Back in June, when demonstrations started after George Floyd was killed, President Trump threatened to send the armed forces to restore order in cities. Military leadership made it clear that they would not allow their institution to be used to repress Americans exercising their constitutional rights. Trump, with the aid of the attorney general, improvised a paramilitary force to do what the soldiers wouldn’t. It was deployed to Portland, Oregon, and he threatened to send it to other cities whose local government would not crack down.

George Orwell once pointed out that “England has nothing corresponding to the gendarmerie, the semi-military police living in barracks and armed with rifles who are the guardians of society all the way from Calais to Tokyo.” The French prototype originated before the Revolution, in troops of cavalry who policed the countryside against bandit gangs, religious dissidents and mobs of starving peasants. Robespierre and Napoleon found it essential to continue and enlarge this paramilitary police, first to control disaffected regions of France and then to enforce French authority in conquered territories. Every government in Europe copied it. It exists to this day as a fourth branch of the French armed forces, alongside the army, navy and air force.