Review: How Civil Wars Start

/ Eric Primm

Political science is a field that it seems like most people are engaged with poorly nowadays. We, average citizens, need to be involved in our political system, but most of us – including me – don’t engage in the rigorous studies that academic political scientists due. That doesn’t mean we can’t see the same trends, but our explanations tend to be more instinctual than fact based. This is why we need the field of political science. We need people to study the cause and effects of politics, and we need people to study this field with a rigorous methodology. Pundits, journalists, and opinion show hosts operate with an agenda then, sometimes, search for data to fit their opinions. Political scientists let the data shape their thoughts. The difference is important, especially when looking at trends with an eye towards identifying – and stopping – potential conflicts. Barbara F. Walter shows us how countries slide towards civil war in her aptly titled book, How Civil Wars Start. Walter analyzes past civil wars from around the world with an eye towards what caused them, and like all of life, it’s a complex subject. There’s no one event that triggers a civil war, and there’s no one solution to avoiding a civil war either. Walter’s book is a terrifying yet excellent look into societal trends that lead to tragedy. This is a book that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle should be studying.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.

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TL;DR

Barbara F. Walter draws on her experience and research to deliver exactly on the promise of the book’s title. How Civil Wars Start draws on historical analysis to point out the warning signs for trouble on the horizon. Highly recommended.

Review: How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter
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From the Publisher

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

“An imperative book for our time.”—Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist

“When one of the world’s leading scholars of civil war tells us that the United States stands at the brink of violent conflict, we should pay attention.”—Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die

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.

Review: How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter

Walter opens How Civil Wars Start by describing the lead up to plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan in 2020. This seems like an apt place to start determining whether a civil war is on the horizon for the United States. Walter goes on to list her background and experiences in studying civil wars. Her experience is extensive, which I appreciate. Part of her work has been interviewing survivors of civil wars to understand their experience; so, she peppers the book with conversations. This helps balance explanations of theory, keeping the non-political science reader engaged. Chapter one of the book deals with anocracy. This is the political state of a nation between democracy and autocracy. Walter’s writing here is both understandable to the layperson like me but also deep enough for those in the field. I found the anocracy chapter to be interesting and detailed. The rest of the book relies on this first chapter because a lot of the indicators for conflict happen in this transitional state from autocracy to democracy.

Walter spends six chapters explaining the indicators and warning signs for civil war. Then, she analyzes how close the U.S. actually is. I found this chapter fascinating and frightening. Walter breaks down the various rising threats to the U.S. in clear prose. But she is clear that she doesn’t think we, the nation, are on the brink of civil war yet. A few wrong decisions could lead us there easily, though. The final chapter is how to avoid it. This chapter is worth the price of the book alone. It should be required reading for everyone who goes into government

Both Left and Right

Throughout How Civil Wars Start Walter identifies a number of right wing, extremist groups that are more likely to start a civil war. Based on my casual conservative friends wondering about civil war on Facebook, I think her analysis is correct. However, the Right will simply call her a lib or socialist in order to ignore her findings. But the important part of her book is that it takes two sides to fight a civil war. Her analysis of the fall and decline of Yugoslavia shows how one side being taken over by a populist demagogue who engages in racial propaganda doesn’t necessarily mean civil war. It’s when the other side reacts with similar measures that precede a slide into conflict. While she correctly identifies extremist right wing groups as pushing the rhetoric, I think she could look more at how the Left has ignored the non-urban areas of the country. Maybe that’s beyond the scope of this book. But she does note that extremist left wing groups might join with extremist right wing groups at the start. Most conservatives will view this book through their victim complex despite the fact that she uses evidence based reasoning. I can already hear the “what-about’s” that will be used to ignore the warnings in this book. However, the piece that, to me, correctly indicates it will be right wing extremists instead of left is that those on the right perceive themselves as losing power. Whereas the moderate left sees their constituents gaining power. A clear indicator of this is gerrymandering and the removal of competitive elections. Both the right and the left are guilty of gerrymandering. This is surely one way to escalate the feeling of helplessness or that our votes don’t matter. Another is all the voting restriction laws that Republicans around the nation are putting into place. They know they’re an unpopular minority, and they know that demographic growth isn’t on their side. So, instead of losing power, they’re doing all they can to cement themselves and to remove public choice. The supposed party of ‘life’ want to make it illegal to give someone food or drink in the long voting lines that they created.

Social Media

It should come as no surprise that social media leads to radicalization. Social media has become a tool of terrorists worldwide, and it’s facilitating homegrown terrorism here in the U.S. Militia groups are able to recruit but also to collaborate with other groups. (See January 6th). Walter’s discussion of how social media drives this process is fascinating. She took something that I knew in general and filled in the specifics. Walter clarifies what drives social media companies, and she details how extremists and states use social media to divide and recruit.

Her analysis of how social media companies profit off creating extremists is frightening. It makes sense, and I wish social media executives cared about protecting democracy. Instead, they’re profiting off its decline.

Identity Politics

In How Civil Wars Start, Walter discusses identity politics. But I don’t think she focused on how the Left’s identity politics play into this. Her focus was the so-called sons of the soil groups. In the U.S. this would be rural, middle and upper class, white people who are losing power to demographic trends. So, how does the Lefts increased focus on identity politics affect this group? I’d love to see a study of this. Because I think their current focus on their own Right identity politics isn’t a backlash as much as an excuse to say things they normally wouldn’t.

Does the Left’s identity politics up the temperature on the Civil War? Unfortunately, we don’t get that analysis in this book. I would be very interested in Walter’s thoughts on this topic. She’s written such a nuanced and throughtfully researched book that I’d trust her to handle the topic delicately.

Civil War in the U.S.?

While Walter doesn’t believe the U.S. is headed towards a Civil War, I’m not so optimistic. Partially because of lurking on my conservative friends Facebook pages, I do believe the U.S. is headed towards a Civil War. At the end of her book, Walter gives strategies for avoiding Civil War. However, I don’t see the U.S. implementing these strategies any time soon. For example, she suggests strengthening the institution of voting by making it easier and by involving more people. She also suggest reforming campaign finance. However, both of these suggestions are against the interests of the Republican party. They are enacting laws to restrict voting as much as they can despite all evidence that the U.S. has secure elections. In addition, the Right continues to push disinformation about elections that will only get worse.

But it takes two to dance. And I see the moderate Left adopting some of the same strategies that pushed the Right towards extremists. For example, the calls to use political power to jail opponents is bad right now. Hearing all the calls for AG Garland to indict Trump over something is not conducive to making the Right believe the department of Justice is non-partisan. Process cannot be skipped, and just because ‘we’ are in power doesn’t mean we get to skip process in a just society. No matter who the ‘we’ is. The rise of Leftist political grifters on social media decrying that the end is near and that Biden must act is as bad an indicator as Right wing talk radio. If the Left continues to escalate their political corched earth tactics that mimic the Right, what else can the outcome be?

Conclusion

Barbara F. Walter’s How Civil Wars Start is an important work for political junkies and politicians. It’s a frank analysis of what puts civil peace in jeopardy, and Walter’s timely analysis is needed to hopefully cool rhetoric on both sides of the aisle.

How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter is available from Crown Publishing on January 11th, 2022.

© PrimmLife.com 2021

8 out of 10!