In my previous post, I discussed the militarisation of American policing and its adverse effects during the recent protests. Militarisation, coupled with a perceived lack of police leadership, accountability and trustworthiness, presents a worrying future for American policing and provides lessons for the international law enforcement community.

Accountability starts at the top. Police leaders set the tone for their forces. Policy development and implementation, training, enforcement of ethical standards and a willingness to cooperate with, and heed the recommendations of, external oversight bodies mould the environment in which policing occurs. Minimising efforts in any of these areas, through words or actions, can spiral out of control and leave police staggering from one problem to another.

Politicians are also accountable for what happens in their jurisdictions. Their words and actions define the space within which the community and police operate. What message did President Donald Trump’s ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’ tweet send? Do his remarks have any less power than those of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who gave shoot-to-kill orders for people breaking community quarantine rules during the Covid-19 pandemic and instructed police to kill anyone believed to be connected with the illicit drug trade?

Words can demonise some and empower others, perhaps to the detriment of all. Again, what message was Trump sending when he blamed Antifa for America’s problems while ignoring the far right? All too often, political rhetoric and re-election considerations overpower good public policy.

Accountability suffers most when the stars align and political expediency meets a politically compliant, or corrupt, policing establishment. Such an alignment was seen in Queensland during Joh Bjelke-Petersen premiership with the policing abuses under commissioner Terry Lewis. Similar concerns arise around the world. In China, police are used to override and constrain freedoms and human rights at the behest of their political masters.

In democratic societies, accountability occurs through the dispassionate application of the law without regard to political whims. The politicisation of public service has weakened the institutions on which accountability depends. America has a longstanding tradition of a winner-takes-all approach to elections that allows presidents, governors and others in leadership positions to appoint politically acceptable agency heads and functionaries, even if their qualifications are dubious. This is also occurring in the Westminster tradition. In Australia, various governments have used a ‘night of the long knives’ to install more politically palatable agency heads, endangering the long-held objective of a professional public service providing frank and fearless advice.

To maintain community support for policing, ensuring accountability through efficient and effective oversight is essential. The US Department of Justice has broad powers to investigate unconstitutional policing practices. However, the department conducted 12 investigations of law enforcement agencies for practices that violated the constitution during George W. Bush’s first term and 15 during Barack Obama’s, but has opened only one since Donald Trump became president. This is a worrying trend.

The apparent view of some US police that they are above the law is also reflected in the qualified immunity that shields them from civil liability for violating a civilian’s constitutional rights in most circumstances. The Supreme Court has upheld that doctrine numerous times. In Pearson v Callahan, for example, the court held that ‘qualified immunity balances two important interests—the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably’. That seems a reasonable argument, but the concept of qualified immunity appears to have been taken to extremes. And last week, the court decided not to hear a set of cases challenging the doctrine, effectively handing the issue over to Congress to resolve.

Perhaps this partly explains why, in 2019 alone, 1,099 people were shot and killed by American police. African Americans comprised 13% of the population, but 24% of those killed. (In contrast, England and Wales had a total of 55 fatal police shootings between 1990 and 2014; in Australia, there were 47 fatal police shootings between 2006 and 2017.)

Between 2013 and 2019, 99% of killings by police in the US did not result in officers being charged with a crime. That may change now given the recent civil unrest and calls for justice throughout the country. The proliferation of weapons in the US is clearly another key factor.

Qualified immunity doesn’t explain why the Minneapolis police use force against African Americans seven times more often than against whites. Nearly 60% of those subjected to physical force by the city’s police are black, even though African Americans make up only about 20% of its population.

Of course, institutional racism is not a peculiarly American phenomenon. Worldwide demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matter movement highlight the impact of racism in Western societies. Australian statistics and royal commission findings show that our policing is not immune to this pernicious cancer. In New South Wales alone, the number of Aboriginal people charged by police increased by 67% over the past 10 years, while the increase for non-Aboriginal people was 8%.

Australia has a different mix of constitutional and legal mechanisms to oversee policing. These important independent processes of accountability must be supported by proper funding and staffing. One need only look at the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and its backlog of finalised and ongoing cases to realise that more could be done. The old adage ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ applies.

In the end, policing is about trust. Communities trust that when they obey the law, they’ll be left alone to live their lives. They trust that, only where necessary, will police use their powers to maintain the peace. Communities trust that when police abuse their powers they’ll be brought to account, quickly and appropriately. In this complex environment there are no easy, short-term or ill-considered solutions.

