Comment: Reasons for deploying troops in streets simply fail

By Daniel W. Drezner / The Washington Post

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “Send In the Troops,” the sole virtue of which is that the headline accurately captures his thesis. Cotton urges President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use regular military forces to put down “rioters [who] have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.”

For Cotton, it does not matter that America’s governors and mayors have refrained from making any such request. Nor does it not matter that on Wednesday morning, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper explicitly stated that there was no need for such action.

For Cotton, the only thing that matters is his theory on how to quell the unrest:

“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

“The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other means’ in ‘cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.’”

In case you are wondering what that overwhelming show of force would do, well …

Cotton argues that the current carnage justifies this action, and that the American public would support it, citing a recent Morning Consult poll that suggests a majority of respondents would support the deployment of U.S. troops to areas of urban unrest.

There is a lot to unpack here. Needless to say, there is a copious amount of moral outrage about Cotton’s proposal. I will leave the expressions of that outrage to writers more gifted than myself.

Instead, I want to focus on the social-science-y elements of Cotton’s thesis. There are three key elements to Cotton’s argument: this is a necessary move because of the damage from violence, an overwhelming show of force would work, and the American public would support it. If any of these three elements fail, then Cotton would be recommending a bloodbath for no reason other than to get his martial jollies off.

First, is the carnage as bad as Cotton claims? He clearly refers to concrete examples of violence and mayhem. But it is not clear at all that the property damage even comes close to the Los Angeles riots in 1992, the last time a president used the Insurrection Act:

Despite much larger national protests, there is no, repeat, no evidence that the violence has caused more than a thousand burned buildings or a billion dollars in property damage. In some cases police have wildly exaggerated the cost of property destruction. Furthermore, a lot of the carnage I have seen comes less from violent protesters and more from overly aggressive police officers. So let’s just say that Cotton’s claims of anarchy necessitating military action are somewhat risible.

Would overwhelming force work? This is an even more dubious claim. Excessive force has the potential to turn peaceful protests violent. FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth and Jamiles Lartey note that “when the police respond by escalating force — wearing riot gear from the start, or using tear gas on protesters — it doesn’t work. In fact, disproportionate police force is one of the things that can make a peaceful protest not so peaceful.”

At every stage in the social unrest to date, the use of excessive force by police forces has resulted in even larger demonstrations. National Guard and other forces used overwhelming nonlethal force to get rid of protesters at Lafayette Square, and the result was an even larger number of demonstrators. If Cotton truly believes that these protesters are being infiltrated by “cadres of left-wing radicals,” then larger protests will simply offer more opportunities for greater damage.

It is also worth noting that despite Cotton’s assurances that, “The nation must restore order. The military stands ready,” it seems rather clear that the military is decidedly not ready to do this. Pick your news story, but the evidence that the military does not want to do this is pretty clear. Neither generals nor soldiers want any part of using force to quell unrest in the United States.

Finally, Cotton is leaning a lot on one Morning Consult poll, and it’s true that 58 percent of respondents supported calling in the U.S. military. The more I look at it, however, the more I doubt the robustness of this result. The precise question that was asked was, “Would you support or oppose cities calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police forces to address protests and demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities in response to the death of George Floyd?” The key word is “supplement,” and, to use Cotton’s own language, the U.S. military does not act as a supporting role when it comes to things like “whatever it takes to restore order.”

Furthermore, that same poll revealed that 71 percent of Americans support calling in the National Guard. This suggests to me that the support for regular military troops is weaker than the top-line number.

If the U.S. military wound up killing Americans on American soil, I doubt that 58 percent would hold up. That number also might change after former military officers start registering their disapproval over any militarization of the response to demonstrations. Which they have. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey. Former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis.

And, most importantly, former secretary of defense Jim Mattis:

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens; much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

“We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.’ At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict — a false conflict — between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.”

The damage caused by the unrest is not as great as Cotton claims. A doctrine of overwhelming force will not quell the demonstrations. Support for this move is soft. Far more senior combat veterans think this would be a horrible idea. And there is the mild fascist whiff that comes from Cotton’s prose.

Other than that, it’s a great op-ed.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything.