5. Parallel Security Forces
Summary: Parallel Security Forces & Coup-Proofing Dynamics
Academic Framework
- Nordlinger's "legitimacy deflation": When civilian regimes lose perceived legitimacy, military officers feel justified in intervention
- Huntington's praetorianism: Military becomes political arbiter when civilian institutions fail—symptom of civilian weakness, not military ambition
- Huntington's control models: "Objective control" (professional autonomy) being replaced by "subjective control" (ideological alignment with ruling administration)
- Counterbalancing: Rulers fragment coercive power into parallel forces to prevent any single entity from mounting a coup; 63% of autocracies used this strategy (1946-2010)
- De Bruin's counterbalancing paradox: Reduces coup success probability but increases coup attempts AND civil war risk
ICE/DHS Expansion as Parallel Force
- Budget tripled: ICE now ~$28-30 billion annually (was ~$10B in FY2024); largest federal law enforcement agency
- $170 billion supplemental via One Big Beautiful Bill Act (July 4, 2025)—creates "fiscal autonomy" bypassing annual appropriations
- Personnel doubled: 10,000 → 22,000+ agents in ~4 months via "$100 million wartime recruitment" campaign
- Training compressed: 16 weeks → 6-8 weeks; some fast-tracked to 4 weeks
- Ideological recruitment targeting: Ads geofenced at gun shows, military bases, UFC fights; some used white nationalist imagery
- Oversight dismantled: Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties gutted (500+ complaints open, 100+ employees fired)
- Anonymity normalized: Masked agents, no ID, unmarked vehicles; Reagan-appointed Judge Young: "We have never tolerated an armed masked secret police"
Military Leadership Purges (Feb 21, 2025 "Friday Night Massacre")
- Joint Chiefs Chairman fired: Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. (first firing of JCS Chairman ever); 2nd Black chairman after Powell; confirmed 98-0
- Chief of Naval Operations fired: Adm. Lisa Franchetti (first female CNO; first woman on Joint Chiefs)
- Coast Guard Commandant fired: Adm. Linda Fagan (first woman to lead any US military branch)
- All service JAGs fired: Army and Air Force TJAGs removed; Hegseth wanted lawyers who won't be "roadblocks"
- Result: No female 4-star officers remain in US military
- DEI as pretext: Hegseth said anyone "involved in any of the DEI woke s--t has got to go"
- Five former SecDefs condemned: Hagel, Mattis, Austin, Carter, Cohen issued joint statement calling dismissals "alarming"
Why This Pattern Matters
- Self-coups succeed when military backs them: 80%+ success rate for executive self-coups vs ~50% for traditional coups
- Weaker militaries easier to manipulate: Historically marginalized forces more susceptible to presidential enticement
- JAG removal = removing legal constraints: "It's what you do when you're planning to break the law" (Prof. Rosa Brooks)
- Senator Reed: "If you're going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers"
Sudan 2023: Counterbalancing's Catastrophic Endpoint
- RSF created as coup-proofing: Bashir built Rapid Support Forces from Janjaweed militias as counterweight to regular army
- Parallel force turned on creator: RSF joined army to overthrow Bashir in 2019, then fought army in 2023
- Humanitarian catastrophe: 12+ million displaced, 150,000-250,000 killed, 25 million food insecure
- US designated RSF genocide (January 2025)
Comparative Parallels
| Feature | ICE (US 2025) | IRGC (Iran) | RSF (Sudan) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personnel surge | 120% in 4 months | Constant Basij expansion | Rapid from Janjaweed |
| Funding | Off-budget $170B | Direct oil/business control | Gold mining |
| Legal constraint | "Unreviewed" warrants | Answers to Supreme Leader | Independent of army |
| Domestic use | Targeting protesters | Internal dissent suppression | Civil war vs army |
Democracy Reclassification
- V-Dem Institute: US classified as "electoral autocracy" (late 2025)
- Polity data series: US "no longer considered a democracy" and "at cusp of autocracy"
- Protect Democracy Authoritarian Threat Index: 3.4/5 (Severe Threat); 19.2% four-year likelihood of democratic breakdown
- Carnegie Endowment: US backsliding proceeds "faster than Hungary or Poland"
Key Scholars for Further Research
- Erica De Bruin (Hamilton College): Counterbalancing empirics; "How to Prevent Coups d'État"
- Caitlin Talmadge (Georgetown): Military effectiveness tradeoffs; "The Dictator's Army"
- Nancy Bermeo: Democratic backsliding typologies; executive aggrandizement
- Peter Feaver (Duke): American civil-military relations
- Lindsay Cohn: Identified current practices as "coup-proofing" tactics (stacking)
- Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, Erica Frantz: "How Dictatorships Work"
Three Primary Risks Identified
- Counterbalancing paradox: Massive loyal ICE force increases likelihood of violent confrontation if military deems orders unconstitutional
- Institutional fracture: "Wartime" framing alienates parallel force from public; creates praetorian self-image
- Collapse of meritocracy: Replacing veterans with loyalists degrades national security capability while enabling "executive shirking"
Claude
Parallel security forces and the anatomy of democratic erosion
The United States is implementing security force restructuring patterns that academic literature traditionally associates with authoritarian consolidation—though in an institutional context without precedent in this scholarly field. The Trump administration's tripling of ICE's budget to $30 billion, its doubling of ICE personnel in four months, and its unprecedented purge of military leadership (including the first-ever firing of a Joint Chiefs Chairman) map onto frameworks political scientists use to analyze coup-proofing and counterbalancing in autocracies. Whether these frameworks apply to an established democracy remains contested among scholars, but multiple democracy indices—including V-Dem and Protect Democracy's Authoritarian Threat Index—have reclassified the U.S. at severe threat levels, with the Polity data series no longer considering it a democracy as of 2025.
Academic foundations: how autocrats fragment coercive power
The study of how leaders protect themselves from their own security forces emerged from Eric Nordlinger's "Soldiers in Politics" (1977) and Samuel Huntington's concept of praetorianism—the idea that when civilian institutions fail, military forces become political arbiters. Huntington argued in "Political Order in Changing Societies" (1968) that praetorian societies lack stable institutional arrangements of any kind, with students rioting, workers striking, and militaries launching coups as each group deploys whatever power it possesses.
The contemporary authority on counterbalancing is Erica De Bruin, Associate Professor at Hamilton College and Non-Resident Fellow at West Point's Modern War Institute. Her 2020 book "How to Prevent Coups d'état: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival" provides the field's most comprehensive empirical foundation, drawing on her State Security Forces Dataset covering 375 security organizations across 110 countries from 1960-2010. De Bruin defines counterbalancing as fragmenting a country's coercive power by creating parallel security organizations—presidential guards, militarized police, militias—that check and balance the regular military.
The requested statistic that "63% of autocracies 1946-2010 used counterbalancing" could not be definitively traced to an original source. The most likely origins are De Bruin's dataset or the earlier counterbalancing data compiled by Ulrich Pilster and Tobias Böhmelt (Harvard Dataverse, 1975-1999), whose work found that personalist regimes show significantly higher counterbalancing levels than other autocracies and that counterbalancing practices diffuse through "experiential peer groups"—leaders learning from and emulating counterbalancing in other states.
