One of the stranger recent military developments is the decision by the United States to strike ISIS targets deep inside Nigeria. The Monroe Doctrine, last I checked, does not extend quite that far, which invites a reasonable question: why does America now see this as its responsibility?
We are told the strikes are intended, at least in part, to protect Christians. That is a noble aim, and one that would be easier to accept if it were applied with some consistency. After all, the overwhelming majority of Latino migrants harassed, detained, or deported by ICE and Border Patrol are almost certainly Christian. The victims quietly documented on 60 Minutes—deported, displaced, or simply erased from the public conversation—were almost certainly Christian as well. The passengers in small boats intercepted on the high seas off Venezuela are almost certainly Christian. Ukrainians suffering under Russian airstrikes are, overwhelmingly, Christian.
And yet, at precisely the same moment, we are making abundantly clear that we do not want Africans—Christians included—to immigrate to, or even visit, the United States. We have gone so far as to encourage our European allies to follow suit, urging them to close their doors to migrants from the Global South altogether.
One begins to wonder what, exactly, is going on.
Much of the cruelty associated with the Trump administration resists tidy explanation. It is difficult to locate these policies in any coherent theory of American interest, or in the values we have long claimed to hold dear: democracy, self-determination, peace, freedom. At times, it is even hard to detect a clear financial motive—there is not much profit to be had in terrorizing families or sinking boats filled with the desperate.
We are, it seems, willing to kill people on small vessels while insisting we are acting to protect Christians abroad; willing to bomb in the name of faith while harassing, deporting, and excluding Christians at home and beyond our borders. The contradiction is not incidental. It is the point.
Perhaps the unifying principle is not security, or faith, or national interest at all—but cruelty itself. The exercise of power for its own sake. The pleasure of domination, unburdened by moral consistency.
If there is another explanation, it has yet to present itself.