How Civil Wars Start - and How to Stop Them

by Barbara F. Walter 2022

Book Review by Ray Herrmann

Civil War is most likely when nearly half the population are members of a weaker group which is being unfairly discriminated against and abused by a more powerful group to such a degree that they see no hope of resolution other than to defeat their dominator.

The U.S. is now close to a Civil War (Polity rating +5 since the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection), but could still avoid this. The things to look for are seemingly uncoordinated attacks designed to undermine our faith in our Government to keep is safe. And a flood of lies to make us confused. It's all about building up our fears and then offering a seeming solution if we choose "them".

This book has summarized decades of data on governments and social instability in order to predict when a civil war might break out. Of several datasets, the most relied on one has been compiled by the Polity Project at the Center for Systemic Peace. They have produced a 21-point scale ranging from -10 (most autocratic government) to +10 (most democratic government). These scores are the best predictor of social instability.

"Full Democracies" are those rated +6 to +10. { Rated +10 are: Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Canada and (until recently)the United States.} "Full Autocracies" are rated -6 to -10. { Rated -10 are: North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.} Anocracies are the name for those rated in the middle (-5 to +5). In Anocracies, citizens have some democratic elements (like elections), but also have presidents with authoritarian powers. It is the Anocracies who are most likely to fall into Civil War (a relationship discovered by the CIA in 1994).

Some characteristics that lead to Civil War:

• Countries that Factionalize (have political parties based on ethnic, religions, or racial identity) are the biggest warning of pending civil war. Superfactions are those that share the same religion, class and geographic location.
• Leaders that are ethnic entrepreneurs: Try to gain support by stoking a fear of other groups (like a fear of immigrants) and by fostering identity-based nationalism.
• Autocrats that put their political goals ahead of democracy by exploiting citizen's fears.
• The rise of Social Media has provided an engaging vehicle for the spread of myths, emotion and the politics of grievance.

Notes & Quotes:

• "People will often sacrifice freedom if they think it will make them more secure."
• Quote by Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
• As long as people have hope, they will put up with a lot of injustice …"

Some Examples of Leaders promoting Civil Wars:

• Yugoslavia was peaceful from 1953 to 1980 under Tito even though there were 8 ethnic groups there. Tito died, then Slobodan Milosevic played on ethnic divisions by rewriting their constitution, putting his supporters in charge and passing laws favoring the Serbs but denying rights to other groups. In 1989, Milosevic sent 15,00 troops and tanks to quash protests. Then he gave a speech to a million Serbs calling on them to "remove disunity". Hope was lost for the other groups and within two years Yugoslavia disintegrated into ethnic cleansing.
• India and Modi: The world's largest democracy is now threatened with civil war since the 2014 election of Narendra Modi as prime minister. India is 80% Hindu, 14% Muslim and 6% (Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists & others). Modi has called Muslims a "crop of two-legged animals" and he put extremists in charge of cultural and educational institutions, effectively writing Muslims out of cultural history. He also created a path to Indian citizenship that excludes Muslims. When Muslims and others protested in the streets, Modi unleashed a brutal crackdown.
    Yet, in 2019, Modi was re-elected with even more votes than in 2014! The violence that Modi seems to encourage serves his party by alarming moderate voters and convincing them that his claims are true. { This seems to occur a lot, which makes it pay for demagogues to incite violence. }
• Irish War: In 1922, Irish Catholics who lived in the north were not given independence by Britain like the rest of Ireland were. And Westminster revised the borders so Protestants made up 2/3 of the population. Protestants then proceeded to enact a series of undemocratic laws designed to exclude Irish Catholics. This created two "superfactions" because Catholics and Protestants were also divided politically, economically and geographically.
    Stability held until 1969 when over 10,000 Protestants intimidatingly marched by the Irish Catholic neighborhoods in Bogside. A riot started and on the third day, the British sent in 300 troops. But, instead of making peace, these troops treated the Catholics as the enemy. After three days, over 1000 people had been injured, buildings were burned and 6 people killed.
    Catholics were then convinced they were about to become victims of the Protestants. And Protestants thought Catholics were on the eve of an insurrection.
    Since 1968, the Catholics had tried peaceful protests, meetings and sit-ins. But the Protestants showed no interest in compromise. In 1972 the British soldiers entered Bogside and shot 26 unarmed civilians (“Bloody Sunday”). Catholics had lost hope and civil war was on.
• Syrian War: A drought from 2006 to 2010 drove hundreds of thousands of rural Sunni's into Syrian cities. This was the time of "Arab Spring" so these people had anticipated relief. Instead Bashar al-Assad, who was part of the wealthy, urban Alawite elite, did little to help them. Still, these Syrians were optimistic when protests began March 15, 2011 and so their demands grew more ambitious (improved education, end to discrimination in employment, end to government corruption).
    On March 18, 2011 the protesters were met by Assad's police and civil defense forces that shot tear gas. By late afternoon, Assad's elite security forces started shooting protesters. On March 25, the lights in Dara went out, cell phones were blocked and soldiers with rifles stormed a mosque, killing dozens.
    Assad called the protesters "terrorists" and offered no concessions. He said "If you want war, we are ready for war". …and so Syria has war to this day!
• Myanmar: In 2011, a military junta which had ruled the country for decades had agreed to civilian rule, but any rapid move from autocracy to anocracy is dangerous (per studies). Sure enough, a group of Buddhist (the majority) ultranationals rose up against the Muslims (the minority). These Buddhist's used Facebook to post hate speech and false stories and accusations against the Muslims, thus stirring up resentment. The Buddhists were joined by the military, and then by government leaders who did not want to antagonize the military.
    By 2012, violence broke out, stoked by false posts on Facebook (which had ignored the problem). In 2016, violence escalated and genocide began in 2017. By 2018, about 24,000 Muslims (Rohingya's) were killed and over 100,000 were brutalized, driving 700,000 to 1 million Muslims to flee.
• Duterte in the Philippines: In 2015, Rodrigo Duterte was a nobody, who had little money and little political support. But he hired a marketing consultant to build a social media army. Duterte used these platforms to exploit and amplify discontent, stoking citizen's fears of drugs proliferating and offering police crackdowns to restore order, while also spreading fake news and rumors about his opponents. Duterte won the election to become President of the Philippines in 2016. This established a pattern where autocratic outsiders can create and ride a wave of support into power.
• Bolsonaro in Brazil: In 2014, like Duterte, Bolsonaro was a nobody and had little money, but he was the first Brazilian candidate to campaign on social media. His YouTube videos and Facebook posts were brutal attacks on his opponents and conspiracy theories, which gradually gained popularity. Bolsonaro positioned himself as an alt-right outsider who was fighting for the people of Brazil. Six months later he won the presidency!
• Le Pen in France: The National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen, has 15 staffers who craft memes, and coordinate the party's attempts to discredit opponents on social media and to exploit racial tensions. This is the most sophisticated social media operation in France. And in a 2017 election the party won 22 seats in the EU parliament.
• Trump in U.S.A.: The author documents some of Trump's early actions, from his "Lock her up" chant, and "I'd like to punch him (a heckler) in the face" to his offer to pay legal fees of those who beat up protesters. She narrates the events of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, where Trump had used fear to goad his followers (on Twitter) to come to "The BIG Protest Rally in Washington D.C.". Once there, he told the crowd (again) that the election was rigged and to "Stop the Steal" and "If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." If those are not fear-inducing fighting words, don't know what are!
• Trump -Ethnic Entrepreneur: In his bid for power, Trump quickly realized that appeals to identity could galvanize his base. So he painted Black Americans as poor and violent, referred to Mexicans as criminals, called women "horseface", "fat" and "ugly". Once in power, he instituted a travel ban on Muslims and called Haiti, El Salvador and African nations "shithole" countries. He pulled us out of international agreements, started a trade war with China, and called white supremacists "good people". In all these ways, Trump was encouraging ethnic factionalism.
    Politicians, like Ted Cruse initially blasted Trump, calling him "utterly immoral", but later cowered to do his bidding when they saw it as a way to enact their agendas.

Threats:

• Conservative Strategy: Trump showed candidates how to lock in a subset of white voters by playing to concerns about status and to anxieties about the rise of minorities. White Americans who felt they were losing power in the last few decades voted overwhelmingly Republican. Almost everyone who had high racial resentment voted for Trump in 2016.
• Climate Change is predicted to lead to over 140 million "climate migrants" by 2050, according to the World Bank (likely from Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America). And the increase in natural disasters will disproportionately affect poorer, rural groups and create economic crises. It is during these times that discriminatory politics, economic policies and inept governments grow.
• Internet affect: Access to the internet began to increase in Africa in 2014 when social media became a primary means of communication (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). A series of fake videos incited violence in Ethiopia and in the Central African Republic. The global shift away from democracy correlates well with the advent of the internet.
    The internet gives dissidents a new way to organize and communicate. Charlatans, conspiracy theorists, trolls, demagogues and anti-democratic agents jumped to this huge new mass audience, widening social divisions and immigrant resentments.
    The problem with social media is the business model: To make money, these companies need to keep people of their platform for as long as possible, so they can charge $$$ for Ads presented. In 2009, Facebook introduced the "like" button, which told Facebook which posts were most popular. Then they (and others) wrote algorithms that watched users "likes" and posts in order to feed them articles which hold their attention. Studies have shown that the kind of information that keeps people engaged is exactly the type of information that leads them to anger, resentment and violence.
• Loser rationale: People throughout history spend time and energy trying to justify their cause: After loosing the Civil War, Southern groups like United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan crafted a narrative of a genteel South whose culture and way of life had been destroyed by the money-grubbing North.
    Similarly, in the wake of Trumps 2020 election loss, his followers felt that they didn't shut out immigrants; they just made them play by the rules. They weren't intolerant; they honored God. They weren't extremists; they were patriots who cared about their country. That's what they were fighting for.

How the U.S. is Moving Toward Civil War: Americans across the political spectrum are becoming more accepting of violence as a means to achieve political goals. Most insurgencies pass through similar phases of development.

• 1)Pre-insurgency phase: The group identifies a set of common grievances and builds a collective identity around a gripping narrative (the story or myth that rallies supporters and justifies their actions). They begin to recruit members and stockpile arms and supplies. The U.S. probably entered this stage in the early 1990's (Ruby Ridge in Idaho and Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas). By the mid 1990's militias were active in virtually all 50 states.
• 2) Incipient Conflict phase: Marked be discrete acts of violence (like McVeigh's bombing in Oklahoma city). This violence is often dismissed as the work of bandits, criminals or terrorists.
• 3) Open Insurgency phase: This final phase is characterized by sustained violence as increasingly active extremists launch attacks (terrorism, guerilla warfare, assassinations, ambushes and raids on police). These attacks involve a large number of fighters. There is often evidence of insurgent penetration and subversion of the military, police and intelligence services. The goal is to force the population to choose sides, partly by showing citizens that the government can't keep them safe and so they are the ones that should have political power.

Today, the U.S. is considered a factionalized anocracy that is quickly approaching the open insurgency phase. The January 6, 2021 siege on the Capital was a major announcement by groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys that they are moving toward outright violence.

Genocide: Genocide often occurs when the ruling group is made so fearful and hateful that, over time, they learn to de-humanize their perceived enemy. Genocide has recently occurred in: Europe's Nazis (Jews), Bosnia ("Bosniaks": Muslims and Croats), Rwanda (Hutus/ Tutsis), India (Muslims).
  The 10 Stages: Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination and Denial. more online.

• Guns and Genocide: Stage 7 (Preparation) is when genocide develops a means of self-defense. There is hate, but the real fuel is fear and violence entrepreneurs exploit the survival instinct to encourage you to destroy your enemy before they can destroy you. An armed population feeds into the fears that "the enemy" is armed and coming to get you, so you need to arm yourself and attack before its too late.

Ways to Reduce Chances of a Civil War:

• How South Africa avoided Civil War: In 1988 South Africa, then an anocracy, had all the risk factors for civil war and had a Polity rating of +4. But in 1986, The U.S. the European community and Japan had imposed strong economic sanctions. By 1989, South Africa was already in a recession when F. W. De Klerk became president and decided to focus on the countries survival. The country was 75% Black and poor, but if the economy collapsed, so would white wealth. So De Klerk lifted the 29 year ban on the black African National Congress and other black parties, restored freedom of the press and released Nelson Mandela!
    South Africa had been closer to civil war than the U.S. is today. So this is a good example of the power of leaders. They can compromise in the face of danger, or they can choose to fight. Prior president Botha had chosen to fight and the country was collapsing, while De Klerk and Mandela chose to compromise.   And the ability to get white businessmen to go along was buttressed by the pressure from the severe sanctions.
• Call for Regulation of Social Media: Noting that QAnon followers have joined with millions of Trump supporters in using the media and internet to spread big lies, perhaps it is time for the government to establish regulations of fairness here. Since the government regulates many other industries (like utilities, drug companies, food processors) it would serve the public good to establish rules for the media and internet. As it is now, any group can use the internet to stoke civil conflict.

I recommend reading this book to everyone, because it is so relevant to the times we are living through and a deeper understanding may help us recognize when we are being manipulated. History is full of examples where we were manipulated into empowering tyrants and even driven to commit genocide!