The counterbalancing paradox emerges from the data
De Bruin's central finding reveals a dangerous tradeoff: counterbalancing reduces the likelihood that coup attempts will succeed by creating incentives for some soldiers to resist, but it is not associated with fewer coup attempts—and the creation of a new security force actually increases the odds of a coup attempt in the following year. Jonathan Powell's research in Armed Forces & Society (2019) identifies an additional dimension: heavily coup-proofed regimes see a considerable increase in civil war likelihood when coup risk is high. When leaders most need their parallel forces against rebels, they are most hesitant to deploy them—leaving weakened regular forces to fight insurgencies alone.
Caitlin Talmadge (Georgetown University) documents the competence costs in "The Dictator's Army" (2015). Coup-proofing warps four key organizational practices: promotion patterns shift from merit to loyalty, training focuses on regime protection over combat effectiveness, command structures fragment to prevent coordination, and information restrictions prevent officers from gaining situational awareness. Her case studies of North versus South Vietnam and Iran versus Iraq demonstrate how these distortions squander military power.
Self-coups have become the primary threat to democracies
Nancy Bermeo's influential 2016 Journal of Democracy article "On Democratic Backsliding" identified a crucial shift: classic coups are declining while executive aggrandizement—elected leaders using ostensibly legal mechanisms to weaken checks on their power—is rising. The data is striking: more than 80% of self-coup attempts by democratically elected leaders succeed, compared to roughly 50% for traditional coups. A third of all self-coup attempts by elected leaders since 1946 have occurred in just the past decade.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die" (2018) operationalizes this into a three-stage model: attacking referees (courts, oversight bodies), targeting opponents (opposition, media), and changing rules of the game. The electoral road to breakdown, they warn, is "dangerously deceptive"—people still vote while elected autocrats eviscerate democracy's substance.
Sudan 2023 demonstrates counterbalancing's catastrophic endpoint
The civil war that erupted between Sudan's Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023 provides the definitive case study of counterbalancing producing state collapse. President Omar al-Bashir deliberately created the RSF in 2013 as a counterweight in one of the world's most coup-prone countries (20 attempts since independence). The RSF's name itself is revealing—"Hemedti" translates roughly as "my protection."
The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed militias used during the Darfur genocide, structured to report directly to Bashir rather than through military chains of command. It developed independent revenue through gold mining and mercenary contracts with the Saudi coalition in Yemen, growing wealthy enough by 2019 for commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo to pledge over $1 billion to Sudan's Central Bank. The parallel force designed to protect the regime grew powerful enough to join the regular military in overthrowing its creator in 2019—then turned on its former coup partner in 2023 when integration plans threatened its independence.
The humanitarian consequences represent counterbalancing's ultimate danger: 12+ million people displaced, an estimated 150,000-250,000 killed, 25 million acutely food insecure, and de facto partition of the country. The U.S. designated the RSF as having committed genocide in January 2025. Academic analysis in Taylor & Francis journals explicitly applies coup-proofing theory: "Powerful militias like the RSF can ultimately turn against the state, seeking not just to influence its policies but to capture institutions and resources, with destructive consequences."
Historical parallels illuminate recurring patterns
Iraq under Saddam Hussein exemplified the full counterbalancing architecture: a Republican Guard of 150,000 men commanded by his son Qusay, with officers disproportionately from Saddam's Tikrit region, receiving better equipment and pay than regular forces. RAND Corporation analysis identified five reinforcing mechanisms: exploitation of family and ethnic loyalties, parallel militaries, overlapping security agencies, encouragement of regular military professionalism (to reduce grievances), and adequate funding. The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War demonstrated the competence costs—Republican Guard units stayed near Baghdad for regime protection rather than deploying to combat.
Syria's Republican Guard showed similar sectarian stacking, with Alawite recruitment from Assad family strongholds and command by Bashar's brother Maher. Unlike the conscript army that suffered mass defections during the civil war, the Guard's "rigorous loyalty mechanisms, familial ties, and sectarian homogeneity" minimized fragmentation—though it ultimately collapsed against the 2024 rebel offensive. Libya's Revolutionary Guard Corps exemplified deliberate regular military weakening: "revolutionary guards reportedly held the keys to ammunition stockpiles at main military bases, doling it out in small quantities as needed."
Turkey's post-2016 trajectory illustrates how failed coups accelerate authoritarian consolidation. Erdoğan's purge following the July 2016 attempt removed 130,000+ civil servants without due process, including 24,000 military officers, 3,774 judges, and 5,800 academics. Freedom House downgraded Turkey from "Partly Free" to "Not Free" by 2018. Academic analysis identifies that "democratic decline mostly stemmed from Erdoğan's personalization of institutions and control of the military's political power after the attempted coup."
U.S. security force expansion defies historical norms
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, provided ICE with $75 billion over four years—including $45 billion for detention capacity alone, a 400% increase exceeding the entire federal prison system budget. ICE's projected FY2026 budget of approximately $30 billion tripled from prior levels, making it the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency. NPR reported in January 2026 that ICE now has $85 billion at its disposal—more than Poland's entire military budget.
Personnel expansion matched the funding surge. ICE's workforce more than doubled from approximately 10,000 to 22,000 agents in roughly four months, driven by a $100 million "wartime recruitment" campaign targeting gun rights supporters, military enthusiasts, and NASCAR fans through geofencing and influencer marketing. Training was compressed from 16 weeks to 6-8 weeks. Former ICE Director Sarah Saldaña warned the "wartime" framing risks attracting "combat-hungry or inexperienced people."
Operational changes transformed enforcement practices. Human Rights Watch documented that "federal immigration enforcement agents now commonly operate masked and without visible identification." ProPublica recorded over 50 cases since 2025 where ICE agents smashed car windows for arrests, compared to 8 in the previous decade. The administration rescinded "sensitive locations" protections on January 20-21, 2025, permitting enforcement at schools, churches, hospitals, and courthouses previously off-limits.
Oversight mechanisms faced systematic dismantlement
The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) was effectively dismantled in March 2025, with more than 500 civil rights complaints open when work was suspended and more than 100 employees losing their jobs. CRCL had previously processed 3,000 complaints annually, including investigations of medical neglect and sexual assault at detention centers. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin characterized these offices as "internal adversaries that slow down operations." POGO documented that DHS removed 160+ CRCL investigative memos from its website without announcement.
Multiple federal judges have issued rulings characterizing these changes in stark terms. Reagan-appointed Judge William G. Young wrote: "ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence...We have never tolerated an armed masked secret police." He called ICE's stated rationale for masking "disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable." The Supreme Court stayed lower court restrictions in a key Los Angeles case (6-3), but litigation continues in multiple jurisdictions.
ProPublica's October 2025 investigation "Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump Is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force" quoted current and former national security officials describing ICE as "an unfettered and unaccountable national police force" that "could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat." The investigation found more than 170 U.S. citizens detained by immigration agents, with approximately 50 detained based solely on questions about citizenship (almost all Latino).
Military leadership purges reached unprecedented scale
The administration conducted what analysts call a "Friday Night Massacre" on February 21, 2025, simultaneously firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and both service Judge Advocates General whose positions were filled—the Army and Air Force TJAGs.
General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black chairman after Colin Powell, was terminated 16 months into a four-year term. Confirmed 98-0 by the Senate, Brown had developed the strategy that defeated ISIS. Secretary Hegseth had publicly stated Brown should be fired for a 2020 video discussing racial discrimination after George Floyd's death. Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female Chief of Naval Operations and first woman on the Joint Chiefs, was fired without explanation—Hegseth's office refused to provide justification. Her removal left the military without any female four-star officers.
Admiral Linda Fagan, the first woman to lead any U.S. military branch as Coast Guard Commandant, was fired within hours of the inauguration while waiting to have her photo taken with the new president at the Commander-in-Chief Ball.
The simultaneous firing of service Judge Advocates General drew particular alarm. Hegseth stated he didn't want lawyers who would be "roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief." Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks observed: "Trump firing the Army, Navy, and Air Force JAGs [is in some ways] even more chilling than firing the four stars. It's what you do when you're planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down."
Five former Defense Secretaries—Hagel, Mattis, Austin, Carter, and Cohen—issued a joint statement calling the dismissals "alarming" and raising "troubling questions about the administration's desire to politicize the military." Senator Jack Reed stated: "If you're going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers."
Scholars debate whether comparative frameworks apply to established democracies
The Carnegie Endowment's August 2025 study "U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective" by McKenzie Carrier and Thomas Carothers provides the most rigorous assessment, comparing the U.S. to seven backsliding cases: Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Hungary, India, Poland, and Turkey.
The study finds U.S. backsliding differs in three dimensions. On focus, the administration emphasizes intra-executive dominance and delegitimization over institutionalized attacks on horizontal checks. On rapidity, it has "sought to centralize power with greater momentum and rapidity" than even Hungary and Poland—"working to weaken checks across multiple levels all at once." On severity, changes are "not yet as severe as that of most of its backsliding peers," with less institutionalization and more limited repressive measures.
The V-Dem Institute classified the United States as an "electoral autocracy" since late 2025, with director Staffan I. Lindberg predicting future elections will not be free and fair. The Polity data series states "the USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy." Protect Democracy's Authoritarian Threat Index rates the U.S. at 3.4 out of 5 (Severe Threat), with experts predicting a 19.2% four-year likelihood of democratic breakdown—compared to 1.5 for Canada, 1.5 for Germany, and 2.3 for Poland.
Some scholars emphasize U.S. institutional distinctiveness
Kurt Weyland (University of Texas) and others argue U.S. democratic institutions, while under pressure, are proving "largely resilient to autocratic takeover." Key differences cited include more deeply rooted democratic norms, stronger judicial independence traditions, federalism providing alternative power centers, robust and diversely funded civil society, and constitutional amendment processes making structural changes difficult.
The Carnegie study acknowledges these constraints: "Constrained by institutional guardrails that make it difficult to pass constitutional amendments or structurally disempower the courts and legislature, the Trump team has focused on other ways of undercutting horizontal institutions." The debate centers on whether incremental erosion through "executive aggrandizement" can achieve what structural changes cannot.
Civil-military relations scholarship illuminates the specific risks
Political scientist Lindsay P. Cohn's Lawfare analysis directly identifies current practices as "coup-proofing" tactics—specifically stacking (replacing competent officers with loyal ones regardless of merit). She warns these measures "do not represent [a crisis of civilian control]; they actually reduce the likelihood of a military coup and increase the likelihood of military compliance in cases of domestic use and questionable orders. The result is a crisis for both military effectiveness and democracy itself."
Peter Feaver's foundational civil-military relations scholarship at Duke identifies "the principal norm for democracies: that civilians have the right to be wrong." The current moment strains this norm as civilian politicization challenges military professionalism. Georgetown's Heidi Urben (retired Army Colonel) observed in June 2025 that "partisan polarization and the American public's relatively high confidence in the military have created a situation...in which politicians cannot resist the temptation to use the military as a tool."
Conclusion: patterns without predetermined outcomes
The academic literature on coup-proofing, counterbalancing, and democratic backsliding provides analytical tools for understanding current U.S. developments—not predictions of inevitable outcomes. Several patterns warrant continued observation: the creation of expanded federal law enforcement with reduced oversight, systematic removal of senior military officers associated with independence from political direction, elimination of internal legal constraints, and operational changes (masked agents, unmarked vehicles) that reduce accountability.
What distinguishes the U.S. case is the combination of speed and institutional context. The Carnegie study's finding that backsliding proceeds faster than Hungary or Poland, combined with its finding of less institutionalized consolidation, suggests an unstable equilibrium. Sudan demonstrates counterbalancing's worst endpoint; Turkey shows how purges can accelerate after failed resistance; Hungary illustrates "executive aggrandizement" achieved through legal mechanisms.
The key contemporary scholars for continued research are Erica De Bruin (counterbalancing empirics), Milan Svolik (authoritarian power-sharing), Caitlin Talmadge (military effectiveness tradeoffs), Nancy Bermeo (backsliding typologies), and Peter Feaver (American civil-military relations). The Journal of Democracy, Comparative Political Studies, and Journal of Conflict Resolution remain the primary academic venues. For real-time monitoring, Protect Democracy's Authoritarian Threat Index and V-Dem's annual reports provide systematic assessment.
Whether frameworks developed for less consolidated democracies fully apply to the U.S. remains an open scholarly question—but one that current events are testing empirically in real time.
