The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - U.S. Boots on the Ground in Nigeria || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Following the Christmas Day U.S. airstrike on a jihadist target in northern Nigeria, the U.S. has deployed 100 troops, more so advisors, to train local counterterrorism forces in Nigeria.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3MCfFqM

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out today is the 17th of February, and the news is that 100 U.S. troops have just arrived in Nigeria to help train local forces in anti-terror operations. It's the first batch, another 100 or 200, is expected to come in the next several days to weeks. Why Nigeria? Why now? What matters? So if you go back to Christmas season, December, the big story that was making the rounds in Maga was that Nigeria was massacring Christians, and oh my God, we got to stop. And so on Christmas Day, Donald Trump bombed a jihadi stronghold in northern Nigeria. First time we've done military operations in Nigeria. The Nigerian government internally was kind of pissed off because this is a country of 230 million people.

It has dozens of ethnicities. The northern part of the country is more Islamic and drier than the south, which is more Christian and tropical. But the militants that have been operating in the north, they don't care who they kidnap. They kidnap anybody. So most of this was just a collective MAGA fabrication, which, you know, we've seen a few of those before. But this time it resulted in the United States actually bombing someone, which is generally not a good reason to do it. Anyway, the Nigerian government was really pissed off, but rather than be pissed off in public, they said, you know, you're right, we do have a militancy problem. Why don't you come help?

And Trump did. Now, these are not combat troops, these are advisors, but they are now getting amashed into this situation. Bhajah in further north and we'll see what happens. This matters for three reasons. Number one, Nigeria, 230 million people, significant energy producer based on the day, exporting somewhere between 1 and 3 million barrels a day, although it's pretty chaotic, so it's usually on the lower end of that. It is the clear superpower of West Africa. It is the most populous nation on the continent. It matters in a great many ways, and in times when Nigeria is able to hold itself together, it projects power into the entire neighborhood, and in areas when it's not able to hold its both together,

it falls into civil war. So anything that helps Nigeria hold itself together is generally good for the region and U.S. power projection regardless. Number two, we are seeing some of the outcomes of the Ukraine war on another continent here. So one of the things that the Russians did, right when the Ukraine war was getting going, is they tried to stir the pot everywhere they could to cause as much chaos and civil conflict as they possibly could. And in the Sahelian region, that's the dry area that's south of the Sahara Desert, but north of the tropical belt, they targeted the French position. And they basically went in under the guise of counterterrorism, counter-Islamic terrorism.

They encouraged Islamic terrorism to continue and cut deals with regimes that were in the process of having coups. We called it the coup belt for a while, to push the French out. The French have now left all of French West Africa, Burkina Fasdo, Mali, countries like that. And so we now have these arrangements of pro-Russian Tin Poc dictators that are basically raping their country and running mining interests for the Russians, whereas the militant groups have been able to spread beyond those countries into places like northern Nigeria. So anything that pushes back that tide is generally a good thing, too. And again, consolidation in Nigeria is probably the best bet at this point because the first line of defense, the French forces in the region are now gone. So are U.S. forces for that matter. So that's number two.

Number three, the Trump administration just put it into a position where it now has sent forces into an area specifically with the goal of finding out what's going on. That's the first time that's happened in this administration. Usually they just rely upon rhetoric and whatever is circling through the conspiracy sphere. Now we actually are going to have a couple hundred troops interfacing with the Nigerians on a daily basis, getting a feel for what is a very, very complex country in a very, very complex security environment that doesn't match the story that you hear on the web. What they do with that information is going to be really, really interesting.

I don't mean to suggest that the United States has like immense interest in this region. But as a rule, anything that holds Islamic terror at bay and keeps them in worthless territories is a good thing. If this is able to penetrate into central or, God forbid, southern Nigeria, then we've got a very different situation where the entire region would become unmoored. So, you know, kudos if this works out. Right now, the government of the United States is still very, very, very early in a fact-finding stage. And once they have the information in front of them, they will then have to make a decision and balance against what we are hearing in the Magosphere, which is largely the opposite of what

is actually happening. That's going to be an interesting conversation that will happen a few months from now. You're jamming your favorite song, and while you aren't missing a beat, you could be missing a signal from your body. It's an SOS from your kidneys, and it doesn't sound like music at all. It's silent. High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and other risk factors can quietly stress the kidneys leading to negative impacts on the heart.

That's what you should ask your doctor about a simple urine test called UACR. Most missed the signal for hidden kidney disease and related heart risk. You shouldn't. Visit Detect thesos.com today to learn more. I'm caught up in the game. My attention is on every play and every whistle, but what I'm missing is a signal coming from my kidneys. That signal isn't like a ref's whistle. it's more of a silent SOS, which could be warning me of an increased risk for events like heart attack or stroke.

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