President Trump is hardly the first modern American leader to call for military force to crush dissent.
Ronald Reagan, a future president, did it as governor of California in the late 1960s.
And Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 on a law-and-order platform.
Historians note that while there are many parallels to the Vietnam era, Trump’s approach to quelling nationwide protests diverges and could cost him the election and harm the military’s reputation.
“Many of the outbreaks of violence in American cities in the late 1960s, almost all of them were triggered by instances of police brutality,” said Edward Miller, an associate professor of history at Dartmouth College who specializes in the Vietnam War era.
“And its almost always cases involving white policemen committing brutality against black civilians,” he added.
The National Guard was also mobilized in many cities to respond to anti-war protesters and violence.
“One of the striking parallels to me between what’s happening now and what’s happened previously has to do with Ronald Reagan’s actions when he was governor of California in 1969,” said Miller.
Clashes between protesters and local police at People’s Park near the campus of the University of California at Berkeley on May 15 led Reagan to send in 2,700 National Guard troops.
Guard troops then occupied the university for two weeks, dispersing tear gas on protesters from helicopters that sickened schoolchildren throughout the city.
A year later, Reagan defended his decision to use force.
“If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement,” Reagan said.
Similarly, Trump told governors on a leaked Monday call that they needed to use force.
“When somebody’s throwing a rock, that’s like shooting a gun,” he told governors. “We had a couple of people badly hurt, and there’s no retribution. So you have to do retribution, in my opinion.”
Miller said he does not recall historical uses of the “martial language” spoken by Trump and defense officials on the Monday call, but he said Reagan did imply using violence.
“Reagan’s comments about the bloodbath is sort of the first thing that came to mind where he seemed to have been suggesting that it was necessary to use security forces in a way that was likely to result in the use of deadly force,” Miller said.
The military loses its prestige
George Washington University military historian Ronald Spector said historical uses of the National Guard and military for domestic disturbances have turned society against the military.
“In the late 19th century, the National Guard was used to break up strikes, and that didn’t make them wildly popular,” he said.
“You don’t get the popular adulation of professional military people until World War II, and then in the Vietnam era, of course, the military loses that prestige,” he said. “As a matter of fact, the status of the military in popular opinion during the 60s and early 70s is very, very low.”
Spector said the ritual of public praise for the military did not return until the post-9/11 era.
Miller believes former Trump Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis and ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen likely had the Vietnam era in mind when they took the unprecedented step to criticize the president’s heavy-handed response to protesters this week.
“I believe that their comments are shaped, at least in part, by this memory of Vietnam and the post-Vietnam War era, when U.S. popular opinion of the military was really at a nadir,” Miller said, noting that ingrained in military officers is civilian control of the military and its apolitical nature.
“Especially if the military does appear to be being used in a political way to gain domestic political advantage,” he said. “I think they’re very concerned about what the implications for that might be for civilian-military relations.”
Trump has also recently stressed his concern for law and order.
In 1968, Nixon won the presidency on a law-and-order platform, then consolidated support and won reelection overwhelmingly in 1972.
“Trump, as many people have noted, seems to have borrowed many pages from Nixon’s playbook,” said Miller.
Nixon and Trump similarly sympathized with protesters.
“Nixon would express sympathy for the general anti-war goals of the protesters, but then say, ‘But you’re going about it the wrong way. And so, therefore, it’s necessary for me and for other leaders to use force to suppress these protests,’” said Miller.
“Nixon was essentially able to have it both ways,” he explained.
Nixon won conservative supporters of the war who also embraced his law-and-order agenda, and he won moderates, even some liberals who were critical of the war but sought an orderly disengagement.
“Nixon’s strategy was to try to unite the center and the Right against the Left. Trump’s strategy has always been to play first and foremost to his conservative supporters,” Miller said. “In that sense, Trump does seem to be different.”