ChatGPT
Parallel Security Forces and Coup-Proofing Dynamics in Comparative Politics and the Contemporary United States
Scope and method
This report synthesizes (a) core comparative-politics frameworks on coups, praetorianism, and “coup-proofing,” and (b) recent U.S. developments that have been framed—by critics and some scholars—as resembling “parallel security force” dynamics. The goal is not to assume that the United States is an autocracy or that a coup/self-coup is inevitable, but to test specific claims (budgeting, organizational growth, oversight changes, masking/anonymity, and leadership purges) against the best-established comparative literature on how coercive institutions are structured and politicized. [1]
A key methodological constraint is definitional: in the academic literature, “parallel forces” and “counterbalancing” typically describe organizations intentionally built outside the regular military chain of command and often designed to be personally reliable to the ruler (e.g., presidential guards, ruling-party militias, intelligence services with coercive capacity). U.S. agencies such as entity["organization","U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement","federal agency, us"] are lawful executive-branch institutions created by statute—so the relevant question becomes whether their scale, mission creep, oversight insulation, and political use are evolving in ways that approximate “counterbalancing” functions (fragmenting coercive capacity, increasing leader-centered control, and weakening independent constraints). [2]
Academic frameworks for coups, praetorianism, and “coup-proofing”
Legitimacy deflation and coup permissibility
In entity["book","Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments","nordlinger 1977"], entity["people","Eric A. Nordlinger","political scientist"] foregrounds how militaries evaluate whether intervention is permissible in the eyes of officers and society. The book treats “legitimacy” as a key variable shaping coup opportunity and justification; the concept of “legitimacy deflation” (widely attributed to Nordlinger’s typology) refers to legitimacy erosion that can lower normative barriers to intervention. [3]
Huntington’s praetorianism and civilian weakness
entity["people","Samuel P. Huntington","political scientist"] uses “praetorian” to describe polities where political participation (mobilization) outpaces political institutionalization—so conflict is mediated less by stable institutions than by direct pressure from powerful social groups, including the military. In this framing, military political power is often interpreted as a symptom of civilian institutional weakness (low institutionalization relative to participation), not merely military ambition. [4]
Counterbalancing and parallel coercive organizations
A central “coup-proofing” strategy in the comparative literature is counterbalancing: rulers fragment coercive power by building multiple armed organizations with overlapping missions and separate chains of command, reducing the odds that any single actor can successfully seize power. In entity["book","How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse","geddes wright frantz 2018"], entity["people","Barbara Geddes","political scientist"], entity["people","Joseph Wright","political scientist"], and entity["people","Erica Frantz","political scientist"] summarize this as the creation of presidential guards or paramilitary forces outside the regular military chain of command; the authors report this is common (they describe “many dictators” pursuing it and give a quantitative share in their discussion of counterbalancing). [5]
entity["people","Erica De Bruin","political scientist"]’s work—particularly her book on counterbalancing—emphasizes that the strategy can protect leaders from coups but often imposes longer-run risks by weakening security-sector cohesion and governance capacity. [6]
Self-coups and military alignment
Comparative research on self-coups (executive seizures of extraordinary power that dismantle checks) often highlights the military’s decisive role. In a entity["organization","Journal of Democracy","academic journal, us"] essay on attempted self-coups, entity["people","Tara Grewal","political scientist"] argues a critical discriminator of success is whether the armed forces back the undertaking. [7]
How counterbalancing and parallel forces operate
Counterbalancing is not just “more police.” In the literature, it is typically characterized by structural features that change coercive politics:
First, rulers create organizational redundancy (two or more coercive bodies that can surveil or constrain each other), making covert plotting harder and coordination among coup plotters more complex. [8]
Second, rulers often pair redundancy with personnel strategies: purges, preferential promotions, and loyalty screening reduce the influence of factions perceived as politically unreliable. The counterbalancing logic is that these personnel moves are safer when a leader has an additional loyal coercive arm to deter backlash. [9]
Third, the comparative literature repeatedly flags a tradeoff: fragmentation can reduce coup success probability but can also raise risks of violent intra-state conflict by manufacturing rival armed centers of gravity. [6]
A widely cited illustration is entity["country","Sudan","country"], where the entity["organization","Rapid Support Forces","sudan paramilitary"] evolved from regime-linked militias into a powerful, semi-autonomous coercive actor. Multiple research and reporting sources describe the RSF as having been used as a coup-proofing mechanism and note that its rise increased the risk of armed conflict with the regular armed forces; the 2023–present civil war is now frequently discussed through this “counterbalancing gone lethal” lens. [10]
image_group{"layout":"carousel","aspect_ratio":"16:9","query":["Rapid Support Forces Sudan fighters","Sudanese Armed Forces soldiers Khartoum 2023","presidential guard unit parade authoritarian regime","paramilitary force checkpoint"],"num_per_query":1}
U.S. immigration enforcement expansion as a potential counterbalancing-like pattern
Funding scale and organizational growth
A major empirical anchor for recent U.S. debate is the entity["organization","Brennan Center for Justice","nonprofit, us"]’s analysis of the July 2025 reconciliation law commonly labeled the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which describes over $170 billion in border/interior enforcement funding over four years and emphasizes that the largest proportional increases flow to interior arrest, detention, and deportation capacity. [11]
In that accounting, entity["organization","U.S. Department of Homeland Security","federal department, us"] received a large multi-year enforcement infusion, with entity["organization","U.S. Customs and Border Protection","federal agency, us"] receiving tens of billions for wall construction, staffing, facilities, and surveillance, and ICE receiving dramatically increased appropriations for detention and for “track down, arrest, and deport” operations. [12]
The Brennan Center reports that ICE had roughly $28.7 billion available in FY2025 (combining base appropriations plus additional funds), “nearly triple” its FY2024 budget, and describes tens of billions more over four years associated with detention and removal operations, including resources to hire thousands of additional officers. [13]
A relevant comparative-politics question is not just “how big is the budget,” but whether the budget growth makes an agency functionally comparable to a parallel counterbalancing force—meaning: large coercive capacity, durable funding streams, and operational insulation from oversight that would ordinarily discipline state violence. [14]
“Wartime recruitment” and tightening leader-centered signaling
Multiple sources describe a recruitment push explicitly framed by ICE as “wartime recruitment,” supported by substantial marketing spending and highly politicized audience targeting. entity["organization","The Washington Post","newspaper, us"] reported on an internal strategy document describing roughly $100 million in one year for recruiting, the use of influencers and geofenced advertising, and targeting of gun-rights supporters and military enthusiasts; it also reports public DHS messaging about hiring more than 10,000 new employees and notes recruitment incentives such as high signing bonuses and removal of some hiring constraints. [15]
From a coup-proofing perspective, this is analytically important because recruitment messaging can function as informal ideological screening—especially when it frames enforcement as a quasi-military struggle, amplifies “enemy” narratives, and recruits from politically salient subcultures. Comparative work treats such ideological narrowing as a pathway to a more personally or politically reliable coercive workforce, even when formal command remains bureaucratic. [16]
Anonymity, masking, and the oversight problem
A signature claim in the user-provided outline concerns masked agents and low accountability. entity["organization","ProPublica","newsroom, us"] reports that residents described masked men forcing people into unmarked vehicles; it also describes episodes where agents wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves, generating public confusion about whether they were federal officers or imposters. [17]
ProPublica further reports that DHS “dismantled” or “gutted” civil-rights guardrails and that the DHS office previously responsible for civil rights and civil liberties complaint processing had been substantially reduced, limiting complaint pathways and transparency. In this account, anonymity and organizational insulation combine to make individual accountability difficult. [17]
In parallel, a federal judge’s condemnation of masking has become a frequently cited benchmark in the debate. entity["people","William G. Young","us district judge"], identified in reporting as a Reagan-appointed judge, is quoted describing masked enforcement as incompatible with U.S. historical practice (“armed masked secret police”) in the context of a judicial rebuke tied to ICE conduct. [18]
From a comparative lens, “masked, hard-to-identify agents + weakened complaint/oversight channels + large budget growth” is close to a template for how internal-security forces become feared and politically usable—even if they remain formally within the state. This is one reason some analysts compare such agencies to paramilitary forces abroad, though the institutional and legal contexts differ sharply. [17]
Is ICE a “parallel security force” in the strict academic sense?
