How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them

After spending the first half of the book documenting the patterns and risk factors that predict where and when civil wars might break out, Walter turns her attention to the US. Like so many other individuals who lived through civil wars, the January 6 Insurrection shocked her, yet she notes that the events were also deeply familiar. Here, Walter introduces her final theme: American Democracy and Its Vulnerabilities. Walter’s goal is to help American readers see how politically unstable their country currently is in the hopes of preventing a second civil war. Walter documents how the US displays all four patterns and risk factors of civil war.

First, the US is now considered an anocracy due to its polity index score. While its Polity Score has dipped several times over the last 200 years, it has only been in the anocracy zone once before, between 1797 and 1800. Like other populist leaders, Trump attacked the core components of electoral democracies: free and fair elections, the press, freedom of speech, and the checks and balances system inherent to the US federal government. Trump expanded the power of the executive branch and also gave government jobs to his supporters, including family members. All these tactics led to the US Polity Score dropping into the anocracy zone.

The US has also seen an increase in factionalism. Walter emphasizes that the shift toward identity groups and identity-based politics is not new under President Trump. Rather, it has been happening over the last 40 years. Social media exacerbated the worsening divisions. Ethnic entrepreneurs on both the political right and left have spread propaganda and conspiracy theories to further division. As discussed in Chapter 5, social media platforms push incendiary content. These ethnic entrepreneurs capitalize on social media algorithms to increase their own rates and profit.

While Trump did not start this division, Walter argues that Trump is “the biggest ethnic entrepreneur of all” (146). His openly racist and xenophobic platform, which champions white Americans at the expense of all other identity groups, pushed the country to a score of 3 on the factionalism five-point scale, alongside Iraq and Ukraine. She also places blame for this increased political factionalism on the Republican party more broadly, which she believes “is behaving like a predatory faction” (147). Despite its lack of broad popularity, Republicans continue to push their populist agenda to appease their base and keep power at the expense of the US’s political stability.

The US also displays the third risk factor: loss of power by a sons of the soil group. In this case, white Americans represent the sons of soil. The US is becoming increasingly diverse, but this diversity is not evenly spread throughout the country. Urban areas are much more diverse than rural America. Moreover, economic opportunities are also concentrated in urban places. These changing demographic, political, and economic factors have led working-class white Americans, who for decades have been “hailed as the backbone of America” (150), to believe they are being left behind. Trump and the Republican Party more broadly exacerbated these feelings by focusing on the downgrading of white Americans. Walter expresses deep concern that the Republican party has become like other political parties that champion sons of the soil movements and exacerbate resentfulness along ethnic lines, many of which have led to civil war.

Finally, the fourth trigger for civil wars is also present in the US: the loss of hope. Republicans have now lost several major elections, including the 2020 presidential election, which has made them feel like the system is stacked against them. As a result, many Republicans believe violence is the only means through which they can achieve their political goals.

Walter also continues to build on her theme regarding Social Media’s Corrosive Influence on Democracy. She notes that “social media algorithms—and Trump’s rapid-fire tweeting—have reinforced the sense of aggrievement among white conservatives” (152). Research has shown that self-identified Republicans and conservatives are more likely than their left-leaning counterparts to spread misleading information on social media. This situation further exacerbates the divide between Republicans and Democrats by reinforcing that the two factions live in different realities.

The structure of the book up to this chapter helps reinforce Walter’s assertion that democracy in the US is at its most vulnerable point in centuries. In previous chapters, Walter meticulously details the risk factors and patterns that prelude civil wars, citing numerous examples from around the world. Thus, by the time Walter presents her evidence specific to the US in Chapter 6, readers have a sense of where the argument will go.

While Walter is deeply concerned about the US, she emphasizes some good news: We have not seen the end of its democratic experiment yet, which is contrary to many other examples she points to. Walter’s argument is a call to action. She wants readers to open their eyes to the political instability in the US to prevent a worsening of violence.