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The wrinkle there is that the military swears their oath to the constitution, and my understanding is that a good chunk of the leadership is the product of 8 years of the Obama administration selecting officers for blue tribe loyalties. I doubt the military would go along with any red tribe attempt to subvert the constitution. Blue state national guards, and maybe a lot of the red states as well, would refuse to obey the president. Then you'd have yourself civil war 2.0.
My hope would be that the military would not go along with attempts to subvert the constitution by any tribe.
I am sure that the Obama administration picked military leadership leaning blue (or at least these able to cosplay someone caring about DEI) on general principle, just like Bush picked generals leaning red before. But I think neither picked people specifically who would more loyal to their tribe than the constitution. When Clinton lost to Trump, despite a general doomsday mood among the blue SJ people, the outgoing administration did not try to flip the game table. Nor would the military have gone along with it.
Generally, I find that different political attitudes come with different ideas on how to enact their policies. 'At the end of the day, what gets done is what men with guns and a willingness to kill want' (which I have seen expressed here, e.g. arguing against women's franchise) is very much right wing, MAGA. You will find rather few left wing activists cosplaying as a militia in military style outfits, or studying at an officer academy so they can later decolonize the US using tanks.
The SJ left really favors civilian institutions for enforcing their policies. Sure, at the end of the day, the decisions of these institutions are backed up with threat of force (e.g. the police), but that is an implementation detail any anyway their expectation is that it will not come to that. (Arguably, when protesters are hampering ICE, they are relying implicitly on institutions, e.g. due process and civil rights. In a state without these, like North Korea, it would be suicidal to annoy people enforcing the will of the government.)
The short version is that a central example of MAGA playing dirty is Trump sending his supporters to break into Congress and 'stop the steal'. A central example of the Dems playing dirty is them using prosecutorial discretion to engage in lawfare against Trump over real and imagined misconduct.
They did. It was called Crossfire Hurricane, and the intelligence community and FBI did go along with it. And it was extremely dangerous to our democracy.
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But that wouldn't be a civil war, it'd be like Korea where the martial law attempt failed because the military didn't really want to do a coup. If the military goes blue then the country is blue. If red then the country is red.
Only if the military actually divides then there would be a civil war. The US military really does not want to fight a potential nuclear war on US soil, against other Americans, they'll stay united, they might well decide to run the country from the Pentagon but they won't fight eachother. The moment they see the wind heading towards the blue side, they'll unite down that path, or vis versa. The Oklahomah National Guard or whoever do not want to fight massively outnumbered and outgunned, they'd lose.
And that's the point — our military does appear to be pretty divided. Hegseth vs. Obama-era generals. Red-tribe "tip of the spear" fighting men vs. women and "diversity" in the more logistical roles. Blue state National Guard vs. red state National Guard.
And I don't see how your "fear of internal nuclear war" will force them to stay united. The existence of nukes didn't prevent any of the post-1945 international wars, did it? Russia and NATO both having nukes hasn't prevented conventional war in Ukraine, has it?
My point is that either Hegseth or the Obama era generals get arrested or shot as the military assesses its position. It's not like there are two Pentagons, one for each side.
No nuclear power has ever fought a civil war, nor have there been any major wars between nuclear powers. NATO and Russia are not at war, Pakistan and India skirmish at most.
And the whole idea is very unlikely. Look at January 6th. Red Americans didn't even bring their guns to overthrow the govt. It was the fakest coup attempt in history, riddled with intelligence assets too. America is not prepared for a civil war, fundamentally unserious in political violence.
Hegseth sends his loyal men try to arrest/shoot the Obama Generals and their men; while, at the same time, the Obama Generals send their loyal men try to arrest Hegseth and his men, while both happen to be at different places — one side visiting the White House, the other at the Pentagon. Or, say, Hegseth's out at Cheyenne mountain when they try.
So picture this: you've got the Obama generals holed up in the Pentagon, issuing orders to the US military to uphold their oath and defend the Constitution from the domestic enemy, the rogue Hegseth and his lackeys who are illegally occupying NORAD; and you've got Hegseth holed up in Cheyenne Mountain, issuing orders to the US military to uphold their oath and defend the Constitution from the domestic enemy, the traitorous generals illegally occupying the Pentagon.
As for the rest of the military, the rank-and-file?
Oh, they're perfectly unified and in 100% agreement that it's their sworn duty to take action and protect the Legitimate Government from the Domestic Enemy…
…but they disagree quite strongly as to which is which.
What happens then?
Why would the officer corps as a whole be split? Either Hegseth commands the loyalty of the military (via purging and promoting the right cadres into key positions) or he doesn't and they topple him.
I don't see why they'd split evenly rather than cluster on one side. The key actors are all in Washington I think, the Pentagon, White House, NSA, DIA, Senate, Supreme Court and House. Controlling all that confers legitimacy and a fair bit of power.
Someone would control the troops in Washington and then they'd set the tone, determine who's the legitimate govt and who's the traitorous rats being swiftly brought to justice.
I mean, even leaving Washington during a major political crisis is a serious show of weakness, it kind of means they don't trust the troops there doesn't it? If they don't have authority over the capital, where would they have authority? It's a bad look to not control the capital.
Also, the US military (left and right) agrees that China is a massive threat, why would they decide to start killing eachother in the face of this powerful adversary rather than working out some compromise?
Thinking backwards, surely post-Soviet Russia is a far more favourable environment for a civil war than America today? Yeltsin torpedoed the economy, it sank like a stone. Oligarchs looting everything and a huge communist party - toxic combination! Military shelling Parliament with tanks. Very dodgy elections. No good reason to accept the legitimacy of the government, they created it only a few years ago. The national culture of Russia seems to be less law-abiding than the US too. But they kept it together. There seem to be structural reasons preventing civil wars.
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