Strictly speaking, ICE is not an extralegal militia; it is a statutory federal agency. But coup-proofing research suggests a functional test: does an organization become (1) unusually resourced, (2) operationally insulated, (3) politically aligned in recruitment and mission framing, and (4) able to operate domestically at scale in ways that can intimidate potential opposition? [19]
On size metrics, entity["organization","PolitiFact","fact-checking organization, us"] finds that under the new law ICE becomes the highest-funded federal law-enforcement agency by budget comparisons (with caveats about future base budgets), while workforce comparisons are more complex: ICE could approach or surpass other agencies in arrest-authority staffing depending on how new hires are allocated. [20]
On operational visibility and accountability, ProPublica’s reporting focuses on masking, unmarked vehicles, and reduced oversight capacity as the mechanisms that make the force “shadowy.” [17]
Taken together, these features do not prove “coup-proofing,” but they do plausibly resemble internal-security expansion patterns that comparative authors associate with leaders seeking to increase coercive discretion and reduce constraint. [21]
Military leadership turnover and loyalty-centered control signals
Dismissals of senior leaders and military legal oversight
In February 2025, entity["people","Donald Trump","us president"] fired entity["people","Charles Q. Brown Jr.","us air force general"] as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and reporting describes the action as part of a campaign led by entity["people","Pete Hegseth","us defense secretary"] to remove senior leaders associated with diversity and equity initiatives. [22]
The same period included removal of entity["people","Lisa Franchetti","us navy admiral"] as chief of naval operations and intent to replace the Judge Advocates General (top uniformed lawyers) for multiple services—moves widely described as unprecedented in scope, and explicitly framed in some reporting as reducing legal constraints on leadership choices. [23]
From a coup-proofing perspective, firing senior commanders can be read through two competing lenses:
· Normal executive control and personnel prerogative: Democracies allow civilian leadership to appoint and remove senior officials; many top roles serve “at the pleasure” of elected leadership, and turnover can reflect policy direction rather than authoritarian intent. [24]
· Politicization and loyalty screening: Large-scale dismissals justified in ideological terms can signal that advancement depends on political alignment. In comparative work, such signals can shift officer expectations, reduce candor, and undermine the “neutral competence” norm central to stable civilian control. [25]
A notable analytic point is that the JAG removals have been singled out by civil-military experts as especially consequential because they can weaken internal legal review—an institutional channel that constrains unlawful orders and shapes rules of engagement and domestic-use-of-force compliance. [26]
The pattern of removing prominent female leaders
In January 2025, entity["people","Linda Fagan","us coast guard admiral"] was removed as entity["organization","U.S. Coast Guard","armed service, us"] commandant; reporting links the dismissal to administration critiques including DEI focus and operational priorities (with differing emphases across outlets). [27]
In late February 2025, Franchetti’s removal (and other reported senior removals) produced commentary emphasizing that the top ranks had become more male-dominated as a result of these actions. [28]
The comparative-political relevance is not the gender composition itself, but what the justifications communicate: if leaders explain dismissals as cleansing “wokeness” or ideological deviation, the signal to elites can be “loyalty and conformity are the safe path.” In many authoritarian settings, this is a key step toward building a coercive apparatus willing to enforce contested rule changes. [29]
Implications for assessing “self-coup risk” and democratic resilience
Why “parallel force” debates matter in the literature
Comparative research emphasizes that self-coups require a coercive coalition capable of enforcing executive moves against other institutions. Grewal’s argument that the military’s stance is decisive in self-coup outcomes clarifies why analysts focus on (a) military leadership politicization and (b) expansion of domestic enforcement forces that can operate with limited transparency. [30]
Counterbalancing research adds a second insight: even if fragmentation reduces the probability of a single successful coup against the ruler, it can create long-run instability—including the possibility that rival coercive bodies fight each other or that the regime must rely on increasingly coercive practices to govern. De Bruin explicitly warns that counterbalancing may protect against coups while increasing other severe risks, including civil war. [31]
U.S.-specific warning signals versus durable constraints
The U.S. has deep legal and institutional constraints compared to classic counterbalancing cases, but several reported developments align with comparative “watch points”:
· Large, multi-year enforcement funding that dramatically expands internal-security capacity (including detention and removal), creating durable constituencies and infrastructure that can outlast a single political moment. [32]
· Recruitment framed in quasi-military terms (“wartime recruitment”) and targeted toward politically salient audiences, potentially increasing ideological homogeneity in coercive roles. [33]
· Decreased transparency and accountability pathways (masking, limited identification, and reduced complaint-processing capacity as described by investigative reporting). [34]
· Elite-level politicization signals via high-profile dismissals of senior officers and service legal leadership, framed in ideological terms. [35]
At the same time, empirically, there is also evidence of continued institutional contestation—judicial pushback (as in the federal judge’s quoted rebuke), congressional debate and attempted restrictions, and sustained investigative oversight by major outlets. Those features are not typical of consolidated authoritarian counterbalancing environments and matter for assessing the degree of risk. [36]
The “military split” concern in U.S. discourse
Concerns about factionalization inside the U.S. military predate the specific 2025–2026 developments described above. In a December 2021 entity["organization","Washington Post","newspaper, us"] op-ed, entity["people","Paul D. Eaton","retired us army major general"], entity["people","Antonio M. Taguba","retired us army major general"], and entity["people","Steven M. Anderson","retired us army brigadier general"] warned that a contested 2024 election could produce “lethal chaos” in the military and urged preparations such as war-gaming and reaffirmation of constitutional norms. [37]
In comparative terms, this maps onto the core fear in self-coup and coup literature: once coercive institutions begin to align with partisan identity rather than constitutional process, the probability of coercive enforcement of disputed political outcomes rises sharply. [38]
navlistFurther reporting on recent U.S. enforcement expansionturn20news39,turn20news40,turn29news42,turn32news40
[1] [7] [30] [38] Internal Error
[2] How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police ...
[3] Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments - Eric A. Nordlinger - Google Books
https://books.google.com/books/about/Soldiers_in_Politics.html?id=1tAWAAAAIAAJ
[4] Praetorianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praetorianism?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[5] Double-Edged Swords (Chapter 7) - How Dictatorships Work
[6] [31] Erica de De Bruin, "How to Prevent Coups D'État
https://newbooksnetwork.com/how-to-prevent-coups-d%C3%A9tat?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[8] [9] Double-Edged Swords (Chapter 7) - How Dictatorships Work
[10] The Rapid Support Forces and the Escalation of Violence ...
[11] [12] [13] [14] [32] Big Budget Act Creates a “Deportation-Industrial Complex” | Brennan Center for Justice
[15] [16] [33] ICE plans $100 million recruitment push targeting gun shows, military fans - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/31/ice-wartime-recruitment-push/
[17] [34] How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force — ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-ice-secret-police-civil-rights-unaccountable
[18] [36] Reagan-Appointed Judge Calls Out Trump's 'Full-Throated ...
[19] [21] Preventing Coups d’état
[20] PolitiFact | Does Trump’s new law make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/jul/11/jon-favreau/ICE-FBI-bill-Donald-Trump-largest/
[22] Trump fires Joint Chiefs of Staff chair CQ Brown
[23] Trump fires Franchetti as chief of naval operations
[24] [29] [35] Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers
https://apnews.com/article/fa428cc1508a583b3bf5e7a5a58f6acf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[25] [26] The D Brief: CJCS, CNO, JAGs fired; Up to 61K DOD workers may lose jobs; Military’s new deportation role; US-India drone pact; And a bit more. - Defense One
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/02/the-d-brief-february-24-2025/403217/
[27] Trump removes Coast Guard commandant, US official says
[28] No More Female 4-Stars: Franchetti Firing Leaves Top ...
[37] Retired generals: The military must prepare now for a 2024 ...
Gemini
The Structural Recalibration of American Coercive Power: Parallel Security Forces, Coup-Proofing Dynamics, and the Erosion of Objective Civilian Control
The contemporary transformation of the United States security architecture throughout 2025 and into early 2026 represents a paradigmatic shift in the relationship between the executive branch and the traditional instruments of state violence. This transition is characterized by two simultaneous and mutually reinforcing trajectories: the systematic ideological purging of the professional military officer corps and the meteoric fiscal and operational expansion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This report analyzes these developments through the academic lenses provided by Samuel Huntington and Eric Nordlinger, examining the transition from "objective" to "subjective" civilian control and the emergence of parallel security structures designed for domestic political utility.
The enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) on July 4, 2025, serves as the primary fiscal engine for this recalibration, providing an unprecedented supplemental windfall of approximately $170 billion for immigration enforcement and detention. When viewed alongside the historic "Friday Night Massacre" of February 21, 2025—which saw the summary removal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the top legal officers of the armed forces—a clear pattern of coup-proofing and institutional fracture emerges. The analysis suggests that the United States is moving away from the professionalized, apolitical model of military subordination toward a praetorian system where institutional loyalty is prioritized over constitutional expertise.
The Academic Framework: Huntington, Nordlinger, and the Crisis of Control
To contextualize the events of 2025, one must first engage with the foundational theories of civil-military relations. Samuel Huntington’s seminal work, The Soldier and the State, provides the essential distinction between "objective" and "subjective" civilian control. Objective civilian control is achieved by recognizing military professionalism as an autonomous sphere of expertise. By insulating the military from political interference and allowing it to maintain its own internal standards of merit and corporate loyalty, the state ensures that the military remains a neutral instrument of national security. Conversely, subjective civilian control achieves mastery by "civilianizing" the military—reducing its autonomy and forcing its values and personnel to align with the specific political or ideological goals of the ruling administration.
The purges of February 2025 represent a decisive and perhaps irreversible move toward subjective control. By dismissing General Charles "CQ" Brown and Admiral Lisa Franchetti specifically for their perceived alignment with "woke" or "social justice" initiatives, the executive branch has signaled that ideological adherence has replaced professional competence as the primary metric for promotion to high command. This shift undermines Huntington’s three pillars of professionalism: expertise in the "management of violence," a sense of social responsibility to the state, and corporate loyalty to the officer corps. When corporate loyalty to the Constitution is replaced by loyalty to a partisan leader, the military ceases to be a professional body and begins to function as a praetorian guard.
Eric Nordlinger’s Soldiers in Politics offers a complementary perspective on "legitimacy deflation." This occurs when a government loses its moral and legal authority in the eyes of the public or the security services, prompting the executive to create counterweights—parallel security forces—to protect the regime from both popular unrest and potential military intervention. In the American context of 2025, the executive appears to be preemptively addressing potential legitimacy deflation by constructing a massive, well-funded security apparatus within DHS that does not share the professionalized, constitutional constraints of the traditional military. This is the essence of "counterbalancing," a coup-proofing strategy used by autocrats to ensure that no single security entity has the power to challenge the leader.
Theoretical Comparison of Civilian Control Models
| Feature | Huntington: Objective Control | Huntington: Subjective Control | Nordlinger: Praetorianism |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Maximize military professionalism. | Maximize executive power over military. | Use of force to achieve political ends. |
| Institutional Autonomy | High: Military manages its own affairs. | Low: Military is integrated into politics. | High: Military/Police dictate policy. |
| Control Mechanism | Professional ethos/Constitution. | Ideological screening/Personal loyalty. | Threats of force/Coup-proofing. |
| Risk Factor | Low: Military remains apolitical. | High: Military becomes a partisan tool. | Very High: Constant risk of civil conflict. |
| 2025 Application | The model being dismantled. | The model currently being implemented. | The emerging state of the security sector. |
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA): Fiscal Autonomy and Parallel Power
The passage of the OBBBA on July 4, 2025, represents the single largest investment in immigration enforcement in the history of the United States, providing a supplemental $140 billion to $170 billion through fiscal year 2029. This "windfall" is specifically designed to bypass the traditional annual appropriations process, creating what critics have described as an "unaccountable slush fund" for the executive's mass deportation agenda. The financial autonomy granted by this bill is a critical component of coup-proofing, as it allows the parallel security force (ICE and CBP) to operate independently of legislative oversight or the "power of the purse".
Detailed Fiscal Breakdown of the OBBBA Supplemental Funding
| Program/Agency Allocation | Funding Amount (4-Year Supplemental) | Primary Operational Objectives |
|---|---|---|
| ICE Interior Enforcement | $75 Billion | Mass deportation, 22,000+ personnel surge, transportation. |
| CBP Border Security | $70 Billion | Physical barriers ($46.5B), technology, 4,100 new agents. |
| Immigration Detention | $45 Billion | Expand capacity to 100,000 beds; family detention centers. |
| Enforcement & Removal | $29.9 Billion | Specialized activities, transportation, 287(g) expansion. |
| Border Technology | $6.2 Billion | AI, machine learning, non-intrusive inspection (NII). |
| CBP Facilities | $5 Billion | Construction of short-term detention and checkpoints. |
| DOJ State/Local Grants | $3.5 Billion | Reimbursement for local police aiding federal operations. |
| EOIR (Immigration Courts) | $3.3 Billion | Funding for 800 judges to accelerate removals. |
The scale of this funding is transformative. ICE’s annual budget, which stood at approximately $9.9 billion in 2024, has effectively tripled when the OBBBA funds are amortized. This fiscal surge allows ICE to remain operational even during government shutdowns, as the multi-year funds are not tied to the annual continuing resolutions that often paralyze other federal agencies. This autonomy is a hallmark of parallel security forces, which are often funded through off-budget mechanisms or specialized levies—such as the new $5,000 apprehension fee and the 1% excise tax on remittances established by the OBBBA—to insulate them from traditional civilian and legislative oversight.
The February 2025 Military Purge: Strategic Decapitation of Professionalism
The firing of senior military leadership in February 2025 serves as the operational bookend to the OBBBA’s fiscal expansion. This "purge" targeted the highest levels of the Pentagon, focusing on officers who represented the traditional, apolitical professional model. The removal of General Charles "CQ" Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was particularly significant. Brown, the second Black man to hold the post, was a vocal advocate for institutional diversity, a stance that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth characterized as "toxic ideological garbage" and "woke s--t" that needed to be eradicated.
The purge extended beyond the Joint Chiefs to include the chief legal authorities of the services. The firing of the Judge Advocates General (JAGs) of the Army, Navy, and Air Force is an unprecedented move to remove the internal "roadblocks" to executive action. Secretary Hegseth explicitly stated the administration's desire for lawyers who "don't exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens," suggesting that the administration intends to issue orders that may test the boundaries of military and constitutional law. This decapitation of the military's legal conscience is a textbook example of "executive shirking," where a leader circumvents constitutional constraints by removing the officers responsible for enforcing those very constraints.
