Prometheus 6

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American Coup D'Etat
Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable
Posted on Monday, June 26, 2006. Originally from Harper's Magazine, April 2006.

Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty, Americans—who spent decades war-gaming a Soviet invasion and have taken more recently to daydreaming about “ticking bomb” scenarios—should cast at least an occasional thought toward the only truly existential threat that American democracy might face today. We now live in a unipolar world, after all, in which conquest of the United States by an outside power is nearly inconceivable. Even the best-equipped terrorists, for their part, could dispatch at most a city or two; and armed revolution is a futile prospect, so fearsomely is our homeland secured by police and military forces. To subdue America entirely, the only route remaining would be to seize the machinery of state itself, to steer it toward malign ends—to carry out, that is, a coup d'état.

Given that the linchpin of any coup d'état is the participation, or at least the support, of a nation's military officers, Harper's Magazine assembled a panel of experts to discuss the state of our own military—its culture, its relationship with the wider society, and the steadfastness of its loyalty to the ideals of democracy and to the United States Constitution.

The following forum is based on a discussion that took place in January at the Ruth's Chris Steak House in Arlington, Virginia. Bill Wasik served as moderator.