WILL the US President Donald Trump really deploy the army to stop protests in America? This question is being asked by many people from the US as well as from all over the world.
In a sense, the question is a moot point because Trump has already activated the military and the National Guard in the Washington area, which is directly under the jurisdiction of the federal government led by the President. On Tuesday, the Pentagon stated that about 1,600 troops had already been deployed in the Washington area and were on alert.
However, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Rath Hoffman points out that troops are currently not deployed in the capital itself, but in the military bases around it.
Trump shocked his critics and delighted his supporters with his speech on Monday by threatening to send “troops on the streets and quickly solve their problems," referring to the governors and mayors who may not succeed in containing the riots. The riots are, according to Trump's administration, led by anarchists and members of the radical left-wing Antifa movement. Trump claims that he will "restore security in America” by sending the troops on the streets.
The protest and riots, which have been going on for more than a week across the US, erupted over the brutal police murder of the 46-year-old unarmed African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25th.
Military helicopters flying over the protesters in Washington
Although there are no soldiers on the streets of Washington, police (FBI) or military helicopters UH-72 Lakota and UH-60 flew over the city on Tuesday, reports the portal "The Drive".
Some helicopters flew low over the assembled peaceful protesters, drowning them out with their noise in an apparent attempt to disperse them.
"The helicopter parked over a crowd at 5/E St Nw Washington DC trying to force people away with noise and wind," reporter Daniella Cheslow posted on Twitter along with an unbelievable video.
On the other hand, the National Guard, which is technically part of the US Army and US Air Force reserve forces, but is under the authority of individual governors, has already been activated in a number of states to help the police in establishing order. More than 17,000 members of the National Guard were sent to the streets in 24 federal states, reports the portal "Military Times".
Meanwhile, military police forces were sent to the streets of Washington today. British ITV filmed a truly rare sight - American soldiers stationed in a cordon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and peaceful protesters gathered below this American landmark.
Former U.S. Army Commander: Our fellow citizens are not, and should never become the enemy
The opposition Democrats, meanwhile, have strongly condemned Trump's fueling of an already chaotic situation and racial unrest that has not befallen the United States since the 1960s.
"These are not the words of a president. These are the words of a dictator," Democratic Senator Kamala Harris stated on Twitter.
"He's using the American military against the American people. He tear-gassed peaceful protesters and fired rubber bullets. For a photo," presidential candidate Joe Biden called out Trump on Twitter, recalling that the police used tear gas and rubber bullets against the peaceful protesters around the White House so Trump could go unhindered to the nearby damaged church and take a photo there with a Bible in hand.
But more importantly, former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen also called out Trump. “Our fellow citizens are not the enemy and should never become so,” Mullen wrote in a column for the Atlantic magazine. He added that American cities are not "battlefields and must never become so" alluding to a bizarre statement by Defense Secretary Mark Esper that "battlefields" should be "dominated" in the context of riot control.
Trump can deploy the army under the 19th-century Rebellion Act
As for deploying the military to the rest of the United States and the president's authority to do so without the governors formally asking him to - there is no unified position. The Trump administration claims that the president has the authority to deploy the army under the 19th-century Rebellion Act - more precisely, the 1807 Rebellion Act - which was passed to easily suppress the armed uprisings of Native Americans. Under the aforementioned act, the White House does not need the approval of the governor when the situation is such that the federal state cannot enforce the law or when the citizens' rights are at stake.
However, a subsequent law passed in 1878, the so-called Posse Comitatus, greatly limited the authority of the federal government to deploy the military in the USA with the prior approval of the Congress.
Still, University of Texas law professor Robert Chesney told the BBC that the president could send the military unilaterally if he assessed that the rights of citizens, i.e. the legal order in a federal state, were endangered.
The Rebellion Act has been activated dozens of times since it was passed, with several of those times being during the racial unrest and the struggle for black civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. It was last activated in 1992 during the great riots in Los Angeles caused by the police beating of African American Rodney King, which was also filmed on camera.
Still, it is clear that deploying the army in this case would be on a far larger scale, as riots have spread across the country. We asked Igor Tabak, military analyst of the "OBRIS - Obrana i Sigurnost (Defense and Security)" portal, for his comment on this unprecedented situation.
Igor Tabak: The protesters are not just African Americans, this has gone beyond the case of George Floyd
"If we interpret the regulations strictly, there is hardly a situation where the president can deploy the army without a call from the governor. The legal basis for this is extremely questionable and could easily lead to a series of lawsuits, perhaps even to problems on the spot between the forces of individual federal states and the federal armed forces. It is very difficult to say what that would be like nowadays.
Still, the situation is precarious enough that Trump seems to have given up on the deployment in the last two days, considering that the military was deployed only on the streets of Washington, which is federal territory and does not have a governor like the rest of the United States," Tabak adds.
"The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the deployment of the federal army for the purpose of carrying out police duties in the United States. Thus, the situation should be completely outside that framework. Yes, the Rebellion Act (Insurrection Acts of 1807) was at times activated, but always very limited in space and time. The vast majority of these cases were based on workers' and racial rebellions, which were responded to by force based on the governor's call," explains this military analyst.
In any case, if further militarization of riot control in the United States were to occur, the question is what the consequences would be in the world's most armed country - some 330 million citizens have a total of over 390 million firearms, not counting the police and the army. That’s more than the citizens of the next ten countries on the list - India, China, Pakistan, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Yemen, Turkey and France - have together.
"Several things need to be taken into account. Firstly, the fact that these are the biggest demonstrations and riots of this kind since the 1960s, an unprecedented situation in recent times, with protesters who are not only African Americans, but also Latin Americans, Caucasians and others. The riots have gone beyond the case of the murder of George Floyd, and even the context of police violence, and they have now become about the overall treatment of race in the United States, as well as the reactions of the authorities to such situations," Tabak points out.
"In theory, this could turn into a civil war, but let's hope it will not come to that."
"Secondly, it has become clear that the protests are not uniform after all. Most of the protesters demonstrate peacefully during the day, in accordance with the First Amendment of the US Constitution. But at night they are joined by others, who have different methods and goals. These other groups want to provoke a conflict with the authorities, they are setting things on fire, breaking in, and looting. There are, quite clearly, both radical left and anarchist, but also radical right organizations that want to provoke a race war," adds our analyst: "These organizations, that is, militias, some of whom also protested against quarantine measures with rifles, come from a specific, far-right part of the American political scene, which is militant and at times irreconcilable with the central government."
Can we still hope that Trump will not further escalate the situation? Tabak thinks that is hard to tell: "The door to chaos was open on Monday, in terms of clashes between federal and local authorities at the judicial level, and perhaps even on the streets, which in theory could escalate into a civil war, but hopefully it will not come to that. It seems that it will not if we look at today's statements by the American Minister of Defense Esper, who stated that he opposes the aforementioned ways of using the army against the demonstrators."
"There are 50 independent states, each with its own National Guard, and some of them with air units, which have no obligation to be coordinated with the federal government if the governor refuses to do so. This federalism is the basis of the United States," Tabak says. "Right now it seems like the situation is starting to calm down or at least consolidate."