In democracies, the military exists to defend the nation from external threats. Yet, even in free societies, leaders have, at times, turned that power inward—blurring the boundary between national defense and domestic repression. When militaries shift from defending the nation to policing its citizens, they risk becoming tools of state repression. History shows that once militaries become entangled in internal politics, reversing the trend can become difficult, as soldiers gain influence; civilian leaders grow reliant on force to hold power; and checks on executive authority weaken or collapse.
Recent events demonstrate how easily a mature democracy like the United States can edge toward this dangerous terrain. On August 11, 2025, despite violent crime at a 30-year-low, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and federalized D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department—a federal power grab under the guise of crime prevention. This followed the June 2025 deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to suppress protests against Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. This decision came despite strong opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who warned that local police were fully capable of maintaining order and that federal military involvement risked escalating tensions on the ground.
What had begun as peaceful demonstrations were soon met with overwhelming federal force. Military units were stationed outside federal buildings and patrolled the streets alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain protestors. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) condemned the actions as “outrageous and un-American, ” noting that troops trained for foreign combat had no place in American streets.
The Los Angeles deployments marked a dangerous inflection point in U.S. civil-military relations—one that echoes troubling precedents abroad. They showed how easily a president can override state and local authorities and deploy troops against citizens, eroding long-standing norms of civilian control. To understand the risks, it helps to look beyond the United States. The cases of Canada, South Korea, and Turkey illustrate a dangerous escalatory pattern: When elected leaders rely on the military to resolve domestic challenges, they often accelerate democratic backsliding. Each case marks a rung on the ladder of democratic erosion, with lessons to be learned for the United States.
Canada: The October Crisis of 1970
In October 1970, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ)—a nationalist and radical separatist group—kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross and killed Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. Public demonstrations in support of the FLQ broke out across Montreal, including rallies at the Université de Montréal and Paul Sauvé Arena. As tensions escalated and unrest spread, the Quebec provincial government, concerned about growing separatist momentum, formally requested federal intervention. In response, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, deploying federal Canadian troops to Montreal and granting sweeping powers to law enforcement.
The War Measures Act suspended habeas corpus, allowing authorities to detain individuals without charge. While the original mandate was limited to protecting government buildings and personnel, police were granted sweeping new powers to search and arrest citizens. More than 500 people were detained––most without evidence or access to legal recourse––and only 10 were ultimately convicted of any wrongdoing. The act also curtailed press freedoms, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police shutting down student newspapers and censoring media coverage of the protests. Although Commissioner Cross was rescued and the FLQ radicals were eventually arrested, the crisis sparked intense public debate over the domestic use of military power. While the Canadian government defended its actions as necessary to preserve national security, contemporary legal scholars, civil liberties advocates, and opposition leaders condemned the crackdown as a dangerous abuse of executive power. The resulting backlash contributed to the repeal of the War Measures Act and the adoption of the more restrained Emergencies Act in 1988, as well as to the eventual creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) as a civilian agency for handling national security threats.
Canada’s response to the October Crisis revealed how military deployment––even in a stable democracy—can quickly erode civil liberties.
President Trump’s decision to deploy the military to Los Angeles echoed the pattern of using domestic unrest to justify extraordinary force—but with a key difference. Canada’s October Crisis involved a genuine security threat that local authorities struggled to address, resulting in their request for federal assistance. The U.S. Los Angeles case, however, was rooted more transparently in political theater. Trump framed protests against his immigration policies as threats to law and order, using that pretext to suppress home grown dissent and erode civil liberties as well as deploy the military over the objections of state and local authorities.
South Korea: Martial law crisis of 2024
Just months before Trump’s military deployment, South Korea faced its own constitutional crisis. In December 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol—frustrated by an opposition-controlled National Assembly that blocked his legislative agenda and impeached members of his cabinet—abruptly declared martial law. He denounced what he called a “legislative dictatorship,” and accused the National Assembly of colluding with North Korea to justify the domestic deployment of military forces. Under martial law, Yoon claimed broad powers to suspend political parties, ban protests, censor media outlets, and disrupt parliamentary proceedings. Amid an atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty over the legality of these measures, many military personnel viewed the order as unconstitutional and either hesitated or outright refused to comply.
When the National Assembly convened in a midnight session to lift the martial decree, Yoon ordered South Korea’s elite Special Warfare Command to storm the assembly and block the vote. As soldiers arrived at the parliament building, South Korean civilians came out in mass to protest, forming a human barrier around the National Assembly to protect lawmakers as they voted to nullify the martial law and restore regular order. Mass protests followed, demanding a return to peaceful constitutional order.
Although tensions flared and scuffles broke out between civilians and soldiers, no shots were fired. The vote ultimately proceeded, martial law was lifted, and President Yoon was impeached and later indicted for insurrection. The South Korean case underscores the vital role of peaceful civilian mobilization in defending democracy, as well as the military’s professionalism and commitment to democratic norms in its restraint and refusal to carry out unlawful orders.
The public rebuke to President Yoon was shaped by broad public support for democracy. South Korea’s transition to democracy in 1987, following decades of authoritarian rule, remains vivid in the collective national memory of South Korean citizens. Older generations who had lived under dictatorship stood alongside younger activists deeply committed to preserving democratic institutions and fearful of a return to arbitrary military rule. That cross-generational unity proved decisive. While South Korea’s democracy ultimately endured, the crisis exposed how quickly a president—when left unchecked—can attempt to usurp civilian rule.