Summary of Senior Military Leadership Ousters (February 21, 2025)
| Name | Position | Stated or Inferred Rationale | Implications for the Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gen. CQ Brown Jr. | Chairman, Joint Chiefs | Support for DEI; 2020 racism video; 2022 memo. | Removal of the senior-most constitutional advisor. |
| Adm. Lisa Franchetti | Chief of Naval Operations | "Unqualified"; chosen for "optics" over merit. | First woman service chief removed; loss of NATO tie. |
| Adm. Linda Fagan | Commandant, Coast Guard | General anti-DEI purge (removed January 2025). | Depletion of female leadership at the 4-star level. |
| Gen. James Slife | Vice Chief, Air Force | Past statements on institutional racism and bias. | Fracture in Air Force continuity and readiness. |
| Army/Navy/AF JAGs | Judge Advocates General | Preventing legal "roadblocks" to executive orders. | Subversion of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. |
| V. Adm. Shoshana Chatfield | NATO Military Rep. | "Loss of competence" (DEI support suspected). | Disruption of U.S. commitment to NATO allies. |
The selection of retired Lieutenant General Dan "Razin" Caine to replace Brown is equally telling. Caine, a three-star general who has never led a combatant command or served as a service chief, lacks the traditional prerequisites for the Chairmanship. His appointment required a "national interest waiver," further signaling the administration's preference for personal loyalty and "warfighter ethos" over established seniority and meritocratic progression. This selection reflects a broader trend of installing "yes men" who are expected to yield to the president's interpretation of the law without question.
ICE as a Parallel Security Force: Recruitment, Ideology, and Militarization
The rapid expansion of ICE under the OBBBA has given rise to a "national police force" that increasingly mirrors the characteristics of a parallel military or paramilitary organization. In late 2025, DHS launched a $100 million "wartime recruitment" campaign designed to more than double ICE’s workforce from roughly 10,000 to over 22,000 agents in an unprecedentedly short period.
The "Wartime" Recruitment Strategy and Tactical Shift
The recruitment strategy reflects a deliberate move away from traditional law enforcement standards toward a militarized, "combat-ready" posture. Internal planning documents revealed that ICE targeted digital advertising toward audiences with interests in "military culture," "tactical gear," and "guns," specifically geofencing ads around military bases, gun trade shows, and UFC fights.
- Ideological Screening: Some recruitment materials utilized white nationalist slogans and imagery, such as the caption "Which way, American man?" and the use of the song "We'll Have Our Home Again" produced by the white nationalist group Pine Tree Riots.
- Pop-Culture Militarization: Ads featured tactical gear, bomber jets, and even retro-style vans with the caption "Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys? Think about how many illegals you could fit in this bad boy!".
- Training Compression: To facilitate the surge of 12,000 new agents in less than a year, DHS significantly compressed the training pipeline for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers. The program was reduced from 16 weeks—previously including a mandatory language course—to a streamlined six-to-eight-week curriculum.
- Lowered Standards: An AI tool used to parse applications incorrectly flagged the "majority" of applicants as law enforcement officers, allowing them to bypass even the reduced training in favor of a fast-tracked four-week course.
This influx of "untrained recruits eager for combat" has raised alarms among former DHS and ICE officials. Sarah Saldaña, who led ICE during the Obama administration, noted that the new mentality "tends to inculcate in people a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85 percent of what you do". This cultural shift, combined with a 1,300% increase in assaults on agents in 2025, has created a "hostile operational environment" where agents are encouraged to operate with anonymity—often wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves during raids.
Coup-Proofing Dynamics and the Counterbalancing Paradox
The simultaneous weakening of the professional military and the strengthening of ICE/CBP are classic indicators of "coup-proofing" through counterbalancing. In political science, counterbalancing involves the creation of multiple, competing security agencies to ensure that no single entity has the power to overthrow the government. However, as scholars like Erica De Bruin note, this creates a "counterbalancing paradox": while it may make a traditional military coup more difficult, it significantly increases the risk of violent civil conflict between the rival security agencies themselves.
The reorganized ICE, sitting on a $75 billion "slush fund" and recruited for its ideological loyalty to the executive, serves as a counterweight to a military that might otherwise refuse illegal orders. This is the essence of "executive shirking," where a leader circumvents constitutional constraints by using loyalist security forces to achieve partisan goals. By building a force capable of domestic suppression that does not share the military's "corporate interest" in upholding the Constitution, the executive has effectively immunized itself against the internal checks historically provided by the Pentagon.
Parallel Force Metrics: ICE vs. International Praetorian Models
| Metric | New ICE (U.S., 2025) | IRGC (Iran) | RSF (Sudan) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personnel Surge | 120% increase in 4 months. | Constant expansion of Basij. | Rapid expansion from Janjaweed. |
| Funding Mechanism | Off-budget supplemental ($170B). | Direct control of oil/business. | Gold mining/Strategic debt. |
| Legal Constraint | Civil law mandate; "unreviewed" warrants. | Answers only to Supreme Leader. | Independent of regular army. |
| Domestic Use | Targeting students/protesters for deportation. | Suppression of internal dissent. | Civil war against the army. |
| Training Model | Compressed 6-8 week "wartime" course. | Heavily ideological/Theocratic. | Tribal/Mercenary based. |
The comparative data suggests that the United States is adopting the structural characteristics of a "praetorian state," as defined by Nordlinger—one in which military or security officers are major political actors by virtue of their actual or threatened use of force. The 2025 military purge, coupled with the creation of an "unfettered and unaccountable national police force" in ICE, creates a system where the executive can deploy force domestically with minimal institutional resistance.
Judicial and Institutional Resistance: The "Secret Police" Accusation
The emergence of this parallel force has met significant judicial resistance, most notably from U.S. District Judge William Young. In a blistering 161-page ruling in late 2025, Young—a Reagan appointee with four decades of experience—condemned the Trump administration for using ICE as an "armed masked secret police" to terrorize student activists. Young’s ruling, which followed a nine-day trial, highlighted the use of masked agents, unreviewed warrants, and "squalid and dishonorable" tactics designed to "strike fear" and "terrorize Americans into quiescence".
Judge Young’s critique echoes Nordlinger’s concept of legitimacy deflation. When a senior jurist compares a federal agency to the "cowardly desperados" of the Ku Klux Klan and notes that ICE "seeks to avoid the actual criminal courts at all costs," it signifies a profound breakdown in the perceived legitimacy of the state’s coercive instruments. Young argued that the administration was misusing the Immigration and Nationality Act to suppress First Amendment-protected speech, specifically targeting pro-Palestinian student activists for deportation to "tamp down" political activity on college campuses.
Case Study: Targeting of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk
The specific evidence in Judge Young’s court revealed that the Trump administration relied on information from shadowy websites like Canary Mission to determine which students to target. Khalil and Öztürk were arrested by masked, plainclothes agents and held in federal custody for over a month. The court found that these arrests were not motivated by criminal law enforcement but were a "full-throated assault on the First Amendment across the board". This use of administrative immigration law—where the "courts" are not true courts and "warrants" are merely orders from an ICE superior—allows the executive to bypass the constitutional protections of the criminal justice system.
The Role of DEI as a Pretext for the Institutional Purge
The removal of General Brown and Admiral Franchetti was framed by Defense Secretary Hegseth as a crusade against "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs, which he claimed had "infected" the Department of Defense. Hegseth explicitly stated that "any general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s--t has got to go". However, the analysis of the JAG firings suggests that DEI was merely the casus belli for a broader effort to remove officers who prioritize constitutional "roadblocks" over executive will.
The "anti-DEI" campaign has evolved into a "witch hunt" that includes the censorship of military academy libraries. In 2025, 381 books were removed from the Naval Academy library based on keyword searches for terms such as "racism," "gender," and "feminism". This "Orwellian" turn is viewed by experts as a way of depriving the next generation of officers of the expertise and experience necessary to lead a diverse force.
