How Civil Wars Start

December 24, 2023 2:54 PM

"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."
posted by mittens (2 comments total)

Monkeytoes answered a question I had by recommending Jeff Sharlet's The Undertow which was absolutely terrifying, and a book Sharlet mentions is Barbara F. Walter's How Civil Wars Start. Her study of where unrest turns into war is as enlightening as it is chilling: It's not a matter of economic insecurity (which is the excuse we often heard from MAGA apologists), but starts with erosion of democratic principles. While the end of the book does try to set an optimistic tone, the bar for avoiding war just sounds so high after she spends the entire book detailing where other countries have gotten it wrong, and how much the US would have to fix, to mend its rifts.
posted by mittens at 2:58 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

link to actual book
posted by Ideefixe at 1:29 AM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]