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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The 2nd Amendment gives citizens the right to bare arms for this exact reason.
Everyone in the military swears and oath to the Constitution and so do most law enforcement.
Since treason is a crime, it gets stopped early thanks to the FBI, NSA, Dept of Homeland Security etc and the military police.
The second amendment is another deterrent here. Having an armed populace that may not want to follow your new dictatorship is not ideal.
I expect comments like “a pistol or AR can’t beat a tank/missle/fighter jet”, which is certainly true. When every home is or may be armed it takes a lot of resources (ie: soldiers willing to die for your coup if they barge into the wrong house unprepared) to overcome that. You can exterminate a large city I suppose to create fear, but you still have to try and disarm the citizens in the USA if you really want to take over.
This is why the 2nd amendment is important. I’m not against gun control, but I am against repealing this amendment or otherwise fully outlawing gun ownership as we need this deterrent.
Just my opinion – YMMV
Funny thing i read today, it’s not that the US is the most powerful military, it’s the top 5 militaries or some shit, like each branch of the military individually is in the top militaries in the world, so i mean technically if 1 branch goes rogue, the best defense… is the other branches lol
It’s harder for low rank soldiers to perform a coup. It is much easier to do it as someone of high power, like a president who called for civilians to take arms and take over congress.
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/4166754-trumps-coup-failed-in-2021-now-its-continuing-in-our-courts/
Regulations. Regulations absolutely forbid it. If they want to have a coup, they have to fill out a ton of paperwork first. Stops them every time.
On a macro level the nation has a perpetual deficit that funds the military. In the event of a coup it’s likely external countries would stop buying US treasury bonds and the coup would quickly run out of money.
I’ve always thought about it from the point that these individuals soldiers have family and love ones of their own. If something was ever putting the domestic population at risk then I can’t see too many jumping on board
If no one has said it: the sheer volume of armed civilians that wouldn’t put up with that sort of nonsense. Really, we just have to not obey their orders. Maybe stop delivering their food and power. The military can’t function without support. If they just up and had a coup without some sort of reason, the populous wouldn’t stand for it.
It’s precisely because the US military is so powerful that pulling off a coup is a risky endeavor not worth the trouble.
Say you, as a general, has garnered enough loyalty for your command to take over District of Columbia and force the President to resign and the Congress to acknowledge you as new President… now what? You’ve got the rest of the military gunning for you and, if you’re not outright besieged on Washington DC, then you’ll be stuck in a drawn out civil war fought between your largely illegitimate government and US military plus whatever ally they could gather up worldwide. Your immediate neighbors will condemn your actions and your choices of friends are an entire ocean and a frozen desert away.
Even taking over nukes won’t work since the US didn’t put them all in one basket and, more importantly, nukes are kinda counterintuitive when the goal is to instigate a coup.
So unless you can get the entire military behind you, it’s just not worth the trouble trying to instigate a coup when you could just run for President or a cabinet office after your service.
There is also a deep cultural tradition in the US that rejects this. Some countries’ militaries exist for internal security while the US is strictly outward facing and historically being very small after wars. It also helps George Washington really set the tone too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newburgh_Conspiracy
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