According to media reports, the Pentagon has ordered the National Guards in the USA to set up “quick reaction forces”. These should be trained and equipped to combat unrest within the USA and be ready for use by the beginning of next year, reported the “Wall Street Journal” and the “Washington Post” as well as the British newspaper “The Guardian”, each citing internal documents from the US Department of Defense.
Accordingly, there are up to 500 National Guardsmen per US state or more than 20,000 soldiers nationwide. According to the Wall Street Journal, they should be trained to control crowds, deal with those arrested and use batons and stun guns. Most National Guard units in the various states already have “quick reaction forces.” However, these have not been used for law enforcement or crowd control in the past, the newspaper reported.
The National Guards are military reserve units and part of the US armed forces. They are normally under the control of the federal states and can be used in the event of natural disasters, civil unrest or domestic emergencies. In certain situations, the US president can take command – for example, if there is a threat of rebellion against the government’s authority or if he is otherwise unable to enforce US laws.
National Guard deployments controversial under Trump administration
The media reports suggest that the US government under Donald Trump plans to further expand the use of the military domestically in the future. In the past few weeks and months, it had already sent National Guard troops to several democratically governed cities to take action against allegedly escalating crime and protests against raids by the migration agency ICE.
This often happened against the will of the state and city leaders – and is currently being heard in several US courts. Critics question the legal basis of the action and accuse Trump of using the National Guard to demonstrate his power and intimidate political opponents.
