by weapons that did not exist, confirmed the continuity of a strategy in which power takes precedence over international law and moral discourse serves as an alibi for raw interests. The aftermath of 11 September 2001 ushered in a new era: that of a war on terror exploited to extend Washington’s influence. Afghanistan in 2001, occupied for twenty years before a chaotic withdrawal in 2021, illustrates the American inability to stabilize what it claims to be saving. Everywhere, the instability left behind by Washington testifies to an empire that is more destructive than protective.
The Patriot Act of 2001 marked an authoritarian turning point, in complete contradiction with the usual lessons on freedoms. The election of Donald Trump in 2016, followed by the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017, as well as his return to the White House in January 2025, his posturing on the Ukrainian conflict, and the activation of American instruments of terror in the South and East China Seas, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America reveal a power that renounces its own global commitments while proclaiming itself a moral guide. Recent history clearly shows that the United States weakens the international order more than it protects it, leaving behind a trail of instability that contradicts its claim to defend peace. Washington lies, bombs, overthrows – then washes its hands of the matter. This trajectory explains why the threats against Nigeria come as no surprise: they are the logical continuation of an empire whose trademark is instability.
Nigeria in the American imperial machine: moral pretexts, geostrategic calculations, and structural arrogance
Donald Trump’s threats to intervene militarily in Nigeria are part of this same tradition of interference cloaked in moralising. By brandishing hypothetical ‘massacres of Christians,’ he is merely repeating an old American method: inventing an emergency, constructing an emotional narrative, proclaiming himself the savior, and then legitimising an intervention designed to reshape a strategic area. However, all reliable sources – Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), regional observatories, and international agencies – show that violence in Nigeria affects Muslims and Christians indiscriminately, following territorial, identity-based, economic, and political dynamics.
Trump’s narrative serves a clear purpose: to pave the legal and political way for calibrated interference in a country that is crucial to Sino-American competition. Nigeria has oil, gas, lithium, cobalt, nickel, a massive population, a dynamic domestic market, and major regional influence. Humanitarianism is therefore only a smokescreen; geopolitics is the matrix.
But Washington persists in treating Africa as a static backdrop, a voiceless territory, a chessboard where pieces are moved without understanding local dynamics. Nigerian armed groups – Boko Haram*, Islamic State West Africa* Province (ISWAP), community militias, criminal networks, ‘bandits’ – are rooted in social and agrarian realities that cannot be neutralized by bombing. American intervention would not only be illegitimate but also doomed to failure, repeating the same mistakes made in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Furthermore, unilateral American attacks that have killed more than sixty people in Latin America already demonstrate the danger of an executive branch that allows itself to act outside international law. Repeating this pattern in Nigeria would amount to trampling on the sovereignty of a major state, destabilizing West Africa in the long term, and upsetting the diplomatic foundations of Sino-African cooperation.
While violence in Nigeria affects both Muslims and Christians, based on territorial, economic, and political considerations, the accusation of ‘Christian genocide’ is therefore a narrative tool, not a reality. For Washington, Nigeria is a geopolitical pivot. Humanitarianism is therefore only a cover. Trump understands nothing about Africa and persists in treating it as a colonial setting where force replaces diplomacy. Nigeria would then become the next country to be ‘stabilized’ by Washington: that is to say, destroyed. For Africa, the response must be clear: no stability, no peace, and no sovereignty will emerge as long as the United States continues to treat the continent as a chessboard where games are played without asking the people for their opinion.
It should be noted that from coups supported during the Cold War to current threats against Nigeria, history shows that American leadership relies more on force than on consistency or accountability. From 1947 to the present day, unilateral interventions, fabricated pretexts, and successive contradictions have eroded international trust and weakened entire regions. Africa does not need improvised saviours, but respect, balanced cooperation, and strengthened institutions. The world order can no longer depend on a power that produces as much instability as it claims to resolve, and Nigeria, like the world, must reject this imperial logic.
* Terrorist organizations banned in Russia
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
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