ACADEMIA Letters Self-coups and the military in the Americas Dirk Kruijt Kees Koonings 1 Abstract The memorandum of the U.S. military command on the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters raises the question of so-called ‘self-coups’ and the role of the military in besieged democracies in the Americas. We explore the legacy of Latin American self-coups in relation to the Trumpist insurrection. Our hypothesis is that, although the U.S. military have come out in support of democracy, their positioning implies a potential convergence between the U.S. and Latin America’s political problems. The U.S. military and democracy under siege “The American people have trusted the Armed Forces of the United States to pro- tect them and our Constitution for almost 250 years. As we have done through- out our history, the U.S. military will obey lawful orders from civilian leadership (…) in accordance with the law, and remain fully committed to protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and 1 Kees Koonings is professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Amsterdam and associate professor of Anthropology and Development Studies at Utrecht University. Dirk Kruijt is emeritus professor of Development Studies at Utrecht University. The authors published Political armies. The military and nation building in the age of democracy. London: Zed (2002) and are currently editing The Latin American military and politics in the 21st century: A cross-national analysis, to be published by Routledge in early 2022. Academia Letters, April 2021 Corresponding Author: Kees Koonings, C.G.Koonings@uu.nl Citation: Kruijt, D., Koonings, K. (2021). Self-coups and the military in the Americas. Academia Letters, Article 730. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL730. 1 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0