WI: The Organization of a US Military Dictatorship

I am an ignorant when it comes to military organization in the United States. Assuming a scenario where the Joint Chiefs or whatever may be overthrows the civilian government for whatever reason (atomic conflict, instability, Rumsfeldia, etc), and sidelined the civilian government, how would that government look? How would it be organized?
 
I am an ignorant when it comes to military organization in the United States. Assuming a scenario where the Joint Chiefs or whatever may be overthrows the civilian government for whatever reason (atomic conflict, instability, Rumsfeldia, etc), and sidelined the civilian government, how would that government look? How would it be organized?

Stephen King´s "Long Walk" had such a government in charge.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
Political legitimacy in the continuity of government is

I am an ignorant when it comes to military organization in the United States. Assuming a scenario where the Joint Chiefs or whatever may be overthrows the civilian government for whatever reason (atomic conflict, instability, Rumsfeldia, etc), and sidelined the civilian government, how would that government look? How would it be organized?

Political legitimacy in the continuity of government is and has been a major issue in US policy and practice since the Articles of Confederation, and there are innumerable references to how that has been, and would be, accomplished, even in the middle of disaster.

As an example, in the middle of the Civil War, the US held congressional and presidential elections.

Bottom line, even in the aftermath of WW III, there would be a civilian-led government with a clear line of sucession to the pre-war government.

Best,
 
The U.S. military in more than two centuries has had approximately zero interest in being in control of the United States.

That is mostly true, but it's not an irreversible trend. Suppose MacArthur wins his confrontation when Truman backs down and that starts a trend of the US military disobeying politicians and making their own decisions, that could lead to a military being interested with being in control of the US.
 
That is mostly true, but it's not an irreversible trend. Suppose MacArthur wins his confrontation when Truman backs down and that starts a trend of the US military disobeying politicians and making their own decisions, that could lead to a military being interested with being in control of the US.

Heck of a hypothetical.

A much more common form of disobedience by military personnel against the president is foot dragging.

In the late 1990s, President Clinton ordered the deployment of 12 Apache helicopters to a base near the former Yugoslavia so they could support a possible ground force there.

Those helicopters could simply be flown from Germany in a couple of hours.

Instead it took the U.S. TWO MONTHS to move them!!

Why? The U.S. military was hard against sending ground troops into Yugoslavia and they saw this as an opening move for that. So they used every possible reason to avoid moving the helicopters. Including sending a contingent by M-1 Abrams tanks by ship to help guard the base the helicopters were going to be using.

Note, the base was in Italy. Why they needed heavy tanks to guard a base in a long time NATO members territory was never explained.
 
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