How civil wars start : and how to stop them

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Walter, Barbara F.

Edition:

First Edition.

Physical Description:

xxi, 294 pages ; 22 cm.

Summary:

"A leading political scientist examines the dramatic rise in violent extremism around the globe and sounds the alarm on the increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States. Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country. Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it's the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today. Over the last two decades, the number of active civil wars around the world has almost doubled. Walter reveals the warning signs-where wars tend to start, who initiates them, what triggers them-and why some countries tip over into conflict while others remain stable. Drawing on the latest international research and lessons from over twenty countries, Walter identifies the crucial risk factors, from democratic backsliding to factionalization and the politics of resentment. A civil war today won't look like America in the 1860s, Russia in the 1920s, or Spain in the 1930s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind. In this urgent and insightful book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face-and the knowledge to stop it before it's too late"--

Contents:

Introduction -- The age of anocracies -- The rise of factions -- The dark consequences of losing status -- When hope dies -- The accelerant -- How close are we? -- What a war would look like -- Preventing a civil war.

Subject Term:

Civil war

Democratization

Domestic terrorism

Publication Info:

New York : Crown Publishing Group, [2022]

Subject:

Civil war

Democratization

Domestic terrorism

Civil wars

Intra-state war

Rebellions

Democratic consolidation

Democratic transition

SAILS ISBN:

9780593137789

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Bridgewater Public Library	303.6 WALTER 2022	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
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Summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A leading political scientist examines the dramatic rise in violent extremism around the globe and sounds the alarm on the increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States

"Required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government." --The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

WINNER OF THE GLOBAL POLICY INSTITUTE AWARD * THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, The Times (UK), Esquire, Prospect (UK)

Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country.

Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it's the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today.

Over the last two decades, the number of active civil wars around the world has almost doubled. Walter reveals the warning signs--where wars tend to start, who initiates them, what triggers them--and why some countries tip over into conflict while others remain stable. Drawing on the latest international research and lessons from over twenty countries, Walter identifies the crucial risk factors, from democratic backsliding to factionalization and the politics of resentment. A civil war today won't look like America in the 1860s, Russia in the 1920s, or Spain in the 1930s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind.

In this urgent and insightful book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face--and the knowledge to stop it before it's too late.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Political scientist Walter (Committing to Peace) issues a stark and deeply informed warning that the U.S. may be headed for another civil war. Drawing on her extensive studies of foreign conflicts, Walter highlights factors that make countries susceptible to sectarian violence, including a government that is neither democratic nor totalitarian, loss of status by a historically dominant ethnic group, and the closing of political avenues for change. Explaining how social media foments political instability, Walter notes that Facebook and other companies showed little inclination to police calls to violence and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, while providing a platform for anti-democratic political organizing even in countries with deep democratic traditions, such as Sweden. Drawing incisive parallels to societies in which ethnic grievances have been harnessed to mobilize armed forces for civil war, Walter notes the increasing visibility of right-wing militias in the U.S. Such groups--financed and abetted by white nationalists in other countries and America's geopolitical rivals--could eventually engage in armed struggle against the government. To avoid civil war, Walter writes, America needs to improve its democratic institutions by making elections freer and more open and increasing civics education. Distinguished by its lucid analysis and global perspective, this wake-up call rings clear. (Jan.)

