1. Defining the Problem
Pages 1-2
2. Internal Military Interventions before 1877
Pages 3-4-5
3. The Era of Industrial Warfare
Pages 6-7-8-9
4. Internal Military Interventions since World War II
Pages 10-11
5.Internal Military Surveillance
Pages 12-13
6. Internal War and the External Enemy
Pages 14-15-16
7. Relevance for Peace Researchers and Activists
Pages 17-18-19
Table I
Interventions
1886-1895
Page 20
Table II
Interventions
1921-1935
Page 21
Table III
Interventions
1943-1990
Page 22
References
Page 23
Copyright Agreement
Page 24
Given the great interest in recent years in the causes of war by peace researchers and in strategies for the abolition of militarism by peace activists, it is surprising that they have given so little attention to internal military intervention in Europe and North America. It is often recognized that internal interventions characterize developing or socialist countries, but few scholars have written on the relation of internal intervention to militarism in the Western powers. One exception may be found in the conception of the 'garrison states' by Harold Lasswell (1941), in which he expressed concern about the militarization of US society.
The present analysis focuses on the United States for two reasons. First, the USA is the dominant military power in the world today, and shifting from militarism to peace in the USA is of central concern. Second, US history is the one that I know best and about which I can make a detailed analysis (Adams, 1985).
When I began searching for data, I found to my surprise that there is no comprehensive list available of internal military interventions in the USA. Although official records for federal troops used in internal interventions are relatively complete, the records for state militia (National Guard) have been published by the federal government only for certain years. To get around this problem I have presented the available data in three tables, corresponding to the periods for which the data may be found. It will be argued that these periods are probably representative of the past 125 years of US history.
For purposes of the present analysis, I have accepted the government's own definition of what constitutes a military intervention, basing this on the government lists of interventions since 1943, as shown in Table III. This corresponds to what is called 'civil disturbances' or 'civil disorders' in the Congressional Record of 4 March 1968 and the Annual Report of the Chief of the National Guard Bureau for fiscal years 1968 to 1990. This includes all military support to civil authority except those operations in cases of 'natural disasters and other emergencies'. A similar distinction is made in the historical summaries for the Department of the Army on which the data for federal interventions are based.
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