Building and maintaining confidence requires providing mechanisms for community involvement in policymaking; having leaders who listen to their communities; ensuring strong and effective oversight mechanisms are in place; and reaffirming the community policing model based on the Peelian principles of modern policing. Only then will communities hold confidence in, and support the ongoing legitimacy of, police in our society.

A fortnight ago, while most Australians were safely tucked into bed, America’s Twitter-happy president took to his favourite platform to tap out another policy announcement. You never know what you’re going to get from @realDonaldTrump, and this was no different. Across three tweets he announced that his government:

will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis was on vacation at the time, and sources allege that he was appalled the president chose to unveil his decision in tweets. The US Defense Department has been waiting for formal direction and it’s now been reported that President Trump has approved a ‘guidance policy’ for implementation that will be delivered to Secretary Mattis.

Arguing that America’s soft power is in decline has become all too easy this year. A soft-power index out of the UK found that America has fallen from number one in the world to third this year, largely due to sharp declines in international polling. At home, Lowy Institute polling found that 60% of Australians say President Trump causes them to have an unfavourable opinion of the United States. The president’s announcement, and the callous way in which it was delivered, will only further chip away at America’s soft power. Uniquely in the world of international relations, much of this erosion can be tied to the president’s engagement with cyberspace and his abrupt style of digital diplomacy. No other leader has ever tweeted out policy announcements and given us their daily thoughts in real time.

But if you don’t give weight to the concept of soft power, let’s throw dollars into the equation. RAND estimates (PDF) that there are between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender personnel in active service and 830 to 4,160 in reserve. Given that they’ll no longer be allowed to serve ‘in any capacity’, the US military has an expensive recruitment drive in front of it. Earlier this year, the US Army budgeted US$300 million to recruit 6,000 additional soldiers.

The personnel that need to be replaced won’t all be in the army, and nor will they all be full-time. But these figures don’t take into consideration the expense of security clearances, training or replacing senior officers and intelligence specialists. Even applying a conservative lens to the figures, Trump’s ban—if enacted—will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. On the flipside, the financial burden brought on by transgender personnel who request financial support for transition-related medical treatment is estimated at US$2.4–8.4 million annually.

Several governments have come out online to condemn the ban. The Canadian defence force spoke about jobs, while also sending out a message about its commitment to diversity. Within 24 hours, a tweet from Canada’s Armed Forces welcoming Canadians of all sexual orientations and gender identities and imploring potential recruits to ‘Join us!’ went viral, racking up 33,000 re-tweets from around the world.

Commander of the UK’s Maritime Forces Rear Admiral Alex Burton tweeted: ‘As an @RoyalNavy_LGBT champion and senior warfighter I am so glad we are not going this way.’ Among the many tweets from the UK’s Second Sea Lord and Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, this stood out: ‘So proud of our transgender personnel. They bring #diversity to our @RoyalNavy and I will always support their desire to serve their country.’ Lieutenant General Patrick Sanders added, ‘The British Army is proud to have many transgender soldiers serving their country. Like all soldiers, they are prepared to lay down their lives for their country. We are a stronger and better Army for being inclusive and we benefit from the rich diversity of all represented in the British Army.’

Australia is one of the world’s 18 countries that allow transgender personnel to openly serve in their militaries. The Washington Post recently reported that an Australian Air Force diversity handbook (PDF) on gender transitioning had been labelled the ‘gold standard’. The government is about to release a foreign affairs white paper that has been repeatedly described as ‘a statement of values’. Last month, the government celebrated its election to the UN Human Rights Council, something our foreign minister and her department have been actively lobbying for since 2015.

All of which makes it incredibly surprising that the Australian government has said nothing about the triple-tweet announcement. They would have certainly seen our closest allies taking to their keyboards to condemn the absurd policy, making it clear to their citizens that they won’t be following suit.

Our political leaders and defence chiefs are long accustomed to an online world. They send out daily tweets, emojis and videos. In fact, the Australian Army has developed a particularly good reputation for its savvy social media use. But not a tweet from Australia. Zip from the dozens of social media accounts administered by Canberra. Nothing witty, nothing kind, nothing strong, nothing factual about Australia’s position on the inclusion of transgender personnel in—to borrow the military’s hashtag—#YourADF. So where is our voice? Only days after Trump’s Twitter storm, a diversity recruitment campaign was even launched that provided the perfect forum for our defence leaders to take a strong stance.

Last year Prime Minister Turnbull said that he wouldn’t engage in Trump commentary. He, his Cabinet and our defence chiefs shouldn’t be expected to comment on every development or tweet. Their time is incredibly valuable and most days they have bigger fish to fry.

