Protests in the United States: Pentagon chief rules out military

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The American secretary of defense distances himself from the president. In a statement Wednesday morning June 3, Mark Esper said he was opposed to the deployment of the armed forces in the United States to restore order. Yet that was what Donald Trump asked in his speech Monday.

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With our correspondent in Washington ,  Anne Corpet

It is a dismissal formulated by the Secretary of Defense. On Monday, the American president said he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act, a law of 1807 that authorizes the deployment of federal troops in the country when there are large-scale social unrest. "I am going to deploy thousands of heavily armed soldiers  ," threatened Donald Trump . But this Wednesday Mark Esper felt it was useless. He prefers to continue using the National Guard which is currently mobilized.

"  I have always thought and I continue to do so that the National Guard is best placed to help the civil authorities in this situation, in support of the local police, " he said. The option of using the soldiers of the American troops should only be used as a last resort and only in the most urgent and desperate cases. We are not currently in this situation. I do not support the invocation of the law on insurgency .  "

1,600 soldiers were positioned Tuesday June 2 in barracks near the federal capital to be ready to intervene. But the National Guard is already present in the streets of Washington, and if the curfew imposed in the city is still not respected by the demonstrators, the looting has stopped.

►Read also: Protests in the United States: Donald Trump opts for the strong way 

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