Guardian Review

Barbara Walter does not expect to see a civil war in the US of the order of the conflict that tore the nation apart in the 1860s, but that's chiefly because civil wars are fought differently these days. And it's about the only comfort a concerned reader can take from this sobering account of how civil wars start and are conducted in our time. Walter is a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, and a consultant to various government and international agencies. She has studied civil wars and insurgencies for three decades, and in this book, she draws on her own work and that of other researchers to produce a typology of the descent into organized domestic violence. The key concept is that of "anocracy", a transition stage of government between autocracy and democracy. The transition can be made in either direction, and it is during the transition that most civil wars erupt. Autocracies possess sufficient powers of repression to keep potential insurgents in check; democracies allow dissidents means to effect change without resorting to violence. But when autocracies weaken, repression can fail, and when democracies ossify, the release valves get stuck. A crucial development in the road to civil war is the emergence of factions. Walter observes that in the early 20th century, civil wars were fought along lines of class and ideology. Hence the Russian revolution of 1917 and the Chinese revolution that began a decade later. But after the second world war, as the old colonial empires broke down, civil wars increasingly reflected ethnic and religious factionalisation. By the late 20th century, such fault lines lay at the heart of most civil wars. A case study to which Walter returns repeatedly is the breakup of Yugoslavia. Held together by the iron fist of Tito, who ruthlessly suppressed displays of religion and ethnicity, the country fractured spectacularly on ethnic and religious lines after his death. In that conflict, the Serbian leader Slobodan Milo¿evi? proved an archetype of another concept that Walter employs, the "ethnic entrepreneur". Milo¿evi? turned Tito's policy on its head, deliberately fanning ethnic and religious flames. Walter punctuates her account with recollections by individuals she has interviewed. One informant told of living in Sarajevo before the breakup began and hardly noticing the religious and ethnic differences among her neighbours. But after Milo¿evi? and his imitators engaged the propaganda machinery, the social fabric was torn asunder. Walter's source was at home with her young son in March 1992 when the lights went out. "And then suddenly you started to hear machine guns," she said. The factions most disposed to violence are those Walter and others call "sons of the soil". People with deep histories in a country, traditionally rural, they resent displacement by immigrants and urban elites. When their resentments are stoked by ethnic entrepreneurs, they are much more prone to violence than other groups. And the most important driver - the "accelerant" - of recent civil wars has been social media. "Social media is every ethnic entrepreneur's dream," writes Walter. She finds it not at all a coincidence that the world achieved peak democracy just before social media began to proliferate, and that democracy has been in retreat ever since. She notes that on the scale researchers in her field employ, the US in the last few years has slipped into the range of anocracy. The slide commenced in the 1990s with the emergence of partisan television networks; it continued with the efflorescence of Facebook, Twitter and weaponised talk radio. And then: "Into this political morass stepped the biggest ethnic entrepreneur of all: Donald Trump." Walter's recounting of Trump's assaults on decency and democracy is familiar yet still chilling. The good news is that the bad news wasn't worse. But we haven't seen the end of it. "America was lucky that its first modern autocratic president was neither smart nor politically experienced. Other ambitious, more effective Republicans - Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley - have taken note and will seek to do better." So what is a democrat to do? First, concentrate on improving the performance of government. The research of Walter and her colleagues shows that politics is more important than economics in starting or preventing civil wars. She suggests federalising election laws, curtailing partisan gerrymandering, curbing unaccountable campaign contributions and eliminating the electoral college. More vaguely, she recommends that government "renew its commitment to providing for its most vulnerable citizens". And social media must be regulated. "The US government regulates all kinds of industries - from utilities and drug companies to food processing plants - to promote the common good," Walter writes. "For the sake of democracy and social cohesion, social media platforms should be added to the list." Will this be enough? Walter hopes so. But she expects the domestic terrorism that has been on the rise since the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 will continue to get worse, that insurgents and militias - the civil warriors of the 21st century - will continue to proliferate, and that demagogues like Trump will continue to encourage them. Walter relates that amid the 2020 election campaign, she and her husband, who between them possess Swiss, Canadian, Hungarian and German passports, considered their exit strategy from the US should things get really bad. They even weighed up applying for Hungarian citizenship for their daughter. It didn't come to that. But they renewed their passports just in case.

Kirkus Review

The idea that a second American civil war is brewing is not alarmist hyperbole. "We are no longer the world's oldest continuous democracy," writes Walter, a professor of international relations who has written multiple books about the mechanics of civil war. Instead, the U.S. is now an "anocracy," a democracy on the road to becoming an autocracy. Chalk much of that decline up to Trump, of course, and those who abetted his efforts to establish an autocracy and preserve it by means of a coup. The image that should be brought to mind is not of columns of blue- and gray-clad soldiers meeting on battlefields; instead, it lies in the scattered rubble of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Walter locates similar circumstances in Ukraine and Myanmar, among other places where "elected leaders--many of whom are quite popular--start to ignore the guardrails that protect their democracies." Even though the number of democratic nations has grown markedly in the last century, the path to getting there is perilous, since entrenched power interests will always resist sharing their power. Another element of danger to popular rule is technological. "It's not likely to be a coincidence," writes the author, "that the global shift away from democracy has tracked so closely with the advent of the internet, the introduction of the iPhone, and the widespread use of social media." Amplifying radicalism and rewarding attack, such media undermine public trust and reinforce long-standing resentments, a critical component in an antinomian environment in which right-wingers "choose the strategy of the weak: guerrilla warfare and terrorism." Walter offers a few solutions: eliminating the Electoral College, reforming the Senate, and banning radical expression and disinformation campaigns on social media, for "curbing the dissemination of hate and disinformation would greatly reduce the risk of civil war." Arresting reading that identifies obstacles and dangers to democracy, many at the highest levels of government. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

