Obama, the military and the threat of dictatorship

“Our Constitution is at risk,” wrote Schweich. He warned that the elevation of an unprecedented number of former senior officers into Obama’s cabinet could “complete the silent military coup d’etat that has been steadily gaining ground below the radar screen of most Americans and the media.”

“He stressed that what began abroad is coming home. “Now the Pentagon has drawn up plans to deploy 20,000 US soldiers inside our borders by 2011, ostensibly to help state and local officials respond to terrorist attacks or other catastrophes.” This mission, he warned, “could easily spill over from emergency counter-terrorism work into border-patrol efforts, intelligence gathering and law enforcement operations.”

A report that appeared in a magazine published by the US Army War College last month, just weeks after the election, indicates that the Pentagon is preparing its own “transition,” a process that is being driven not by Obama’s vague promises of “change” but by what the military command sees as a historic crisis of the existing order that could require the use of armed force to quell social struggles at home.

Entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” the monograph was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college, the Army’s main training institute for prospective senior officers. According to the magazine, he “continues to provide expert advice to key actors in the security and defense policymaking and analysis communities.”

One of the key contingencies for which Freier insists the US military must prepare is a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”