The US military is currently the most powerful in the world. Is there anything in place, besides soldiers’/CO’s individual allegiances to stop a military coup?
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A military coups in the modern US is at least theoretically possible, it’s just very highly unlikely.
The US doesn’t operate like a banana republic. High ranking military officers aren’t promoted due to direct loyalty to a dictator or due to nepotism the way things happen in 3rd world countries and in dictatorships.
The President does pick the Joint Chiefs for example, but does so by proxy and only with confirmation of the Senate. It’s not like in Russia where Putin picks all the top people and eliminates anyone he considers even remotely a threat.
The US also rotates assignments every few years so individuals and groups can’t form cliques with direct loyalty to a specific officer as easily because people rotate so often.
The US has historically been a very stable country and a strong belief in democracy is at its core so there isn’t an underlying desire to overthrow the government because if you don’t like your government in the US, you can easily vote them out.
High Ranking military officers believe in the chain of command and have an quasi-religious belief in being answerable to the civilian government.
There’s also a very strong court system in the military with strict regulations. Those that are a problem are rooted out and gotten rid of.
Government in the US is also quite decentralized. The system of semi-autonomous States vs the Federal government makes launching a coups fairly impractical.
EDIT: You also have to consider that the different branches of the US military (Army, Navy/Marines, Air Force, and Space Force) all operate independently with their own chains of command. They work together with common cause, but are notorious for inter-service rivalry, so getting more than 1 to work together for a coups would be quite the feat.
Two organizations that might actually be dangerous for launching a coups would actually be the CIA (who do that everywhere else all the time), and PMCs (Private Military Contractors aka mercenary organizations) that are very well armed and equipped and have loyalties outside the US military structure and could be loyal to a specific US leader. We saw a similar attempt at a coups in Russia with the Wagner group. It’s important to note that organizations like the CIA are forbidden from operating on US soil against US civilians but do anyway…
There are scenarios though where a would-be dictator could attempt to launch a coups. There was a disorganized coups attempt on Jan 6, 2021 albeit the military wasn’t involved.
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