Â鶹ÒùÔº

In what's been called a ", President Donald Trump removed six top generals or admirals on Feb. 21, 2025, including Air Force General C.Q. Brown and Navy . Trump also fired who in combat and at home.

Over at the FBI, the president has tapped loyalists and to direct the executive branch's largest internal security agency. These men have in federal law enforcement but Trump's lies about the .

Trump has reportedly used —a²ú´Ç³Ü³Ù and that Jan. 6 entailed —to help vet appointees for senior national security and intelligence posts. Loyalty tests can screen for appointees who will and —e±¹±ð²Ô the law.

Further, Trump , to lead the Secret Service—the presidential guard unit. Curran's appointment meant senior service members in favor of what one news report called a "" who had but had .

Such coordinated personnel changes—, appointing loyalists to lead the FBI and selecting Trump's personal bodyguard to lead a security service—are consistent with a strategy of .

That personalization is a hallmark of throughout the world.

Loyalty to the leader, not the law

Security force personalism happens when the country's security forces by purging nonpartisan, law-abiding officers and promoting loyal officers who would never rise through the ranks on merit.

Whereas a professional military in a democracy is loyal to , personalist security forces are loyal to their leader.

Sometimes this process entails recruiting personnel from the leader's party or allied or . It may even include creating a paramilitary force, presidential guard or a new special forces unit staffed with officers and rank-and-file loyal to the leader. These forces then remain outside of the normal military chain of command.

Repressing dissent—and democracy

When leaders put loyalists in charge of the men with guns, it becomes easier to opposition from citizens, political figures and any dissenting military leaders.

That's for three reasons.

First, personalized security forces are more likely to follow the leader's orders to . Security forces loyal to Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, in when civil society groups mobilized to . Loyalist military or paramilitary forces in Russia and have similarly quashed public dissent in recent years.

Second, because citizens often know that personalized security forces are more likely to than to , opposition groups are . This makes it easier for leaders to , , and so they .

A few years after Ortega's forces killed protesters in the streets, he and the 2021 election.

Third, personalism of security forces weakens the power of other groups that might otherwise constrain the leader, such as elites in the ruling political party and even generals who oppose a leader's power grab.

If elites fear loyal security agents, they tend to when they disagree with the leader—or else, research shows, . Generals, too: Research finds that loyal security forces .

Leaders who don't give up power

on security force personalization in autocracies indicates that when leaders put loyalists in charge of security forces, peacefully through elections or protest becomes much more difficult.

Take the example of Syria, where President Hafez Assad came to power after a . The country had experienced since 1946. The biggest threat to Assad's power was another military coup.

To minimize this threat, he created a personalized security force by promoting fellow Alawites, a minority ethno-religious group, of the Syrian military. Assad subsidized and created an overlapping network of family-controlled security units outside the formal military.

Security force personalization . This is frequently the case because this process often purges competent officers and for senior officers to .

But it was useful for enabling the Assad family to the country blind and ensure that the leader's son, Bashar Assad, his father.

Syria under the Assads, and ruling party elites could not check the leader's power. When citizens mobilized peacefully in 2011 to oust the Assad regime, and imprisoned tens of thousands of Syrians.

The Assads' only ended after 12 years of brutal civil war.

Follow the money

Personalized security forces need money—both to ensure loyalty and to acquire the weapons needed when the .

So leaders who personalize their security forces must funnel huge sums of money to the most loyal units, sometimes making them more powerful than the regular army.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, for example, receives and . Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's , though smaller than the regular military, always had better equipment and training.

In 2003, his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to lead a new Presidential Guard Brigade and so he could control . The longtime the entire Ugandan Armed Forces. Age 81 and with his son in charge of the men with guns, his eighth term in office next year.

Security forces personalization in the US?

The purges at the Pentagon in late February will not transform the U.S. security apparatus into a personalized force overnight, nor will they likely spur . Even though the Constitution establishes , senior officers can .

But the firings do the military. So do other moves by Trump that signal greater ambitions to personalize the security forces, such as selecting loyalists to lead the FBI and Secret Service and purging the military lawyers who help soldiers abide by the law.

Look at the new faces and follow the money. Will the Trump administration bypass the senior ranks to promote junior officers whose military careers depend on Trump remaining in power? Will the "" that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to extract from the Defense Department instead a new security force?

The most serious sign of security personalization in the U.S. would be the creation of a new force outside the regular military chain of command—think the Department of Government Efficiency, but with guns. Pro-Trump military contractors are already calling for the government to fund a "" and deport immigrants.

If Trump seeks an in 2028, one potential scenario could play out: A loyalist praetorian guard like that would be a threat to security units still loyal to the .

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .