Donald Trump has always treated geography the way a child treats a map drawn in crayon: everything outside the gilt-edged boundaries of Mar-a-Lago is, by definition, a shithole. Africa, in particular, occupies a special place in this cartography of contempt. It is not merely distant; it is disposable. In his second coming, the man who once governed by tweet now governs by decree, treating Congress as an optional accessory and the Constitution as a set of polite suggestions best ignored when they inconvenience the royal will.
So when he decided Nigeria required a Christmas present of Tomahawk missiles, he wrapped the gift in the language of religious crusade. Christians were being slaughtered, he declared. America would not stand idly by. The missiles flew. Some exploded. Some, according to reports that refuse to stay buried, did not. Debris turned up in onion fields and residential areas far from the stated targets. The Nigerian government, ever quick with the face-saving press release, insisted it had been a joint operation—the sort of partnership one discovers only after the fact, never contemplated before, and mysteriously never repeated. No body counts of the right kind of terrorists. No strategic shift. Just the quiet humiliation of a large African country reminded, once again, that sovereignty is a costume one wears until a greater power decides the fitting is over.
There is a legal fig leaf, of course. Isolated military actions in the name of national security interests have long enjoyed a certain presidential elasticity. This particular adventure stretched that elasticity until it snapped. Religious framing does not magically convert a punitive spectacle into a coherent security strategy. It merely supplies the applause track for the domestic audience that prefers its foreign policy served with scripture and a side of superiority.
Meanwhile, the same administration that lectures the world on order has been busy imposing blanket tariffs with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, driving up costs at home while daring the Supreme Court to do something about it. Inflation is not a foreign policy victory; it is the bill that eventually arrives at the American voter’s door. The recent shift in Congress may yet clip some of these excesses. One can hope. Constitutional order is not a partisan preference; it is the difference between a republic and a reality show with nuclear codes.
Here in Nigeria, our own government has watched this performance with the avidity of an understudy taking notes. State capture, the casual dismissal of democratic norms, the creative reinterpretation of institutions—these are not inventions of Washington. They are local crafts, refined over decades. When a foreign president behaves like a king, it is easier for domestic strongmen to insist that their own monarchical instincts are simply the spirit of the age. The humiliation abroad becomes, perversely, a permission structure at home.
Which is why an interested Nigerian observer finds himself in the peculiar position of rooting for the restoration of American constitutional guardrails. Not because America is a model of perfection—far from it—but because the alternative is watching the most powerful country on earth model the very impunity we are supposed to be resisting. If Congress reasserts itself, if courts are obeyed rather than defied, if foreign adventures require more than a late-night social-media justification, then at least there remains a standard against which we can measure our own leaders. We may fail that standard daily. But it is useful, occasionally, to remember that the standard exists.
Trump’s Nigeria interlude produced no lasting strategic gain, only the temporary satisfaction of a man who confuses projection of power with projection of grievance. The missiles came and went. The tariffs continue. The religious rhetoric lingers like incense after a particularly theatrical service. And Nigeria, that large African country so often treated as an afterthought, is left with the familiar residue: a reminder that in the hierarchy of global respect, some places remain, in the eyes of certain powerful men, little more than inconvenient shitholes waiting for the next demonstration of American seriousness.
One can only hope the next demonstration is constrained by law rather than enabled by it. For America’s sake. And, inconveniently, for ours.
