It’s quaint of me but I think that the U. S. military should be used to defend the United States. That was my immediate reaction when I read this editorial at the Washington Post:
A not insignificant cohort of President Donald Trump’s advisers want the United States to abandon widespread commitments abroad and instead become a regional power focused on the Western Hemisphere. The president’s righteous strike against Islamic State targets in Nigeria is a reminder that America is capable of much more.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues,” Trump wrote on social media after targeting jihadists in the state of Sokoto, which has been a hot spot for kidnapping schoolkids. Egregious sectarian language aside, Washington responsibly conducted the operation in coordination with the Nigerian government.
It’s a welcome change in a part of the world that has always been little more than an afterthought for the president. The question is whether this is a one-off decision or the start of a more consistent and coherent policy.
This paragraph is particularly interesting:
The U.S. once had a regional counterterrorism plan known as the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, but a recent audit found the program underfunded, leaderless and mostly ineffective. The Pentagon has also been considering merging Africa Command back into European Command, which it spun off from in 2008. This could mean fewer resources and less attention for the region. In addition to the security reasons for continued engagement, the U.S. would be foolish to cede the young and growing continent to China and Russia.
and especially consider this passage:
Nigeria, a relatively wealthy country in the region, is still battling insecurity on several fronts.
What the editorial praises is not strategy but vigilante geopolitics—Batman in Africa.
I am a Christian. I am a Catholic. I agree with Pope Leo’s anguish over the people, Muslims and Christians alike, being killed by terrorists in Nigeria.
That doesn’t translate into my believing that the U. S. military should be used to fight terrorism in Nigeria.
I oppose our attacking Islamist terrorists on three grounds: military, fiscal, and legal. I don’t believe that airstrikes against Muslim terrorists in Nigeria are particularly effective. They’re showy but short-lived. None of our interventions in Africa whether in the Sahel, in Libya, or Somalia have been effective at putting down Islamist terrorism.
They’re also expensive. We don’t know for certain but a reasonable estimate is that the airstrikes cost between $1 million and $3 million (probably closer to the latter). U. S. missiles are expensive. The costs mount up quickly.
Whatever the editors think of Nigeria it is far from a rich country and it spends less than 1% of its GDP on its military—probably less than $1 billion per year.
Which takes me to my fiscal complaint. Deploying the U. S. military to find bands of terrorists in Nigeria is an incredibly inefficient strategy given its limited effectiveness and high cost. The primary issue is not whether we can afford to fight Islamist terrorism in Nigeria but whether this is the most effective use of our money.
Finally, from a legal standpoint using the U. S. military to attack Islamist terrorists with or without the consent and cooperation of the Nigerian government shouldn’t be the first recourse. It shouldn’t even be the third recourse. We are obligated by treaty not to use military force without the consent of the United Nations Security Council. Absent an imminent self-defense claim, international law strongly disfavors unilateral military action outside a multilateral framework.
IMO the recourses should be the Nigerian government followed by UN peacekeepers followed by a multi-national African force.
The TSCP mentioned above began as an initiative under the Bush II administration. Other than separating AFRICOM from CENTCOM it has largely languished for the last 20 years. IMO we should be providing military aid to the Nigerian government, accompanied by lots of oversight, and then becoming more involved in the TSCP, potentially providing funding also accompanied by substantial oversight. Why is it “underfunded, leaderless and mostly ineffective”? The editors are largely silent on that.
This is not a problem that yields to episodic force, because it is rooted in beliefs, not organizations. As I have contended in the past movements like Al Qaeda and ISIS are to be expected in any sola scriptura religion without a magisterium whose sacred text can be interpreted as justifying military force against unbelievers. It will be endemic. We aren’t fighting individuals or organizations but endemic beliefs and incidental attention isn’t enough.