President Trump’s 2025 military deployment mirrored South Korea’s earlier use of force, with an embattled executive manufacturing a domestic emergency to justify sending troops against civilian opposition. In both Los Angeles and in D.C., Trump is deploying federal forces over the objection of state and local authorities. In Los Angeles, Trump’s goal was to quash protests under the banner of restoring law and order, and although courts upheld the orders as lawful, the move provoked mass outrage. In the week following the initial Los Angeles deployment, more than 5 million people joined over 2,100 demonstrations nationwide, rallying under the “No Kings” banner in one of the largest protest events in U.S. history.
In South Korea, legislative pushback quickly ended a similar deployment. Congressional Democrats fiercely condemned the Los Angeles deployment, especially after California Sen. Alex Padilla (D) was handcuffed attempting to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, prompting calls for Noem’s resignation and more demands for troop withdrawal. Trump’s deployment has reinvigorated efforts to limit the president’s authority to deploy the military domestically through reforming the Insurrection Act.
Turkey: The 2016 coup and executive consolidation
The final case, Turkey, illustrates the most extreme rung on this escalatory ladder. Where Canada saw temporary overreach and South Korea witnessed an attempted, but thwarted, power grab, Turkey shows how a leader can exploit a manufactured or real crisis to fully entrench authoritarian control, using the military not just to suppress dissent but also to permanently remake the political order.
On July 15, 2016, factions of the Turkish military attempted a coup to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Although the coup failed within hours, it opened a critical window of opportunity for Erdoğan to consolidate political power. He swiftly blamed a religious network led by exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen for orchestrating the plot, despite a lack of credible evidence and Gülen’s denial. Citing the failed coup as justification, Erdoğan declared a national state of emergency and mobilized military and police forces to carry out sweeping arrests. Tens of thousands of alleged dissidents were detained, including opposition politicians, civil servants, journalists, and civil society actors—most who had no connection to the coup. These arrests effectively purged a wide swath of political opposition under the guise of national security.
The speed and scale of the arrests suggests that many suspects had been preselected well before the coup attempt, indicating that the failed coup served as a convenient pretext to execute a sweeping purge. Between 2016 and 2020, more than 150,000 public employees—including judges, academics, and civil servants—were suspended or dismissed. Roughly 80,000 individuals were formally arrested, often on dubious or fabricated charges. In the years that followed, independent media outlets were shuttered, judicial autonomy collapsed, and a culture of fear took hold across Turkish civil society.
The state of emergency was extended seven times and remained in effect for two years, allowing Erdoğan to continue his crackdown on civil liberties. In 2017, the AKP pushed through a highly controversial constitutional referendum that replacedTurkey’s parliamentary system with a powerful executive presidency, further consolidating Erdoğan’s authority and centralizing power in the hands of the executive.
Erdoğan showed that domestic military deployment isn’t just a tool to crush dissent—it can be used to dismantle democratic institutions and remake society. After the failed coup, he used emergency powers to purge the state, jail opponents, silence the press, and rewrite the constitution. President Trump’s 2025 deployments haven’t yet replicated Erdoğan’s power grab, but the warnings are there. By manufacturing a crisis, invoking nebulous calls for “law and order,” federalizing local police, and using the military to suppress protest and override local authority, Trump signaled a willingness to use force as a political tool. The Trump administration has called for additional military and National Guard forces to be deployed nationwide to assist with their controversial and unpopular deportation agenda despite this being a law enforcement function. Turkey shows where broad military deployments combined with authoritarian power grabs can lead.
Conclusion
From Canada to South Korea to Turkey—and now to the United States—domestic deployment in established democracies reveal a troubling pattern: executives invoking crises to justify crackdowns, concentrate powers, and erode civil liberties. President Trump’s 2025 deployments fit squarely within this global trend, marking another step in the authoritarian use of force to undermine democratic norms. Though the contexts may differ, the dangers are the same: politicization of the military deployments and the erosion of democratic institutions designed to constrain executive power. What distinguishes these cases is not just the rhetoric but also the response:
- During Canada’s 1970 October Crisis, even though there was a legitimate security threat and the military’s role was temporary and constrained, the deployment still restricted freedoms and sparked political backlash, which spurred serious reforms.
- South Korea’s 2024 coup attempt was the best response to an authoritarian power grab—a combination of peaceful mobilization of civil society, a legislature asserting its authority, and the restraint and professionalism of the South Korean military. This combination prevented a democratic collapse.
- Turkey’s 2016 military crackdown, however, indicates that authoritarians rarely stop with just a limited military deployment and instead view deployment as a powerful instrument in dismantling the country’s democratic foundations.
The United States has climbed further up that ladder. Trump’s 2025 deployments marked a decisive break: The use of military force not to address a real emergency but rather to stifle dissent and assert federal power. Efforts in Congress to hold the administration accountable for this unnecessary and dangerous escalation still lack enough bipartisan support to halt the president’s actions. In June, civil society mounted a swift, massive protest wave, further driving public opinion against this domestic deployment. And California has challenged the Los Angeles deployment in federal court, alleging the president’s use of the military violated federal law and the Posse Comitatus Act. The Trump administration is likely to continue deploying additional military forces to assist with their deportation agenda across the country, or under the guise of addressing a nonexistent crime surge, and congressional, civil society, and local response will determine whether the U.S. can prevent further breakdowns in civil-military relations.
History shows that once military force is used against a nation’s own people, the democratic damage can be difficult to undo. No democracy, no matter how established, is immune.