Too Underdeveloped for Geopolitics?

A spectre haunting Nigerians... the spectre of geopolitics

I’m currently in a cut-and-join process of writing an essay, a paper, a something titled; International Politics as Escapist Entertainment for Third-World (Nigerian) Netizens, and it’s based off the idea that we all seem to have that international politics, or geopolitics doesn’t concern us Nigerians as affairs to be taken seriously because everything happens so far away in places like Europe, North America etc. and that any criticism we might have of international politics might be washed away by rebuttals to care about our own dwindling domestic politics, or even worse, the question or rebuttal raised that the average Nigerian cannot be thinking about geo-political affairs when they don’t even know where their next meal will come from. All very true, really. And so, international politics, geopolitics, is an affair, a connected phenomenon, that Nigerians involve themselves with, or engage with, as an escapist way of dealing with the harsh realities of their lives, or, the concern for geopolitics as a Nigerian, is left to those petit bourgeoisie folk who know where their next meal is coming from, who have climbed the rungs of Maslow’s pyramid, and can now afford to chitchat about whatever’s happening in the Middle East, in China, what bs Elon Musk has done, and what bs Donald Trump is going to do the next week.

I had similar sentiments too, well, as much as my course of study would allow me, but feeding a Twitter addiction and watching news updates would quickly make that vanish. So, for the average Nigerian, if we are to assume the average Nigerian to have eaten, has a home over their head, clothes, and knows where their next meal is coming from, or even the petit bourgeoisie Nigerian who still thinks politics, geopolitics even more so, is something out of their reach, and something they’d rather not get involved in, why should you care about geopolitics?

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT GEOPOLITICS

Because geopolitics cares about you.

Simple and short.

A longer explanation would be that recently, geopolitics and its effects knocked on Nigeria’s door and crashed into our shores. Sometime last year, there was the whole thing where America got into Nigeria’s affairs, and Donald Trump commented on the kidnapping and killings of Nigerian Christians, and threatened to take military action in Nigeria if the crisis wasn’t solved. Our President, the man who we’ve never known to give a shit about the Christians, Muslims or whoever, kidnapped by terrorists in the country, was quick to get under the US’s toes and announce a collaboration between both governments to combat terrorism in Nigeria. And Twitter exploded.

On the one hand, it was understandable but misguided, as people were excited about the US’s threat of military intervention. Could you really blame them? After years of family members, friends, colleagues, et al getting extorted, kidnapped and killed, the thought of the US, the world’s ‘super power’, the ‘democratic leader of the world’ stepping into little old Nigeria to save the Christians from Islamist persecution, did sound like something almost Messianic. Trump the Messiah, coming to save the Christians from persecution, just like the Bible had prophesied. And on the other hand, others poured out their concerns over the US threatening military intervention, picking and cracking the holes in Trump’s sudden interest, or concern for the citizens of the country he has made notably racist and derogatory comments about. It was all too suspicious, especially our President’s eagerness to acquiesce to him.

Picking history apart, one would easily see that US intervention with a small or underdeveloped country, usually military interventions, under guises of ushering in democracy to said country, have been anything but prosperous to the countries involved. Ask Cuba, ask Guyana, ask Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, etc. The US heralds itself as the moral police of the world due to its military might and the overgrown idea of Manifest Destiny, US exceptionalism, and all that soft power rubbish third world countries are fed, and with powers given to them by international organisations such as the UN, the ICC and ICJ to essentially pluck in and out of the affairs of third world countries, they abuse their powers, flout international laws (or international suggestions as they’re now fondly called) and do as they please, all in the name of national interest. A realist scholar’s wet dream.

So, how does this relate to us regular Nigerians? The simple point is that Trump could not give any less shits than he already does, about Nigeria, and the Christians being killed in the country. Or any Nigerian, for that matter. Last Christmas, when he was wishing peace unto the world, and we were eating chicken and celebrating the Christmas holiday, he was making good on his threat to militarily intervene in Nigeria’s security affairs. By bombing a forest and a nearby village in an attempt to secure peace for the earth. In an attempt to fish out the terrorists he so cares for who are attacking the Nigerian citizens.

And what happened next? Well, no terrorists were harmed in the bombing, (why he didn’t ask of, or use the high-tech military paraphernalia the US has to directly fish out where the terrorists were hiding, remains a mystery to us all, it seems) but villagers, people, the ‘average Nigerians’ who couldn’t care much for geopolitics as their livelihoods took too much time away from that, were harmed. Luckily, there were no recorded deaths, but property and livelihoods were lost, and no mention of any compensation from both governments were made. Or will be made. (This isn’t to say it was the fault of the villagers for not knowing about geopolitics; this is just proving a point that geopolitics will happen to you whether you like it or not.) Tinubu didn’t speak on the bombings afterwards, or what was achieved from it, and neither did Trump, but the message both administrations left was clear as day. The United States had breached whatever concepts of sovereignty Nigeria had, and could now, if it so wished, breach into the country to do as it pleased. Curtesy of our President.

