What occurs when leaders have loyalists in control of males with weapons: Classes for the US from Nicaragua, Syria and different authoritarian nations

In what’s been known as a “Friday evening bloodbath” on the Pentagon, President Donald Trump eliminated six high generals or admirals on Feb. 21, 2025, together with Air Pressure Common C.Q. Brown and Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti. Trump additionally fired navy attorneys who advise senior officers on the legality of their conduct in fight and at dwelling.

Over on the FBI, the president has tapped loyalists Kash Patel and Dan Bongino to direct the chief department’s largest inside safety company. These males have little administrative expertise in federal legislation enforcement however have repeated Trump’s lies concerning the 2020 election.

Trump has reportedly used denialism – about Joe Biden profitable the 2020 election and that Jan. 6 entailed pro-Trump protesters violently assaulting cops – to assist vet appointees for senior nationwide safety and intelligence posts. Loyalty assessments can display screen for appointees who will enthusiastically perform a president’s agenda and comply with orders – even if requested to interrupt the legislation.

Additional, Trump promoted Sean Curran, his private bodyguard, to steer the Secret Service – the presidential guard unit. Curran’s appointment meant bypassing senior service members in favor of what one information report known as a “largely nameless U.S. Secret Service agent” who had by no means served in Secret Service headquarters however had a detailed relationship with Trump.

Such coordinated personnel modifications – firing Pentagon attorneys, appointing loyalists to steer the FBI and deciding on Trump’s private bodyguard to steer a safety service – are per a method of “personalizing” the safety forces.

That personalization is a trademark of strongman rule all through the world.

Loyalty to the chief, not the legislation

Safety power personalism occurs when leaders reshape the nation’s safety forces by purging nonpartisan, law-abiding officers and selling loyal officers who would by no means rise by means of the ranks on advantage.

Whereas an expert navy in a democracy is loyal to the Structure, personalist safety forces are loyal to their chief.

Generally this course of entails recruiting personnel from the chief’s social gathering or allied ethnic, tribal or extremist teams. It might even embody making a paramilitary power, presidential guard or a brand new particular forces unit staffed with officers and rank-and-file loyal to the chief. These forces then stay outdoors of the conventional navy chain of command.

Repressing dissent – and democracy

When leaders put loyalists in control of the boys with weapons, it turns into simpler to repress opposition from residents, political figures and any dissenting navy leaders.

That’s for 3 causes.

First, customized safety forces usually tend to comply with the chief’s orders to shoot peaceable anti-government protesters. Safety forces loyal to Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, killed roughly 300 protesters in 2018 and 2019 when civil society teams mobilized to protest Ortega’s proposed pension cuts. Loyalist navy or paramilitary forces in Russia and Belarus have equally quashed public dissent in recent times.

Second, as a result of residents typically know that customized safety forces usually tend to shoot residents than to defend them towards international threats, opposition teams are much less prone to arrange a protest. This makes it simpler for leaders to silence impartial media, jail opposition political candidates, stuff poll packing containers and steal votes in order that they by no means lose one other election.

A number of years after Ortega’s forces killed protesters within the streets, he jailed seven opposition presidential candidates and claimed to have gained the 2021 election.

Third, personalism of safety forces weakens the facility of different teams which may in any other case constrain the chief, equivalent to elites within the ruling political social gathering and even generals who oppose a pacesetter’s energy seize.

If elites concern loyal safety brokers, they have a tendency to preserve their mouths shut once they disagree with the chief – or else, analysis reveals, face a purge. Generals, too: Analysis finds that loyal safety forces cut back the danger of navy coup makes an attempt.

Leaders who don’t quit energy

Our information on safety power personalization in autocracies signifies that when leaders put loyalists in control of safety forces, eradicating these leaders from energy peacefully by means of elections or protest turns into far more tough.

Take the instance of Syria, the place President Hafez Assad got here to energy after a profitable navy coup in 1971. The nation had skilled greater than a dozen coup makes an attempt since 1946. The largest menace to Assad’s energy was one other navy coup.

To attenuate this menace, he created a personalised safety power by selling fellow Alawites, a minority ethno-religious group, to the senior ranks of the Syrian navy. Assad backed navy housing for loyal officers and created an overlapping community of family-controlled safety models outdoors the formal navy.

Safety power personalization harmed the Syrian navy’s capability to battle. That is ceaselessly the case as a result of this course of typically purges competent officers and creates incentives for senior officers to deceive the chief about unhealthy information.

But it surely was helpful for enabling the Assad household to rob the nation blind and be certain that the chief’s son, Bashar Assad, succeeded his father.

Syria didn’t have free and truthful elections underneath the Assads, and ruling social gathering elites couldn’t verify the chief’s energy. When residents mobilized peacefully in 2011 to oust the Assad regime, loyal safety forces killed and imprisoned tens of 1000’s of Syrians.

The Assads’ reign of terror solely ended after 12 years of brutal civil conflict.

Comply with the cash

Personalised safety forces want cash – each to make sure loyalty and to accumulate the weapons wanted when the chief orders violent repression.

So leaders who personalize their safety forces should funnel big sums of cash to probably the most loyal models, generally making them extra highly effective than the common military.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, for instance, receives income from state oil exports and controls sanction-busting smuggling networks. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Particular Guard models, although smaller than the common navy, at all times had higher tools and coaching.

In 2003, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni assigned his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to steer a brand new Presidential Guard Brigade and gave this unit the job of combating terrorism so he might management navy assist from the U.S. The longtime chief’s son now instructions the complete Ugandan Armed Forces. Age 81 and along with his son in control of the boys with weapons, Museveni appears to be like set to win his eighth time period in workplace subsequent 12 months.

Safety forces personalization within the US?

The purges on the Pentagon in late February is not going to rework the U.S. safety equipment into a personalised power in a single day, nor will they seemingly spur the navy to oust Trump. Regardless that the Structure establishes civilian management over the navy, senior officers can nonetheless resist stress from Trump to quash protest.

However the firings do spark issues about politicizing the navy. So do different strikes by Trump that sign higher ambitions to personalize the safety forces, equivalent to deciding on loyalists to steer the FBI and Secret Service and purging the navy attorneys who assist troopers abide by the legislation.

Have a look at the brand new faces and comply with the cash. Will the Trump administration bypass the senior ranks to advertise junior officers whose navy careers rely on Trump remaining in energy? Will the US$50 billion “financial savings” that Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth needs to extract from the Protection Division as an alternative fund a brand new safety power?

Probably the most severe signal of safety personalization within the U.S. could be the creation of a brand new power outdoors the common navy chain of command – assume the Division of Authorities Effectivity, however with weapons. Professional-Trump navy contractors are already calling for the federal government to fund a “small military of personal residents empowered to make arrests” and deport immigrants.

If Trump seeks an unconstitutional third time period in 2028, one potential state of affairs might play out: A loyalist praetorian guard like that might be a menace to kill protesters and battle safety models nonetheless loyal to the Structure.