In dealing with matters of international relations or international politics, I always suggest at least two prerequisites.The first is a credible understanding of international relations or geopolitics so that we are able to locate events or the actions of states within a proper historical context.
The second is the importance of eschewing the tendency to look at political phenomena as disconnected. Much of what is happening within various Afrikan countries today can’t be properly understood without a credible grasp of imperial projects such as slavery, colonialism, racism, capitalism, imperialism, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, the Berlin Conference on West Africa (1884-85) or concepts such as Empire and the Deep State.
As we know by now, on the 25 December 2025, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) carried out airstrikes in northwest Nigeria. In a statement, US President, Donald Trump stated that he authorised these strikes and that they are directed at what he calls “ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,”
Trump also stated that “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” What is the background to all this? Long before these airstrikes Trump and other officials of the US government have been repeatedly making public claims about a “genocide” against Christians in Nigeria.
Consistent with this, on 31 October 2025, the US government redesignated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” for the persecution of Christians by groups of “violent Islamists”, under its International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Subsequent to this, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that as the US they “stand ready, willing and able” to defend them [Nigerian Christians].
To assess the veracity and validity of Trump’s statement, let us first deal with the genesis of ISIS. In a 2016 interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of being responsible for the creation of ISIS.
He referred to Obama as “the founder” and Clinton as “the cofounder’ of ISIS. While these parts of Trump’s utterances can easily be characterised as farfetched, there is however another part of what Trump said in that interview that can’t be easily dismissed as such and this is the part where he said “…the way he [Obama] got out of Iraq, that was the founding of ISIS.”
All credible international relations scholars, historians or political commentators converge on the thesis that, the creation of ISIS cannot be separated from the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
A combination of the power vacuum and political instability that followed the removal of Saddam Husein, the alienation of the Sunni community and the US-backing of the Shiite-dominated government- all helped precipitate the creation of ISIS.
It is however also important to mention that, during this period, the US also administered detention facilities such as Camp Bucca (where all manner of human rights violations took place).
In fact, this is where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was held, who would later become leader of ISIS. Equally important, ISIS traces its roots to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004 to fight the US occupation.
So, if it is indeed true that the US is bombing ISIS in Nigeria- they are simply cleaning up a mess that they have created for Afrika and other parts of the world.
Let us now deal with the Trump administration’s Christian genocide claim in Nigeria. On 7 November this year, the International Crisis Group (ICG) published an article titled “Why is President Trump Threatening a Humanitarian Intervention in Nigeria?’. In this article, the ICG makes a number of instructive observations.
One is that “…Nigeria’s security threats are multi-faceted and overlapping, stemming from among other things religious extremism, banditry, resource competition, communal land disputes, and separatist agitation.They also tend to be enmeshed in history, entangled in poverty and exacerbated by political contestation.
There is wide acknowledgement that the security situation has gotten worse in recent years, with Amnesty International reporting in May that roughly 10,000 people had been killed and many more abducted since the inauguration of Bola Tinubu as president two years earlier in 2023 – though the government disputed that figure.”
The article further observes that “But claims of numbers of victims by religious affiliation are highly suspect, especially given that it is often difficult to identify the religious affiliation of each person killed or kidnapped.
A narrow focus on the “genocide of Christians” narrative misses other considerations as well. One is that the epicentres of instability in Nigeria today include the Northeast, where Islamist groups have waged a fifteen-year insurgency against the Nigerian state, and the Northwest, where groups of so-called bandits are continually pillaging rural settlements and terrorising the inhabitants. In both of these regions, the majority religion is Islam, and most of the victims have, by all appearances, been Muslims.”
It is also interesting to note that, before and after this latest US military intervention the Nigerian government publicly refuted the US claims of Christian genocide in Nigeria.This is very curious and raises even more questions about the nature of the military alliance between the US and Nigeria.
We in South AfriKKKa know from experience that the Trump administration does not believe in evidence-based statements when it comes to making serious accusations against other countries- particularly those whose foreign policy they find offensive.
Let us now deal with the Trump administration’s attitude towards Afrika and Black people. Any Black person (regardless of their geographic location), who has as a credible grasp of history knows that Trump and his administration have absolutely no regard for black life.
No so long ago, Trump stated that Haitian and Afrikan migrants come from “all these shithole countries”. Then earlier this month, he described Somalia as “garbage” and further said “We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right?” “Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime,” “The only thing they are good at is going after ships,” “they just run around killing each other”.
Having said all these insulting things about Afrika and Black people in general, why would the Trump all of a sudden be concerned about the wellbeing of black Christians in a ‘shithole’ country?
I am one of those who holds the view that, the real motives behind the US’s recent military intervention in Nigeria can be deduced from an understanding of a number of key factors.
The first is the growing influence of China and Russia in global affairs and in particularly, their growing influence in the Global South (of which Afrika is a part).
Over the past twenty years or so, we have seen how the influence of China and Russia have grown in multilateral fora and how these two countries have also significantly altered the balance of power in critical areas such as economics (trade and infrastructure), politics (diplomacy), military, and technological innovation.
This has resulted in political scientists and commentators such as Noam Chomsky, John Meirsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Kishore Mahbabuni, Richard Wolff, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Morris Berman, Chris Hedges, and Ibn Khaldun describing the US as a ‘declining empire.’