Oh, and as for the kidnapped and killed Christians? Oh well, some people just have to go. Little to no outrage from anyone. We all endured it and got through it. The US government left us alone. For now.

Now the administration has its eyes set on Venezuela. Or rather, a few weeks ago, it had its eyes set on Venezuela, now it’s back again at Iran and newly, Greenland. Sometime earlier this year, the whole world watched as the US breached international law in ways that haven’t been breached since the onset of modern international law. The Trump administration quite literally kidnapped the Venezuelan Head-of-State, and even tauntingly posted a picture of it. Boldly and proudly saying to the world, look what I can do, and what could you possibly do about it? There was the general and expected outrage, then silence. Because what could we really do? What possibly can below- the-poverty-line Venezuela do? Reactions were mixed over this, too; people stated that it was good that the administration was ousting the Venezuelan dictator with blind hopes of replacing him with a democratically elected Venezuelan leader (lol), when Trump announced his champagne plans to run the country. It seemed that people forgot that a democratically elected dictator ousting a regular dictator didn’t mean good was bound to come out of it.

An imaginary war on drugs was cited as the official reason for the Head-of-State’s kidnapping, but who, we’re all still asking, made the US the global police? What laws dictate that one can kidnap the Head-of-State of another country on grounds of alleged crimes and take them to their own country to be tried by their own domestic laws, when the ICC and ICJ sit there quietly, observantly, and while the UN does nothing but “condemn the actions of—” the United States? There are sentiments that both courts only exist to criminalise African countries, that international laws are laws only for poor countries, and such sentiments have never rung truer. Anyway, we’re still awaiting the trial. We’ll be seeing soon how swiftly the hands of the US’s justice system work outside its domestic affairs. And until then, we’ll sit down and watch.

Now, Trump is threatening intervention in Iran over the protests against their tyrannical government. Because the Iranian government is known as the all-father of human rights violations, there’s a tendency for the general public to believe that liberalist, individualist America coming to save them will be good. It is important to reject that idea, as similar sentiments rose in the 1970s, just before the Iranian Revolution. The United States was no help then, and would be no help now. Following international law principles of non-intervention, for whatever that’s worth, States should be left to their own devices on how best to curb their own crises. And if there’s anything the protests in Iran have said to the world, it’s that they can handle themselves pretty well without the need for US intervention. The US is not the world’s global saviour.

The US’s ability to simultaneously insert itself into the domestic affairs of multiple countries, all with the covert aim of bringing about nuisance, and exercising its military might under claims of national interest, should be alarming to all States that are not the United States. The Trump administration is threatening Greenland now, and there’s talk of the destruction of NATO (the strongest nuclear and military alliance in the world) should that happen, and the faraway idea of World War Three, being just at our knees. And drawing from history, could one guess the class of people, or from which continent, where people, almost completely uninvolved with the affairs that led to the previous World Wars happening, that were first and last-ditch effort drafts for the wars?

Geopolitics cares about you. Whether you like it or not. Geopolitics will find you, whether you like it or not. And not caring, or shutting down people on the internet for their very valid fears about the current state of the global landscape, will not make it go away. The Nigerian administration has point-blank told us that they will sell us, our lives, property and all, for whatever unimaginable sums of money or narratives, the United States government is ready to sell them. The United States administration has made it clear that we are a very permeable country, and at the mercy of the President’s benevolence. Or concepts of benevolence. As he sweeps through continents, exercising military might and spreading the fear of the Western hand, one moment it could be a random remote village in North-Eastern Nigeria, and the next moment, it’s Port Harcourt, Cross River State, Ikeja, Lekki, and just outside your doorstep, where it’s too late to run away from.

This, of course, isn’t to say that we must ditch all concerns of our domestic politics. At least it’s still something that we, with enough will, can still control. We may be too underdeveloped to make a mark in geopolitics, but in domestic politics, slivers of hope still run. As always, we must start by educating ourselves. By all means, educate ourselves. We must think outside the boxes we’ve been told to think inside of, we must educate ourselves for the ones who can’t, or the ones who refuse to, we must erase narratives of socio-political helplessness, stay vocal in times of crises and peace, take the upcoming elections seriously (I think I died a few hundred times seeing campaigns for Tinubu’s re-election already), and as always, raise awareness in the little ways that we can. In the collective focus on individual problems, we lose sight of the ability to individually focus on collective issues. And who do collective issues affect if not the individual? They all wrap around each other.

So perhaps the issue is not that Nigeria, or Nigerians, are too underdeveloped for geo-political concerns, but perhaps it is our behaviours, our actions and reactions, to our domestic affairs that spill out into our ability to understand and critically engage with geo-political issues. Perhaps it is our understanding, our withdrawn understanding, that the material conditions of our lives serve as valid enough reasons to disqualify us from the ability to think outside the box, to think far out and beyond our borders.

But regardless, geopolitics stands still and uncaring. It does not care whether you were too tired, too hungry or too busy surviving to pay attention to what occurs beyond our shores. And geopolitics, most definitely, does not pause because you were told politics is for those who have already eaten.