[anonymousguy]

This could always happen in the US. US military officers swear an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, but they don't swear an oath to other officers or elected officials. That said if an elected president violates the constitution the US military could qualify a military coup to restore law.

Many posters in here indicate oddness that a military force could represent secularism. I am curious why that is. Most uniformed militaries I have observed have always seemed more secular than the people they represent. Let us not forget the Islamic Brotherhood was democratically elected in Egypt, which attempted to instill sharia law. A military coup ended that nonsense. Also, Hitler was democratically elected and was not immediately supported by the military.

[dragonwriter]

> US military officers swear an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,

True, but...

> but they don't swear an oath to other officers or elected officials.

... this part is, interestingly true, but only of officers. Officers don't swear an oath to other offices or elected officials, but enlisted personnel do both -- first to the President and second to the officers appointed over them, and all subject to the UCMJ. [0]

Not, of course, that oaths constrain behavior, but, to the extent oaths are relevant, in any case, the Constitution names the President Commander-in-Chief of the military and gives Congress the power to regulate the military, so an oath by a military member to support the Constitution necessarily involves a degree of commitment to elected officials, and to the extent those elected officials have used their Conditional powers to establish and appoint superior officers, those other officers.

[0] http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

[anonymousguy]

Perhaps the necessary enough justification could be that an elected president does something that directly and literally violates an article written into the actual constitution and the military seeks to appoint a new leader from the line of succession. That way there is no violation of the principals of Cincinnatus and an elected civilian retains the position opposed to an unelected military figure.

[DanielBMarkham]

It could. Also pigs could learn aviation. It is unlikely for either to happen, however.

The U.S. has a built-in coup mechanism: the president effectively serves at the convenience of Congress. While he/she is an elected official and in a different branch of government, the constitution was pretty clear on who runs the show. The House and Senate can, at any time, remove the president from office.

It'd be a helluva thing to do, but military coups are fairly spectacular also. On any given day that both houses were in session, given a hated enough president, you could probably do the entire thing on a voice vote in an hour or so. At that point the military and police authorities would be responsible for removing the president and swearing in the new one.

You might be able to spin out some scenarios for a U.S. coup d'etat, but there is a very long line of tradition in the states that the military serves the civilian authority. I think most command-level officers are fairly well indoctrinated in avoiding that scenario at all costs.

[delazeur]

> Many posters in here indicate oddness that a military force could represent secularism. I am curious why that is.

My hypothesis is that the average English speaking tech worker is both more secular than their nation's population and more secular than their nation's military, making it more difficult to think of militaries as secular organizations. I know I tend to think of the U.S. military as full of religious conservatives, but that probably says more about how secular I am than about how religious the military is.

[stonogo]

The Knox laws are still in force. There is no legal framework for an American military coup, setting aside that the Commander in Chief is an elected office.

[niftich]

Not to be pedantic, but the entire mechanism of coups d'état is that you step outside the legal framework and instead use intimidation and force.

If you fail, it's very, very often fatal. If you succeed, you retrofit some sketchy legal justification, or ignore the matter altogether.

[stonogo]

Part of running a coup in a democratic country is that your ground troops have to be on your side. This is much more difficult when every single soldier is made completely aware during indoctrination that domestic military action is almost completely illegal. Adding in the fact that there is no conscription in America, the likelihood of a military coup today is vanishingly small.

[civilian]

What are the Knox laws? Google isn't pulling anything except this http://www.knox.army.mil/garrison/dhr/asd/docs/regs/r190-5.p...

[stonogo]

An autocorrect failure; sorry. Should have been 'the Knott laws' aka the 'Posse Comitatus Act' of 1878.

[Spooky23]

That idea is a big part of why for most US history the professional military was a tiny backwater.

There was a strong distrust of a professional military.