"How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," a book by Barbara F. Walter
Barbara F. Walter, a civil war expert, said the US is closer to violent conflict than many think.
In her new book, Walter identifies three factors that increase the likelihood of a civil war.
Her book, "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," was released earlier this month.
Walter – a political scientist and professor at the University of California, San Diego – is one of the world's leading experts on civil wars. She's a member of the Political Instability Task Force, a group of analysts that study data to predict where volatility and violence is most likely to break out.
In her new book, "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," which came out this month, Walter outlines three factors' researchers have identified that presage civil conflict and explains in detail the ways in which the US exhibits those warning signs.
"Civil wars ignite and escalate in ways that are predictable; they follow a script," Walter writes, adding that the same patterns have emerged in Bosnia, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Northern Ireland, and Israel.
She said one of the best predictors of civil war is if a country is moving towards or away from democracy. If a country is an "anocracy" – a term used to refer to countries that are not fully democratic or fully autocratic but somewhere in between – they are more likely than both full autocracies or democracies to experience violence.
Today, the US is an anocracy for the first time in more than two hundred years, according to Walter, who cites the Polity Project, a nonprofit that measures how democratic or autocratic a country is. Walter said the country's recent slip on the democracy scale started with the 2016 election, which observers said was marred by politically driven rules and Russian interference.
The US slipped further on the scale during President Donald Trump's term, when executive powers expanded and the president refused to cooperate with Congress's first impeachment inquiry, Walter said. And then it slipped again, after the January 6 insurrection.
Another warning sign Walter points to is "factionalism," a specific kind of political polarization.
"Countries that factionalize have political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology, and these parties then seek to rule at the exclusion and expense of others," she writes, adding that Trump especially catered to Americans along ethnic and religious lines with a focus on white evangelical Christians.
Finally, Walter points to a phenomenon known as "downgrading" as another predictive measure. Downgrading refers to a dominant group's loss of status in society. She said researchers have found the "trajectory of a group's political status" was the "most powerful determinant of violence."
The republican party started losing their political power during the Bush 41 presidency, and now they're willing to go to war, to get it back. Even if it means destroying the Country and bringing an end to Our Republic.
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