How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them

by Barbara F. Walter

Ukraine could supply training and combat experience.

The Rise Above Movement (RAM), a white supremacist group based in California, has traveled to Ukraine for training with Azov Battalion.

During the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Göring was interviewed by a young American psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, who told Göring that he didn’t think the average person wanted to be dragged into war. Göring responded: “Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?…It is always a simple matter to drag the people along….All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and [for] exposing the country to greater danger.”

This existential fear leads to a domestic arms race, in which one group is made to feel insecure and, in an attempt to feel more secure, forms militias and purchases weapons, which in turn makes the rival group feel insecure, and so it, too, forms militias and purchases weapons—which then triggers the original side to arm itself even more. Both sides believe they are taking defensive measures, but the effect is to create ever more insecurity, which can spiral into war.

A broader movement among the left appears to be growing. In 2019, only 8 percent of terrorist incidents were perpetrated by left-wing groups; in 2020, it was 20 percent. Armed groups, such as the Socialist Rifle Association—which is dedicated “to providing working class people the information they need to be effectively armed for self and community defense”—and the Not Fucking Around Coalition (NFAC), a Black nationalist militia group that supports self-policing and firearms training in Black communities, have made appearances in Louisville, Kentucky, in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s killing, and in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to protest the nation’s largest Confederate monument.

The left-wing movement, with its loose association of subgroups, is also more diverse, including everyone from anarchists, radical environmentalists, and animal rights activists to anti-globalists, anti-capitalists, and gun rights advocates, which makes coordination more difficult.

Still, the specter of left-wing radicals flexing their muscle will be what right-wing extremists invoke—to stoke fear and, ultimately, justify their own violence. It will be the evidence they use to gain even more support for their movement.

Violence often springs from a sense of injustice, inequality, and insecurity—and a sense that those grievances and fears will not be addressed by the current system. But systems can change. No one thought that white South Africans would reform a system designed specifically to cement their dominance. But when the costs of maintaining that dominance became too high, and business leaders who were hurt by sanctions insisted on reform, they dismantled it.

Most countries that were able to avoid a second civil war shared an ability to strengthen the quality of their governance. They doubled down on democracy and moved up the polity scale.

When a rich country had a worse government than experts would expect given its prosperity, he found that it faced “a significantly greater risk of civil war outbreak in subsequent years.” So a wealthy country like the United States is more likely to experience a civil war when its government becomes less effective and more corrupt, even if its per-capita income doesn’t change.

Fearon found that “all good things tend to go together” but that three features stood out: “the rule of law” (the equal and impartial application of legal procedure); “voice and accountability” (the extent to which citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media); and “government effectiveness” (the quality of public services and the quality and independence of the civil service). These three features reflect the degree to which a government serves its people and the degree to which its political institutions are strong, legitimate, and accountable. Improvements in governance tend to reduce the subsequent risk of war.

In a 2019 report, the Electoral Integrity Project examined countries’ electoral laws and processes and found that the quality of U.S. elections from 2012 to 2018 was “lower than any other long-established democracies and affluent societies.” The

Strengthening the Voting Rights Act would go a long way toward eliminating voter suppression and deepening people’s trust in the system.

Canada focused on reaffirming voting rights after the center-left Liberal Party won a majority of votes in 2015. The 2018 Elections Modernization Act eliminated voter identification requirements, restricted political party and independent campaign spending and donations, expanded voting rights to include all Canadians abroad (even those who have lived outside the country for more than five years and are not planning to return), improved voter privacy, gave the commissioner of Canada elections more investigatory power, banned foreign donations, and required online platforms such as Google and Facebook to “create a registry of digital political advertisements” so that citizens could see who was trying to influence elections.

gerrymandering—the

The American system is structured to exacerbate the urban-rural divide by giving small states disproportionate power in the Senate. Since 2000, two presidents have lost the popular vote but won the election after electoral college victories.

Rather than manipulate institutions to serve a narrower and narrower group of citizens and corporate interests, the United States needs to reverse course, amplifying citizens’ voices, increasing government accountability, improving public services, and eradicating corruption. We need to make sure that all Americans are allowed to vote, that all votes count, and that, in turn, those votes influence which policies are enacted in Washington. Americans are going to regain trust in their government only when it becomes clear that it is serving them rather than lobbyists, billionaires, and a declining group of rural voters.

if Americans remain ignorant about how power operates in American politics, then people with nefarious purposes will step in and take it away from them.

This is a historical pattern. Milton Mayer, an American journalist who traveled to Germany in 1951, asked ordinary citizens about daily life in the years Hitler rose to power. One man, a baker, repeated a common refrain: “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.” Another German, a philologist, recounted that people could no more see it “developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

Many Americans just don’t want to believe that our biggest threat comes from within.

The report, however, led to an outcry among congressional Republicans and veterans groups, and the DHS was pressured to withdraw it.

the most important thing governments can do is to “remedy grievances and fix problems of governance that create the conditions that extremists exploit.” If America does not change its current course, dangers loom.

In the case of the United States, the federal government should renew its commitment to providing for its most vulnerable citizens, white, Black, or brown. We need to undo fifty years of declining social services, invest in safety nets and human capital across racial and religious lines, and prioritize high-quality early education, universal healthcare, and a higher minimum wage. Right now many working-class and middle-class Americans live their lives “one small step from catastrophe,” and that makes them ready recruits for militants. Investing in real political reform and economic security would make it much harder for white nationalists to gain sympathizers and would prevent the rise of a new generation of far-right extremists.

As Robert A. Johnson, head of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, put it: If America put “much more money and energy…into public school systems, parks and recreation, the arts, and healthcare, it could take an awful lot of sting out of society. We’ve largely dismantled those things.”

Not only do they make it harder for extremists to radicalize moderates, they also undercut the ability of extremists to step in and compete with the state to offer services.

What she found was the civic version of a church service: local citizens coming together to worship the Constitution and build their faith in our democracy. Instead of opening with a prayer, they opened with the Pledge of Allegiance. Instead of singing a hymn, they read a poem from an American author. Instead of reading a Bible passage, they read the Declaration of Independence.

Our shared history and ideals can inspire and guide us, reviving our national pride in a system that is truly of the people, for the people, and by the people.

“Only in America,” he says, “could this have happened.”

The gift to be ourselves. The gift to feel safe and free and to prosper.

Every day I see a vision of a more promising future: eager students, hardworking immigrants.

To fulfill the promise of a truly multiethnic democracy, the nation must navigate deep peril. We need to shore up our democracy, stay out of the anocracy zone, and rein in social media, which will help reduce factionalism.

This will give us a chance to avoid a second civil war. If we can do that, we might be in a position to tackle another looming threat: climate change. A warming planet will increase the number and severity of natural disasters, endangering our coastal cities, and causing heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts. It will also certainly increase migration from the global south to the wealthier, white north. In the absence of a strong and effective government response, it will tear at our social fabric.