Domestic use of military forces is not an uncommon thing around the world.

[Igel]

70. This is silly. Ceteris paribus, you're right.

In other words, "all things being equal, you're right."

Except that seldom are two or three things equal, much the less "all."

1. How big's your military? How big's your territory?

If you're the US, Russia, or China, it's huge.

If you're the Czech Republic, not so big. Not so forceful.

If you're the Grand Caymans, a few well placed sneezes and the country's invaded.

I don't like the Czech police being essentially a branch of the military. But they're a branch and the ties aren't close. I don't give a hoot about the overlap in a place like Grand Cayman. Not a big problem. The police, at their worst, are manageable. In the US, Russia, China, the military could easily make a very nasty police state if they wanted to with the overlap between military and police. Not like any of them have ever--or would ever--do such a thing.

2. What's your government?

If you're the US, there's a fair amount of accountability--admit it or not--between the government and populace. Yeah, the government does things we don't like. If the partisan divide wasn't so deep and partisan support so knee-jerk, it might be different (might not be, either).

In Russia, there's a bit less. In Syria, rather less. Let's not talk about places like Bahrain. There the military/police are arms of a government with rather little accountability to the populace.

3. Does the populace trust the government? What's the role of the government in society?

In the US, we haven't historically trusted the government for things that we can do for ourselves. Britain was an oppressor; the US government was small and far away. A lot of what government did would have been done by the same people under a different name. Rely on government for land? Well, the government claimed the land and prohibited immigration for a while, so it's just doing what would have normally been done anyway. Defend a settlement? That would have been organized locally. It also did bad things: Prohibition, for instance. In any event, helping the locals was often almost a side effect.

Even if we did need the government the government for some things, reliance on it (or perceived reliance) is still often considered a bad thing. Trust is greater in communities that had to look to the government to do things they couldn't do for themselves--if the federal government is your protector against local government, then the feds are golden. (And those who the local government isn't necessarily people you need protection from.)

In a place like France the government was the protector against a reactionary class and against the clerics. The protected are a clear majority. In Sweden, the government was just an extension of the community--in a homogeneous society, everybody had the same rules and the government would, naturally, have the same rules; if you help your neighbor, it's assumed, fairly accurately so since you shared the same culture and upbringing, that if you needed help you'd have gotten it.

The US lacked France's history of class war and anticlericalism. We're too big and too diverse for Sweden's homogeneity-based trust. While things are changing--in some ways more people trust the government as their defender even as they distrust the government in other ways--laws lag attitudes. Properly so.

4. What's your army?

In the US most people actually trust the army. We just don't want them around. DU is especially prone to having some people who think that every US soldier is a war criminal--on a good day, perhaps one just waiting to reach his full potential. But we have citizen-soldiers. Not as citizen-soldier as Switzerland, which can't push that envelope much further than it has. Still, we know that most soldiers are just boys from down the street (still far more boys than girls) and they're in the military for the short-haul.

Unlike some armies which are still professional. You join, you live as a soldier, and that's your career. You're loyal to your boss and retirement plan and answer first and foremost, now and in the long-term, to your boss and his boss; in the US, that soldier, in 2 or 4 years, is going to be a civilian again and answer to his parents and friends.

5. What's the level of trust in your society? Does the government trust the populace?

Is there corruption? In Russia, the troops are underfunded and fed. The military leaders siphon off money and supplies; parents and wives have to make sure that their sons/husbands are fed and clothed. It's easy for officers to misuse troops in ways that personally benefit themselves.

Is there social solidarity? It's not a coincidence that multiethnic and fractious societies tend to position troops by ethnicity or tribe affiliation. If you're a dictator or you're unsure of your army's loyalty, you want to ensure brutality and loyalty: You put the Kikuyu in Luo territory, you make sure the Shona are the soldiers in Ndebele areas. If you put Ndebele soldiers in Ndebele territory, they may "go native"--since they're near home, they're less likely to be brutal to people in their own tribe. It's the same for a Muscovite soldier in Moscow versus in Ingushetia.

Etc.