How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F Walter review –
sounding the alarm
This compelling history delineates the path from
democracy to autocracy – and warns that the US is heading the wrong way
Scalzo/EPA
HW Brands
Thu 13 Jan
2022 07.30 GMT
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 iIn this book she draws on her own work and
that of other researchers to produce a typology of the descent into organised
domestic violence.
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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
Milošević proved an archetype of another concept that Walter employs, the
“ethnic entrepreneur”. Milošević 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
Milošević 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 most
important driver – the ‘accelerant’ – of recent civil wars has been social
media
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.
HW Brands is professor of history at the
University of Texas, Austin. How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is
published by Viking. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at
guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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