In what’s been known as a “Friday night massacre” at the Pentagon, President Donald Trump eliminated six prime generals or admirals on Feb. 21, 2025, together with Air Power Normal C.Q. Brown and Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti. Trump additionally fired military lawyers who advise senior officers on the legality of their behavior 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 experience in federal legislation enforcement however have repeated Trump’s lies in regards to the 2020 election.
Trump has reportedly used denialism – about Joe Biden winning the 2020 election and that Jan. 6 entailed pro-Trump protesters violently assaulting police officers – to assist vet appointees for senior nationwide safety and intelligence posts. Loyalty assessments can display for appointees who will enthusiastically carry out a president’s agenda and follow orders – even if asked to break the legislation.
Additional, Trump promoted Sean Curran, his personal bodyguard, to guide 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 “mostly anonymous U.S. Secret Service agent” who had never served in Secret Service headquarters however had a close relationship with Trump.
Such coordinated personnel adjustments – firing Pentagon lawyers, appointing loyalists to guide the FBI and choosing Trump’s private bodyguard to guide a safety service – are in step with a method of “personalizing” the security forces.
That personalization is a trademark of strongman rule all through the world.
AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
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 way of the ranks on benefit.
Whereas an expert army in a democracy is loyal to the Constitution, personalist safety forces are loyal to their chief.
Generally this course of entails recruiting personnel from the chief’s celebration or allied ethnic, tribal or extremist groups. 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 exterior of the traditional army chain of command.
Repressing dissent – and democracy
When leaders put loyalists answerable for the lads with weapons, it turns into simpler to repress opposition from residents, political figures and any dissenting army leaders.
That’s for 3 causes.
First, customized safety forces usually tend to observe the chief’s orders to shoot peaceful 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 military 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 citizens than to defend them against foreign threats, opposition teams are less likely to organize a protest. This makes it simpler for leaders to silence independent media, jail opposition political candidates, stuff ballot boxes and steal votes in order that they never lose another election.
A number of years after Ortega’s forces killed protesters within the streets, he jailed seven opposition presidential candidates and claimed to have won the 2021 election.
Third, personalism of safety forces weakens the ability of different teams that may in any other case constrain the chief, akin to elites within the ruling political celebration and even generals who oppose a pacesetter’s energy seize.
If elites concern loyal safety brokers, they have a tendency to keep their mouths shut after they disagree with the chief – or else, analysis exhibits, face a purge. Generals, too: Analysis finds that loyal safety forces reduce the risk of military coup attempts.
Leaders who don’t surrender energy
Our data on safety power personalization in autocracies signifies that when leaders put loyalists answerable for safety forces, removing these leaders from power peacefully by way of elections or protest turns into far more troublesome.
Take the instance of Syria, the place President Hafez Assad got here to energy after a successful military coup in 1971. The nation had skilled more than a dozen coup attempts since 1946. The largest risk to Assad’s energy was one other army coup.
To reduce this risk, he created a customized safety power by selling fellow Alawites, a minority ethno-religious group, to the senior ranks of the Syrian army. Assad backed military housing for loyal officers and created an overlapping community of family-controlled safety models exterior the formal army.
Safety power personalization harmed the Syrian military’s capacity to fight. That is steadily the case as a result of this course of typically purges competent officers and creates incentives for senior officers to lie to the leader about bad news.
However it 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.
Maynor Valenzuela/AFP via Getty Images
Syria did not have free and fair elections beneath the Assads, and ruling celebration elites couldn’t verify the chief’s energy. When residents mobilized peacefully in 2011 to oust the Assad regime, loyal security forces killed and imprisoned tens of hundreds of Syrians.
The Assads’ reign of terror solely ended after 12 years of brutal civil struggle.
Observe the cash
Customized safety forces want cash – each to make sure loyalty and to accumulate the weapons wanted when the leader orders violent repression.
So leaders who personalize their safety forces should funnel enormous sums of cash to essentially the most loyal models, generally making them extra highly effective than the common military.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, for instance, receives revenue from state oil exports and controls sanction-busting smuggling networks. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Special Guard units, although smaller than the common army, all the time had higher tools and coaching.
In 2003, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni assigned his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to guide a brand new Presidential Guard Brigade and gave this unit the job of fighting terrorism so he may management military aid from the U.S. The longtime leader’s son now commands all the Ugandan Armed Forces. Age 81 and together with his son answerable for the lads with weapons, Museveni looks 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 customized power in a single day, nor will they possible spur the military to oust Trump. Regardless that the Structure establishes civilian control over the military, senior officers can nonetheless resist pressure from Trump to quash protest.
However the firings do spark concerns about politicizing the army. So do different strikes by Trump that sign larger ambitions to personalize the safety forces, akin to choosing loyalists to guide the FBI and Secret Service and purging the army legal professionals who assist troopers abide by the legislation.
Have a look at the brand new faces and observe the cash. Will the Trump administration bypass the senior ranks to advertise junior officers whose army careers depend upon Trump remaining in energy? Will the US$50 billion “savings” that Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth desires to extract from the Protection Division as a substitute fund a brand new safety power?
Essentially the most critical signal of safety personalization within the U.S. could be the creation of a brand new power exterior the common army chain of command – assume the Division of Authorities Effectivity, however with weapons. Professional-Trump army contractors are already calling for the federal government to fund a “small army of private citizens empowered to make arrests” and deport immigrants.
If Trump seeks an unconstitutional third term in 2028, one potential state of affairs may play out: A loyalist praetorian guard like that might be a risk to kill protesters and fight safety models nonetheless loyal to the Constitution.