National Security Risks of the Purge
- Internal Discord: Retired military leaders have warned that "placing a diverse Armed Forces under the command of a homogeneous leadership is a recipe for internal resentment, discord, and violence".
- Talent Attrition: The dismissal of high-ranking women like Adm. Franchetti and Adm. Fagan leaves the U.S. military without a single female four-star officer for the first time in decades, likely discouraging future recruitment and retention of women, who currently comprise 18% of the active-duty force.
- Mission Readiness: The removal of experienced combat veterans like V. Adm. Shoshana Chatfield at a time of "historic juncture" for NATO commitments deprives the country of vital expertise in the management of international alliances.
- Vietnam-Era Precedents: An amicus brief signed by four former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs warned that returning to an "overwhelmingly white officer corps" exercising authority over a 40% nonwhite rank-and-file mirrors the racial tensions of 1969-1970, which led to 300 internal disturbances and 71 troop deaths.
The GAO study of State Department personnel data (2002-2018) further underscores the institutional fragility, finding that racial and ethnic minorities were already 4% to 29% less likely to be promoted than their white coworkers even before the 2025 purges. By actively dismantling the programs intended to address these disparities, the administration is effectively re-segregating the leadership hierarchy, potentially inviting a breakdown of order within the ranks.
Institutional Fracture and the Risk of Civil Conflict
The cumulative effect of these changes is a profound "institutional fracture" within the U.S. security sector. For the first time in the modern era, there is a credible risk of a split between the professional military—which remains culturally committed to the Constitution—and the parallel DHS force—which is ideologically committed to the executive.
The 2021 warning by three retired generals in The Washington Post regarding a potential "civil war" following the 2024 election has gained new relevance. These generals called on the Department of Defense to conduct "War Game" simulations to prepare for a scenario where active-duty troops and veterans become radicalized and join an insurrection. The documentary film War Game (2024) depicted exactly such a scenario, where a losing presidential candidate calls on the military to "take back the election," forcing the chain of command to choose between their oath and their partisan affiliation.
With the military's top legal officers (JAGs) removed and a loyalist Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in place, the traditional "internal check" that prevents the illegal use of the military for domestic purposes has been severely compromised. This leaves the country in a precarious state where the only remaining check on executive power is the willingness of rank-and-file soldiers to refuse illegal orders—a "nuclear option" for civil-military relations that Huntington sought to avoid through objective control.
Global Context and Paradigmatic Rupture
The events in the United States are not occurring in a vacuum but are part of a global "third wave of autocratization." The V-Dem Democracy Report 2025 notes that the level of democracy for the average world citizen is back to 1985 levels, with a truly global loss of freedom of expression and the rule of law. The "paradigmatic rupture" signals that state authority is being redistributed away from traditional institutions toward private military actors, non-state militias, and "shadow regulatory" bodies.
In countries like Iraq and Thailand, we see similar dynamics. In the November 2025 Iraqi elections, political parties tied to Iranian-backed militias won 45 seats, integrating armed parallel forces directly into the legislative process. In Thailand, the military has established its autonomy from civilian oversight through a 20-Year National Strategy that overrides electoral mandates. The American transition toward a hyper-funded ICE and a purged Pentagon reflects this global trend of "regime transformation" from liberal democracy to electoral autocracy.
Global Trends in Strategic Debt and Militarization (2025)
The global defense economy has become structurally embedded in national finance, with a record $2.718 trillion spent on military budgets in 2024. This "fiscalization of warfare" has produced a new asset class: "strategic debt," where sovereign borrowing is securitized not against future productivity, but against a state's current capacity for violence.
| Conflict System | Fiscal Architecture | Institutional Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| United States | OBBBA $170B Supplemental. | Creation of a parallel, off-budget security force. |
| Russia | 15.5 Trillion Ruble Budget (7.2% GDP). | Totalization of the economy for kinetic conflict. |
| Ukraine | $18.6 Billion in War Bonds. | Securitization of national survival against future debt. |
| Sudan | Gold-backed debt via VEB.RF. | Funding of parallel militias (RSF) against the army. |
| Tunisia | $2.3 Billion Stabilization Loans. | Militarization of border and internal governance. |
This global trend toward the "metastasis of military logic into every conceivable domain of governance" explains why the OBBBA is not merely a funding bill, but a "fiscal architecture of militarized governance". It redistributes authority away from the traditional, rule-of-law-bound bureaucracy toward a "shadow" federal police force that is exempt from the standard disclosure and accountability mechanisms.
The Future of American Civil-Military Relations: A Risk Assessment
The strategic recalibration of 2025 suggests that the United States is entering a period of high volatility in its civil-military relations. The systematic dismantling of objective civilian control has created three primary risks for the stability of the republic:
- The Counterbalancing Paradox: The creation of a massive, ideologically loyal force in ICE increases the likelihood of a violent confrontation between federal agencies if the executive issues orders that the professional military deems unconstitutional. The removal of the JAGs significantly increases the probability that such a confrontation will occur, as there is no longer a senior legal buffer within the Pentagon to mediate between executive orders and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
- Institutional Fracture and Radicalization: The "wartime recruitment" tactics and the use of white nationalist imagery in ICE ads suggest that the parallel force is being deliberately alienated from the broader American public. This alienation is the first step toward a praetorian model where the security force views itself as the "last resort depository of national legitimacy," independent of the "corrupt" civilian institutions it is meant to serve.
- The Collapse of Meritocracy and Expertise: The purging of senior officers on ideological grounds undermines the "expertise" pillar of military professionalism. Replacing decorated combat veterans with "loyalists" who lack command experience (such as the nominations for JCS Chairman) degrades the actual national security capability of the United States while increasing the risk of "executive shirking".
The transition to a "subjective" control model means that the military and DHS are no longer neutral instruments of the state, but are instead tools of the administration in power. This shift is "indistinguishable from the world's most repressive regimes" and represents a line that, until 2025, the United States had largely refrained from crossing.
Synthesis and Conclusion
The convergence of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s fiscal windfall and the systematic decapitation of the military's professional leadership has fundamentally altered the American constitutional order. By the beginning of 2026, the executive branch has successfully constructed a dual-track security system: one track (the military) is being purged of its professional autonomy to ensure compliance, while the second track (DHS/ICE) is being rapidly expanded into a parallel domestic army.
The academic frameworks of Huntington and Nordlinger provide a chilling diagnosis of this shift. We are witnessing the abandonment of objective civilian control in favor of a subjective model that prioritizes ideological purity over military expertise. The legitimacy deflation described by Nordlinger is manifest in the blistering rebukes from the judiciary and the alarm of retired military leaders who fear the military is being turned against the citizenry. The "secret police" tactics condemned by Judge Young are not an aberration but a deliberate feature of this new architecture—designed to "terrorize Americans into quiescence".
As the United States continues to autocratize in alignment with global trends, the "institutional fracture" between its security entities poses a grave risk to the peaceful transfer of power and the rule of law. The parallel forces of 2025 are no longer a theoretical threat; they are a well-funded, ideologically charged reality, operating with "indelible obloquy" and threatening the very survival of the democratic experiment. The 2025 recalibration is not merely a change in policy, but a foundational shift in the architecture of American power, moving the nation toward a praetorian future where the instrument of force is no longer the servant of the people, but the master of the state.