Political scientist Walter (Sch. of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego; Committing to Peace) has authored a solid contribution to the field of conflict studies. Her book's central objective is to place the potential for violent civil conflict within the United States into a broad comparative context with other nations in conflict. Traditionally, the basis of violent conflict lies in reinforcing social cleavages, and Walter's innovative account narrates the cumulative impact of recent developments, such as the rise of social media and its role in spreading misinformation, particularly relating to immigration. The author tells how violence clusters in "anocracies"; that is, in regimes in transition from having been more democratic or more authoritarian. Walter shows convincing evidence of the erosion of democracy in the United States and the resulting potential for violence, including her contention that destabilizing change is aggravated by "ethnic entrepreneurs"--a conflict studies term for those who use social media to mobilize fear and grievance. Walter's scenario for actual civil war is less convincing, but still deeply sobering. The book accomplishes two major objectives: effectively examining authoritarian themes and strategies practiced by some elements in the Republican Party; and suggesting prescriptive polices to arrest the erosion of American democracy. Walter's use of data and comparative slant should promote serious debate. VERDICT Highly recommended.--Zachary Irwin, formerly at Penn State Behrend

Excerpts

Chapter 1 The Danger of Anocracy Noor was a high school sophomore in Baghdad when U.S. forces first attacked Iraq on March 19, 2003. At age thirteen, she had seen her country's leader, Saddam Hussein, condemn U.S. president George W. Bush on TV for threatening war and had heard her family talking around the dinner table about a possible American invasion. Noor was a typical teenager. She loved Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera. She would watch Oprah and Dr. Phil in her free time, and one of her favorite films was The Matrix. She couldn't imagine U.S. soldiers in Baghdad--where life, though sometimes hard, had mainly been about hanging out with friends, walking to the park, and visiting her favorite animals at the zoo. To her, it just felt unreal. But two weeks later, American soldiers arrived in her part of the city. The first sounds she heard were airplanes and then explosions late in the afternoon. She rushed up to the roof of their house, following her mother and sisters, not knowing what they would find. When she looked up at the sky, she saw armored vehicles floating under parachutes. "It was like a movie," she said. A few days later, American soldiers walked down the street in front of her house, and Noor ran to the front door to watch them. She saw her neighbors also standing in their doorways, smiles on their faces. The soldiers smiled back, eager to talk to anyone who was willing. "Everybody was so happy," Noor recalled. "There was suddenly freedom." Less than a week later, on April 9, her fellow Iraqis descended on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, where they threw a rope over the enormous statue of Saddam Hussein, and, with the help of American soldiers, tore it down. Noor thought to herself, You know, we can have a new life. A better life. Life under Saddam had been challenging. Noor's father had been a government employee, yet like many other Iraqis, the family had little money. Saddam's failed war against Iran in the 1980s had left Iraq poor and in debt, and things had gotten only worse in 1990 after he invaded Kuwait and economic sanctions were imposed. Noor's family, like most Iraqi families, struggled with rampant inflation, a crumbling healthcare system, and shortages of food and medicine. They also lived in fear. Iraqis were forbidden to talk politics or to criticize their government. They came to believe that the walls had ears, and that Saddam's security services were constantly watching. Saddam had been brutal to his enemies and rivals during his twenty-four-year reign. Iraqis who criticized the president, his entourage, or his Baath Party could be put to death. Journalists were executed or forced into exile. Some dissidents were imprisoned; others simply disappeared. People heard stories of how prisoners were tortured--their eyes gouged out, their genitals electrocuted--then killed via hanging, decapitation, or by firing squad. But now the Americans had come, and eight months after Iraqi citizens dragged Saddam's statue to the ground, U.S. soldiers found the fearsome dictator hiding in an eight-foot-deep hole near his hometown of Tikrit. He looked dirty and dazed. With Americans in charge, most Iraqis believed that their country would be reborn and that they would experience the freedom and opportunities available in Western countries. Families dreamed of experiencing true democracy. The military, and perhaps the judiciary, would be reformed. Corruption would end. Wealth, including oil profits, would be distributed more equally. Noor and her family were excited for independent newspapers and satellite TV. "We thought we would breathe freedom, we would become like Europe," said Najm al-Jabouri, a former general in Saddam's army. They were wrong. When Saddam Hussein was captured, researchers who study democratization didn't celebrate. We knew that democratization, especially rapid democratization in a deeply divided country, could be highly