Can Military Governments be a good thing (for a while)?

**TheCurmudgeon** · 07-04-2013

Being a military man, I would like to think that the military that understands its role as a servant of the country (however you define THAT term), can step in when the alternative is a decent into civil war. There has to be other options.

I wonder if things had been different in Syria had the military not sided with Assad. I realize that is fantasy, but it begs the question of when the military has a duty to protect the population, even from its own government.

I take an oath to the Constitution, and then to the President and the Officers appointed over me. I prefer to think that, in other parts of the world, military men think the same way. I realize this has shades of "Starship Troopers", but reality can be stranger than fiction.

**Firn** · 07-04-2013

Looking at my sig there have been indeed some cases, where a quicker execution of what the intellect dictated would have saved first the one of democracy and later the very own.

... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"

General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935

Thankfully Europe today is a different continent despite the big crisis. Mr Bunga bunga and a mad Magyar.

**Fuchs** · 07-04-2013

The question shouldn't be if something is "good", but whether it's the least evil option which is available and realistic.

One can hardly think of Stauffenberg et al and not think that there are at least exceptions when a coup by or with the military is better than the status quo.

In most potential military coup scenarios it's better to keep the military in the barracks - especially if a civil war is a possibility. There isn't going to be much of a civil war if the military stays in its barracks. The threshold for the launch of a civil war by dissenters is typically so high that the government couldn't stem it with police forces alone.
Countries with lots of tribal institutions, paramilitary forces, access to foreign forces or domestic warlords are obviously exceptions to this. Soon, countries with a very much hardware-supported police state may be added to this list of exceptions.