President Donald Trump signed such an executive order on Monday, which directs his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, to develop so-called special units within the National Guard, which will be explicitly trained and armed to handle matters of public order in a country-wide basis, an action that is the first indication that he intends to increase the activities of the US military in the law enforcement operations within the nation. Retired Army Major General Randy Manner states that the plans are unnecessary and dangerous.
Special Guard units are made through executive order
According to CNN, President Trump signed an executive order on Monday stating that the National Guard units of each state are resourced, trained, organized, and available to aid federal, state, and local law enforcement in eliminating civil disturbances. When the new order was signed, Hegseth will be responsible for making sure that the Army National Guard and Air National Guard of each State are on hand to provide aid to law enforcement in keeping the people safe.
It also directs Hegseth to designate an acceptable number of each State’s trained National Guard members to be reasonably available to such purposes and provide a standing quick reaction force which will be available to deploy all over the country on short notice.ย There are still questions concerning how the order will be worked out in practice because the National Guard already has the reaction forces, created to react quickly to incidents.
Concerns raised by a military expert
Former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, Retired Army Major General Randy Manner, told PBS NewsHour that he believes this is unnecessary and also quite dangerous, and it is creating a new precedent. Under the leadership of Manner, who was at the time the vice chief, they had already established the capability of having quick response forces in all the states.
Important deviations as compared to current Guard missions
The similarity here is that it is centered on the order of the people, and that this really troubles Manner. The notion that a unit whose main business is to go anywhere in the nation to respond to a possible demonstration, or civil riot, as the president feels prudent to put the D.C. Guard into it, is not conformed with the mission of the National Guard, said Manner.
The point of difference is that the governors command the National Guard when such forces are not used by the president. No one is asking for this extra help, as Manner noted, not the mayor of D.C., but the mayor of Los Angeles. It is in this regard that the president is forcing the armed military to enter American cities.
Right now, Manner pointed out that Guardsmen on the streets of D.C. are not trained in law enforcement. But he said that whereas law enforcement officers have four to six months of training, our young men and women have three or four hours of training, not months. The deployment of the National Guard in each of these deployments reduces the military preparedness, as these soldiers are no longer training for their combat operations missions.
Implementation challenges and legal questions
It appears highly performative, Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force judge advocate who is now a law professor at Southwestern Law School, told CNN. But once again, it is in the details of how they intend to use them.
The executive order that Trump issued to create special units of the National Guard to undertake safety missions in urban areas is a major step in militarizing the enforcement of domestic law but has been criticized by the military scholars as having dangerous precedents and raises questions about the sufficiency of training, legal discretion, and the politicization of the military assets in the effort to combat urban crime.