▲ Minneapolis street crossing where George Floyd was stopped by local police [Fibonacci Blue].

COMMENTARY / Salvador Sánchez Tapia [Brigadier General (Res.)].

In a controversial public statement made on June 2, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to deploy units of the Armed Forces to contain riots sparked by the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota, and to maintain public order if they escalate in the level of violence.

Regardless of the seriousness of the event, and beyond the fact that the incident has been politicized and is being employee as a platform for expressing rejection of Trump's presidency, the possibility raised by the president poses an almost unprecedented challenge to civil-military relations in the United States.

For reasons rooted in its pre-independence past, the United States maintains a certain caution against the possibility that the Armed Forces can be employed domestically against citizens by whoever holds power. For this reason, when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, while authorizing congress to organize and maintain armies, they explicitly limited their funding to a maximum of two years.

Against this background, and against the background of the tension between the Federation and the states, U.S. legislation has tried to limit the employment the Armed Forces in domestic tasks. Thus, since 1878, the Posse Comitatus limits the possibility of employing them in the fulfillment of missions for the maintenance of public order which it is the responsibility of the states to carry out with their own means, including the National Guard.

One of the exceptions to this rule is the Insurrection Act of 1807, invoked precisely by President Trump as an argument in favor of the legality of an eventual employment decision. This, despite the fact that this law has a restrictive spirit, since it requires the cooperation of the states in its application, and because it is designed for extreme cases in which they are unable, or unwilling, to maintain order, circumstances that do not seem applicable to the case at hand.

The controversial nature of the advertisement is attested to by the fact that voices as authoritative and so little inclined to publicly break its neutrality as that of Lieutenant General (ret.) James Mattis, Secretary of Defense of the Trump Administration until his premature relief in December 2018, or that of Lieutenant General (ret.) Martin Dempsey, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Board between 2011 and 2015, have spoken out against this advertisement , thus joining the statements made by former presidents as diverse as George W. Bush and George W. Bush, who have spoken out against it. ) Martin Dempsey, head of the board Chiefs of Staff between 2011 and 2015, have spoken out against this employment, joining the statements made by former presidents as diverse as George W. Bush and Barak Obama, or those of the Secretary of Defense himself, Mark Esper, whose position against the possibility of using the Armed Forces in this status has recently been made clear.

The presidential advertisement has opened a crisis in the usually stable US civil-military relations (CMR). Beyond the scope of the United States, the question, of deep significance and affecting the core of CMR in a democratic state, is none other than whether or not to use the Armed Forces in public order or, in a broader sense, domestic tasks, and the risks associated with such a decision.

In the 1990s, Michael C. Desch, one of the leading authorities in the field of CMR, identified the correlation between the missions entrusted to the Armed Forces by a state and the quality of its civil-military relations, concluding that externally oriented military missions are the most conducive to healthy CMRs, while internal missions that are not purely military are likely to generate various pathologies in such relations.

In general, the existence of the Armed Forces in any state is primarily due to the need to protect it against any threat from outside. In order to carry out such a high task with guarantees, armies are equipped and trained for the lethal employment force, unlike police forces, which are equipped for a minimal and gradual use of force, which only becomes lethal in the most extreme, exceptional cases. In the first case, it is a matter of confronting an armed enemy that is trying to destroy one's own forces. In the second, force is used to confront citizens who may, in some cases, use violence, but who remain, after all, compatriots.

When military forces are employed in tasks of this nature, there is always a risk that they will produce a response in accordance with their training, which may be excessive in a law and order scenario. The consequences, in such a case, can be very negative. In the worst case scenario, and above all other considerations, the employment may result in a perhaps avoidable loss of life. Moreover, from the point of view of CMR, the soldiers that the nation submission for its external defense could become, in the eyes of the citizenry, the enemies of those they are supposed to defend.

The damage this can produce for civil-military relations, for national defense and for the quality of a state's democracy is difficult to measure, but it can be intuited if one considers that, in a democratic system, the Armed Forces cannot live without the support of their fellow citizens, who see them as a beneficial force for the nation and to whose members they extend their recognition as its loyal and disinterested servants.

Abuse in the employment the Armed Forces in domestic tasks may, in addition, deteriorate their already complex preparation, weakening them for the execution of the missions for which they were conceived. It may also end up conditioning their organization and equipment to the detriment, once again, of their essential tasks.

On the other hand, and although today we are far away and safe from such a scenario, this employment may gradually lead to a progressive expansion of the tasks of the Armed Forces, which would extend their control over purely civilian activities, and which would see their range of tasks increasingly broadened, displacing other agencies in their execution, which could, undesirably, atrophy.

In such a scenario, the military institution could cease to be perceived as a disinterested actor and come to be seen as another competitor with particular interests, and with a control capacity that it could use for its own benefit, even if this were opposed to the nation's interest. Such a status, in time, would lead hand in hand to the politicization of the Armed Forces, from which would follow another damage to the CMR that would be difficult to quantify.

Decisions such as the one targeted by President Trump may ultimately place members of the Armed Forces in the grave moral dilemma of using force against their fellow citizens, or disobeying the President's orders. Because of its gravity, therefore, the decision to commit the Armed Forces to such tasks should be made on an exceptional basis and after careful consideration.

It is difficult to determine whether the advertisement made by President Trump was just a product of his temperament or whether, on the contrary, it contained a real intention to use the Armed Forces in the disturbances that are dotting the country, in a decision that has not occurred since 1992. In any case, the president, and those advising him, must assess the damage that can be inferred from it for civil-military relations and, therefore, for the American democratic system. This without forgetting, moreover, the responsibility that falls on America's shoulders in the face of the reality that a part of humanity looks to the country as a reference letter and a model to imitate.