dazhdinia Is Militia a thing we need?

[Walneria]

The following article has been published on a blog "Naša Pravda" on October 21st, 2022:

IS MILITIA A THING WE NEED?
-Written by Ŝepan Vjaʒovskyjъ

Dazhdin Militia in Dušanověcъ, Posąvragia

As many of us know, there are two main law enforcement agencies in Dazhdinia - the Militia (Mılicja in Dazhdin) and the Police (Policja in Dazhdin). Both of those agencies have their traces in the previous regime and as such, you can not rework everything from the ground up if you have spent the past 23 years stuck in a reformist cycle, that already has some rules set, but I feel it is time to ask the question, if we really want to maintain Militia in the state it is.

Militia, formerly known as the People's Militia, was and still is a law enforcement agency accountible to the Ministry of Defence, but tasked with carrying out duties on civilians, as well as serving as SWAT teams and military police. Its existence is primarily justified using following three arguments:

1. It is better to have two seperate agencies, one tasked with carrying out more dangerous missions and armed, with the other two serving as a more civil force, enforcing for example traffic laws or administering wellness checks etc.
2. Militia's position has been proven worthy by some of our neighboring states, most famously Walneria, where the Guard and Police serve as two complementary forces with seperate organization ladders
3. The separation of powers between the Police and Militia ensures, that if a populist party takes over one of the two, the other one is still able to carry out its duties

I wish to challenge those assessments. Firstly, Police has seen its tasks carried out by local law enforcements, such as city-employed police or any other local security agencies, while Militia is still pushed to carry out some tasks that are more a part of the Police's competences. If the Militia is absorbed into the Police, the new joined agency would be more flexible and could address the problems with staffing of some positions.

Then, while it is true that both a gendarmerie-like Guard and a civilian-like Police work in Walneria, it is based on their respective "besieged fortress" mentality, which has pushed them to maintain a lot of historical policies regarding their national sovereignity and ability to defend itself, including rather intrusive policing of public spaces, which is a problem addressed in our country on a different front entirely. The Federation of Dazhdinia is country reliant on the international community and as such is looking for foreing relations with other democratic nations, including cooperation. Walneria has the policy of self-reliance and only recently, it has stared to open to the international community a bit more openly. If Dazhdinia ever finds itself in the position of being seriously threatened from abroad, akin to what Walnerians percieve, we may very well find ourselves in a similar position, but at current time, I think Militia is an unnecessary luxury that only costs taxpayers money.

And finally, while the separation of powers is a great argument and has worked just fine in the case of Dazhdinia so far, we can just look east to Sawbrania and other undemocratic nations of our neighborhood, where we can notice that while their separated militia/gendarmerie and police/security forces really have different leaders, they exist rather as to keep the whole structure standing and prevent any one person from taking arms with their agency against the rest, as the remaining agencies, such as army and interior troops would quickly quell those attempts in a bloody demonstration of state power.

Let me know what you think on this topic!
@YKShchepan89 ; 2022-10-21 17:57 GSČ (UTC-1:00)

Edited October 23, 2022 by Walneria
Autocorrect is a terrorist (see edit history)