Metafilter links to an article in Parameters from Charles J. Dunlap, Jr, The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012 from 1992.#

(Note: When reading this it is strange to have to remember that when Charles refers to the 'Second Gulf War' he is talking about something he thought would not ever really happen.)

An introduction into the setting of the letter,

The letter that follows takes us on a darkly imagined excursion into the future. A military coup has taken place in the United States--the year is 2012--and General Thomas E. T. Brutus, Commander-in-Chief of the Unified Armed Forces of the United States, now occupies the White House as permanent Military Plenipotentiary. His position has been ratified by a national referendum, though scattered disorders still prevail and arrests for acts of sedition are underway. A senior retired officer of the Unified Armed Forces, known here simply as Prisoner 222305759, is one of those arrested, having been convicted by court-martial for opposing the coup. Prior to his execution, he is able to smuggle out of prison a letter to an old War College classmate discussing the "Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012." In it, he argues that the coup was the outgrowth of trends visible as far back as 1992. These trends were the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses, the monolithic unification of the armed forces, and the insularity of the military community. His letter survives and is here presented verbatim.

The central problem that was seeded in 1992 for Prisoner 222305759 was the increasing domain of the military and the disillusionment of the American public with the effectiveness of the democratic process.

Americans became exasperated with democracy. We were disillusioned with the apparent inability of elected government to solve the nation's dilemmas. We were looking for someone or something that could produce workable answers. The one institution of government in which the people retained faith was the military. Buoyed by the military's obvious competence in the First Gulf War, the public increasingly turned to it for solutions to the country's problems. Americans called for an acceleration of trends begun in the 1980s: tasking the military with a variety of new, nontraditional missions, and vastly escalating its commitment to formerly ancillary duties.

The most important defense against a coup d'etat is a populace that supports the current government, sadly that trust of the government continued to erode in the years after 1992.

For over two centuries that vigilance was rewarded, and most Americans came to consider the very notion of a military coup preposterous. Historian Andrew Janos captured the conventional view of the latter half of the 20th century in this clipping I saved:

A coup d'etat in the United States would be too fantastic to contemplate, not only because few would actually entertain the idea, but also because the bulk of the people are strongly attached to the prevailing political system and would rise in defense of a political leader even though they might not like him. The environment most hospitable to coups d'etat is one in which political apathy prevails as the dominant style.[7]

However, when Janos wrote that back in 1964, 61.9 percent of the electorate voted. Since then voter participation has steadily declined. By 1988 only 50.1 percent of the eligible voters cast a ballot.[8] Simple extrapolation of those numbers to last spring's Referendum would have predicted almost exactly the turnout. It was precisely reversed from that of 1964: 61.9 percent of the electorate did not vote.

So, the military was tasked with more responsibilities and additional, non-traditional missions such as humanitarian aid and nation building.

The revised charter for the armed forces was not confined to domestic enterprises. Overseas humanitarian and nation-building assignments proliferated.[45] Though these projects have always been performed by the military on an ad hoc basis, in 1986 Congress formalized that process. It declared overseas humanitarian and civic assistance activities to be "valid military missions" and specifically authorized them by law.[46] Fueled by favorable press for operations in Iraq, Bangladesh, and the Philippines during the early 1990s, humanitarian missions were touted as the military's "model for the future."[47] That prediction came true. When several African governments collapsed under AIDS epidemics and famines around the turn of the century, US troops--first introduced to the continent in the 1990s--were called upon to restore basic services. They never left.[48] Now the US military constitutes the de facto government in many of those areas. Once again, the first whisperings of such duties could be heard in 1992.[49]

The problem was that the anti-democratic nature of the military was extended into an increasingly large number of sectors of American life and American presence world wide. This put more and more power into unelected hands.

Not only this but these things caused the military's role as being able and willing to wage wars when necessary to decrease and become less effective. (I think this section of the paper has less to do with the Coup, and more to do with the author's sense of what should be changed about the military. If the military lost all its firepower and training then it would not be as deadly or effective in a Coup. It would still be dangerous because of the authoritarian style of operation.)

Humanitarian missions likewise undermined the military's sense of itself. As one Navy officer gushed during the 1991 Bangladesh relief operation, "It's great to be here doing the opposite of a soldier."[89] While no true soldier relishes war, the fact remains that the essence of the military is warfighting and preparation for the same. What journalist Barton Gellman has said of the Army can be extrapolated to the military as a whole: it is an "organization whose fighting spirit depends . . . heavily on tradition."[90] If that tradition becomes imbued with a preference for "doing the opposite of a soldier," fighting spirit is bound to suffer. When we first heard editorial calls to "pacify the military" by involving it in civic projects,[91] we should have given them the forceful rebuke they deserved.

At the end are some interesting bullet points about what could have been changed in the military's operation to avoid the unfortunate Coup of 2012.

Demand that the armed forces focus exclusively on indisputably military duties. We must not diffuse our energies away from our fundamental responsibility for warfighting. To send ill-trained troops into combat makes us accomplices to murder.

Acknowledge that national security does have economic, social, educational, and environmental dimensions, but insist that this doesn't necessarily mean the problems in those areas are the responsibility of the military to correct. Stylishly designating efforts to solve national ills as "wars" doesn't convert them into something appropriate for the employment of military forces.

Readily cede budgetary resources to those agencies whose business it is to address the non-military issues the armed forces are presently asked to fix. We are not the DEA, EPA, Peace Corps, Department of Education, or Red Cross--nor should we be. It has never been easy to give up resources, but in the long term we--and the nation--will be better served by a smaller but appropriately focused military.

Divest the defense budget of perception-skewing expenses. Narcotics interdiction, environmental cleanup, humanitarian relief, and other costs tangential to actual combat capability should be assigned to the budgets of DEA, EPA, State, and so forth. As long as these expensive programs are hidden in the defense budget, the taxpayer understandably--but mistakenly--will continue to believe he's buying military readiness.

The final remarks about democracy are essential for every citizen to read:

Democracy is a fragile institution that must be continuously nurtured and scrupulously protected. I would also tell them that they must speak out when they see the institution threatened; indeed, it is their duty to do so.