Equally, however, as we get ready to take our seat on the UN Human Rights Council, how can we shirk important global debates like this? It is vital that our political and defence leaders speak out to publicly and proudly reinforce Australia’s commitment to values in times like this. Because the military’s hashtag is spot-on—it is #OurADF—and there’s nothing but shame in deafening silence.

Military coups—successful or otherwise—follow a predictable pattern in Turkey. Political groups—typically Islamists—deemed by soldiers to be antagonistic to Kemal Ataturk’s vision of a secular Turkey gain increasing power. Tensions rise, often accompanied by violence on the streets. Then the military steps in, exercising what the soldiers claim is their constitutional power to restore order and secular principles.

This time, it was very different. Thanks to a series of sham trials targeting secularist officers, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had managed to reconfigure the military hierarchy and place his own people at the top. While the country has been rocked by a series of terrorist attacks and faces a souring economy, there was no inkling of unrest in the military or opposition to Erdogan. On the contrary, Erdogan’s recent reconciliation with Russia and Israel, together with his apparent desire to pull back from an active role in the Syrian civil war, must have been a relief to Turkey’s top brass.

No less baffling was the almost amateurish behavior of the putschists, who managed to capture the chief of the general staff but apparently made no meaningful attempt to detain Erdogan or any senior politicians. Major television channels were allowed to continue to operate for hours, and when soldiers showed up in the studios, their incompetence was almost comical.

Planes strafed civilians and attacked the parliament—very uncharacteristic behavior for the Turkish military outside areas of Kurdish insurgency. Social media were full of pictures of hapless (and apparently clueless) soldiers being pulled out of tanks and disarmed (and sometimes much worse) by civilian crowds—scenes I never thought I would see in a country that’s come to hate military coups but still loves its soldiers.

Erdogan was quick to blame his former ally and current nemesis, the exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, who leads a large Islamic movement from outside of Philadelphia. There are obvious reasons for taking this with a grain of salt, but the claim is less outlandish than it may seem. We know that there’s a strong Gülenist presence in the military (without which the government’s earlier move against senior Turkish officers—the so-called Eregenekon and Sledgehammer cases—couldn’t have been mounted). In fact, the military was the last remaining Gülenist stronghold in Turkey, since Erdogan had already purged the movement’s sympathisers in the police, judiciary, and media.

We also know that Erdogan was preparing to make a major move against the Gülenists in the military. A few officers had already been arrested for fabricating evidence in earlier trials, and it was rumored that a large-scale purge of Gülenist officers was in the works for next month’s meeting of the Supreme Military Council.

So the Gülenists had a motive, and the timing of the attempt supports their involvement. It’s a supreme irony that the coup Erdogan long feared from the secularists may have eventually come from his one-time allies—who themselves were responsible for fabricating myriad coup plots against Erdogan.

Yet a bloody military coup lies very much outside the traditional modus operandi of the Gülen movement, which tends to prefer behind-the-scenes machinations to armed action or explicit violence. The coup may have been a desperate last-ditch effort, given the prospect that they were about to lose their last stronghold in Turkey. But, with so many unanswered questions about what took place, the emergence of many strange twists and turns in the coming weeks would be no surprise.

There’s less uncertainty about what’s likely to happen next. The coup attempt will add potency to Erdogan’s venom and fuel a wider witch-hunt against the Gülen movement. Thousands will be sacked from their positions in the military and elsewhere, detained, and prosecuted with little regard for the rule of law or the presumption of innocence. There are already alarming calls to bring back the death penalty for putschists, which recent experience shows is a very broad category for Erdogan. Some of the mob violence against captured soldiers portends a Jacobinism that would jeopardize all remaining due-process protections in Turkey.

The coup attempt is bad news for the economy as well. Erdogan’s recent, somewhat skin-deep reconciliation with Russia and Israel was likely motivated by a desire to restore flows of foreign capital and tourists. Such hopes are now unlikely to be realised. The failed coup reveals that the country’s political divisions run deeper than even the most pessimistic observers believed. This hardly makes for an attractive environment for investors or visitors.

But, politically, the failed coup is a boon for Erdogan. As he put it while it was still unclear if he was going to emerge on top, ‘this uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army’. Now that the coup has failed, he will have the political tailwind to make the constitutional changes he’s long sought to strengthen the presidency and concentrate power in his own hands.

The coup’s failure will thus bolster Erdogan’s authoritarianism and do little good for Turkish democracy. Had the coup succeeded, however, the blow to democratic prospects surely would have been more severe, with longer-term effects. That provides at least some reason to cheer.