Military police are nothing new, but the US Marines seem to be taking the concept to a new level, forming a growing number of new battalions of police meant not to police the military, but to be deployed abroad as a US-imposed police force for other nations.

The new “world police” battalions are being presented as a way for the US to quickly deploy police abroad for “anti-terror” or drug war operations, and it seems they won’t necessarily be confined to places under direct US occupation, and could be sent anywhere the US has designs on imposing a police state.

Military officials concede that the new system could be problematic, further blurring the lines between military and police and leaving it up to commanders to decide which laws actually apply to their deployments.

The move could reflect the repeated failure of the US government to create their preferred styles of police force out of wholecloth. Perhaps they figure installing US military police will be a simpler alternative, though it also risks even further mission creep and the prospect that the US will simply be directly owning and operating the open-ended police states they have so often backed abroad.