destabilizing. In fact, the more radical and rapid the change, the more destabilizing it was likely to be. The United States and the United Kingdom thought they were delivering freedom to a welcoming population. Instead, they were about to deliver the perfect conditions for civil war. Iraq was a country plagued by political rivalries, both ethnic and religious. The Kurds, a large ethnic minority in the north, had long fought Saddam for autonomy; they wanted to be left alone to rule themselves. The Shia, who made up more than 60 percent of Iraq's population, resented being ruled by Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, and his mostly Sunni Baath Party. Over decades, Saddam had been able to consolidate power for his minority group by stacking government positions with Sunnis, requiring everyone to join the Baath Party to qualify for jobs regardless of religion or sect, and by unleashing his murderous security forces on everyone else. A mere two and a half months after the invasion, Iraqis coalesced into competing sectarian factions, dictated in part by two fateful decisions by the U.S. government. In an effort to bring rapid democracy to the country, Paul Bremer, the head of the United States' transitional government in Iraq, outlawed the Baath Party and ordered that all members of Saddam Hussein's government, almost all of whom were Sunni, be permanently removed from power. He then disbanded the Iraqi military, sending hundreds of thousands of Sunni soldiers home. Suddenly, before a new government could be formed, tens of thousands of Baath bureaucrats were thrown out of power. More than 350,000 officers and soldiers in the Iraqi military no longer had an income. More than 85,000 regular Iraqis, including schoolteachers who had joined the Baath Party as a condition of their employment, lost their jobs. Noor, who is Sunni, remembers the feeling of shock around the country. Those who had been locked out of power under Saddam, however, saw their opportunity. Political jostling broke out almost immediately among figures such as Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia dissident who had returned from exile, and Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shia cleric who wanted Iraq to become an Islamic regime. Though the Americans had hoped to broker a power-sharing agreement among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, they soon acquiesced to the demands of Maliki, who wanted a government that, like the population, was majority Shia. For Noor, what resulted wasn't democracy. It was chaos followed by a power grab. Regular Iraqis, especially Sunnis, began to worry. If the more numerous Shia were in control of the government, what would prevent them from turning on the minority Sunnis? What incentives would they have to give them jobs, or share critical oil revenues? What would keep them from exacting revenge for Saddam's past crimes? Former Baathist party leaders, intelligence officials, and Iraqi army officers, along with Sunni tribal chiefs, soon realized that if they wanted to retain any power in the new democracy, they had to act fast. Nascent insurgent organizations began to form as early as the summer of 2003. They found easy recruits in Sunni cities and Iraq's Sunni-dominated countryside where citizens increasingly felt politically and economically aggrieved. As one Sunni citizen noted, "We were on top of the system. We had dreams. Now we are the losers. We lost our positions, our status, the security of our families, stability." Sunni insurgents didn't go after American troops at first (the Americans were too well armed). Instead, the insurgents focused on easier targets: those individuals and groups who were helping the Americans. This included the Shia who enlisted in the new Iraqi security forces, Shia politicians, and international organizations, including the United Nations. The insurgents' goal was to reduce or eliminate support for the U.S. occupation and isolate the American military. It was only afterward that the insurgents began to target American troops, planting inexpensive but highly effective roadside bombs along important supply routes. By the time Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003, guerrilla war had broken out. The fighting escalated in April 2004 when Shia factions began to compete for power. The most notorious was a Shia militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shia cleric who played on Shia nationalists' anger at U.S. occupation to gain support. He, too, targeted American allies and troops in order to convince the Americans to leave. By the time Iraq's first parliamentary elections were held, in January 2005, it was clear that Sunnis would play, at best, only a secondary role in government. Some hoped the Americans would step in to strengthen the constitution, or rein in Maliki. But the Americans had become worried about their long-term entanglement in Iraq and did little to intervene. As acts of violence toward coalition forces continued to escalate, so did fighting among Iraqis, who fractured into dozens of regional and religious militias to try to gain control of the country. Many had the support of the local population and received money and weapons from foreign rivals. "Saudi Arabia supported the Sunni militias, and Iran supported the Shia militias, and then you had Muqtada al-Sadr, who promoted himself," recalled Noor. "People everywhere started taking sides." Excerpted from How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.