It is a bitter irony: the United States, self-styled as the beacon of democracy, is now experimenting with the very tools long associated with repressive regimes…
There was a time when America preached restraint, lectured the world on democracy, and wagged its finger at every government that used the military to settle domestic scores. Today, that same country has deployed soldiers into its own streets. President Trump’s decision to send the National Guard into cities like Chicago, Washington, and Los Angeles is not just political theatre. It is the slow cracking of a system that once claimed to be unbreakable.
For decades, African nations have been told that only weak states unleash the army on their people. Yet here we are, watching the supposed guardian of democracy resort to the very “third world” practices it condemns. It feels strange to see the stars and stripes flutter above military convoys patrolling civilian neighbourhoods. The land of the free has started to look like the land of fear.
Trump’s justification sounds familiar. He says cities are unsafe, governors are failing, and the federal government must restore order. That script has been used by many leaders across Africa who wished to appear strong while silencing discontent. The difference is that when those leaders acted, Washington called them tyrants. Now, the White House has decided that the same formula, soldiers in the streets, can cure a democracy’s growing unease.
In Illinois, a federal judge has already blocked the deployment. In Oregon, another has done the same, warning that the use of troops would inflame tensions rather than ease them. Even so, the message has already spread far beyond America’s borders: when power feels threatened, it reaches for the gun.
This is what makes the move dangerous. Other leaders are watching. If Washington can militarise dissent, then anyone can. It erases the last moral barrier that separates democratic authority from brute force. The African strongmen who once trembled under Western lectures now have a convenient reply: “We are only doing what the United States does.”
America has always served as both teacher and mirror. When it turns its back on its own principles, it gives license to every opportunist who believes power should never be questioned.
In Lesotho, we have lived through this before. The army was sent into communities under the banner of “disarming criminals.” Instead, civilians were beaten, tortured, and in some cases, killed. Reports from Amnesty International described people stripped, assaulted, and left to rot in detention. Nobody was held accountable. The government’s silence was telling.
The Biden administration, said nothing. Not a word condemning the torture. Not a statement demanding justice. It taught our leaders that the world does not care, so long as you wear the label “ally.” That silence has cost lives.
And now, with the United States flirting with the same militarised instinct, it becomes almost impossible for Washington to call anyone else out. The preacher has joined the sinners.
What we are witnessing is not a momentary lapse but a shift in how power justifies itself. Soldiers are being rebranded as peacekeepers, and dissenters as threats to national unity. It is a dangerous vocabulary. Once a nation convinces itself that order must come before freedom, the rest is predictable: arrests, intimidation, and silence.
The United States may recover from this. Its institutions are stronger than ours. Its courts are still willing to say no. But even if it does recover, the damage is done. The world has seen the mask slip.
America’s moral authority was never in its might but in its example. If that example fades, it leaves the world darker. Lesotho’s weak leadership, already prone to abuse, now has cover. Other fragile democracies will follow. Every soldier deployed on a city street will trace their justification to the country that once claimed to be the world’s conscience.
The lesson is brutal but clear. Democracy dies not in coups, but in small compromises that feel reasonable at the time. Today it is “restoring order.” Tomorrow it is “ensuring stability.” Before long, the citizen becomes the suspect.
America should know better. And so should we.