While their reasons for this conclusion may not be identical, they are unanimous on one thing: the US is no longer an undisputed behemoth in world affairs.
The US therefore finds itself in a moment where it has to play catch up with other emerging forces-as it desperately seeks to regain the hegemonic status it once enjoyed.
Regrettably, the Afrikan continent has once again become a key battle ground for this revised Cold War between the US and its allies on the one hand, and China and Russia and their allies on the other.
The second factor is the on-going scramble for Afrika’s mineral resources. A 2022 Aljazeera article notes that “Africa holds approximately 30% of the world’s total mineral reserves, including the majority of the planet’s platinum, cobalt, and manganese. These resources are essential to the global energy transition, as they are key components for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines.”
The article further notes that “Nigeria is among the top mineral-rich countries in Africa, particularly regarding its oil and natural gas reserves. It ranks highly alongside nations such as South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Angola in terms of overall mineral wealth and production value.”
Now connect this to Trump’s speech on the 4 December 2025, during the Rwanda/DRC Peace accord in Washington, wherein he explicitly stated that “We’ll be involved with sending some of our biggest and greatest companies over to the two countries [DRC and Rwanda].We’re going to take out some of the rare earth and take out some of the assets and pay, and everybody’s going to make a lot of money.”
This part of his speech made me go back to the text of the Strategic and Critical Minerals Stockpiling Act of 1939-the Act that is responsible for the brutal execution of Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo.
This Act defines ‘Strategic’ and ‘Critical’ as “materials that (a) would be needed to supply the military, industrial, and essential civilian needs of the United States during a national emergency, and (b) are not found or produced in the United States in sufficient quantities to meet such need.”
Additionally, according to the U.S Geological Survey (USGS) “The United States’ dependence on imports and the vulnerability of supply chains raise the potential for risks to national security, defense readiness, price stability, and economic prosperity and resilience.”
Another aspect to bear in mind is the US’s energy needs. The U.S. Energy Information Administration noted that “In 2022, U.S. total primary energy consumption was about 95 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), which was equal to about 16% of total world primary energy consumption of about 600 quadrillion Btu. The United States’ percentage share of world population was about 4% in 2022, and the U.S. had the 4th largest per capita primary energy consumption in the world.”
The US national economy is not able to provide for the US’s total annual energy needs, including those of its over 800 military bases across the world, therefore, the US government is constantly seeking ways in which to secure its energy needs.
This is why the US has a military alliance with Nigeria. Nigeria is not only rich with oil and natural gas, but is also one of Afrika’s biggest economies and military powers.
The third factor is the emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States. Since 2022, French troops have been expelled from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. Between 2024 and 2025, U.S troops were expelled from Niger and Chad.
This resulted in the US losing one of the biggest drone bases in Niger (Air Base 201).This is said to be a $110 million drone base that the US used for regional “counterterrorism.” Despite this, the U.S. maintains its only permanent Afrikan base, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which houses roughly 4,500 troops focused on East African operations.
In recent memory, the emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States under the leadership of Captain Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso, General Assimi Goita of Mali, and General Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger has been one of the biggest setbacks for US/French and western hegemony in Afrika.
As Afrikans, we must therefore understand this cuddling between the US and Afrikan countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda as part of an elaborate strategy to dismantle the Alliance of Sahel States and restore the US and western hegemony in Afrika’s mineral rich regions.
The fourth factor is how the US views the world. The political, economic, or military actions of the US in any part of the world, must be understood through a particularly international relations philosophy-the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
This doctrine gets its name from the author of the US national security strategy in the early 90’s, U.S. under-secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz.
The opening paragraphs of the Wolfowitz document states that “The survival of the United States as a free and independent nation, with its fundamental values intact and its institutions and people secure; a healthy and growing U.S. economy to ensure opportunity for individual prosperity and resources for national endeavours at home and abroad; healthy, cooperative and political: vigorous relations with allies and friendly nations; and a stable and secure world, where political and economic freedom, human rights and democratic institutions flourish.
These national security interests can be translated into four mutually supportive strategic goals that guide our overall defence efforts:
•The first goal- Our most fundamental goal is to deter or defeat attack from whatever source, against the United States, its citizen, and forces, and to honour our historic and treaty commitments.
•The second goal- is to strengthen and extend the system of defence arrangements that binds democratic and like-minded nations together in co defence against aggression, build habits of cooperation, avoids the renationalization of security policies, and provides security at lower costs and with lower risks for all.
•Our preference for a collective response to preclude threats or, if necessary to deal with them is a key feature of our regional defence strategy.
•The third goal- is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies.
•These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidate, non-democratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.
•To reach these goals the United States must show the leadership necessary to encourage sustained cooperation among major democratic powers.
•The alternative would be to leave our critical interests and the security of our friends dependent upon individual efforts that could be duplicative, competitive, or ineffective.”
Finally, just like its previous illegal invasions of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, its on-going belligerence towards Iran and Venezuela and its unapologetic support to the Zionist state of Israel-the December 25 US airstrikes in Nigeria are nothing else but part of a global strategy that seeks to restore the hegemony of a ‘declining empire’.
Makhosi amakhulu
