Speaker 1: (00:00)
One year ago today, insurrectionists swarmed the us capital, shocking the nation, and leaving many wondering about how robust our democracy really is a new book coming out next week, looks at the conditions that lead to civil conflict in countries and searches for answers to avoid them. Barbara Walter professor of political science at the university of California, San Diego and author of the book, how civil wars start and how to stop them, joins us professor Walter. Welcome.
Speaker 2: (00:29)
Thank you very much. So
Speaker 1: (00:31)
Your book goes through the ingredients that often lead to civil war. What are the most important of
Speaker 2: (00:37)
Those? Yeah, so I've been studying civil wars around the world for the last 30 years. Places like Syria in Iraq, Mozambique, Northern Ireland. And one of the things that we've learned is that two factors in particular tend to emerge, um, in the lead up to civil war, no matter where they break out. And those two factors are what we call an in. That's a fancy term for partial democracy. It's a government that's neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic. It's something in between. And the second factor is whether a country's politics devolve into racial, ethnic, or religious politics. How big
Speaker 1: (01:19)
Of a role do you think racism plays in the, of our democracy? And also, do you think other nations have been able to further weaponize that against us?
Speaker 2: (01:29)
I think it plays a role. And the way I look at it is this, the us is in the midst of an enormous transformation. Um, an enormous transformation that many people aren't even aware of. It's a movement from the us being a, uh, a white majority country to a white minority country by 2045. The United States is expected to have a majority of citizens who are non-white. This has been deeply threatening to a subset of the white population here in the United States. And they're the one that have been participating in things like the January 6th attack on the capital. One of the things that we know from our studies of other countries, that experience civil war is we know who starts tends to start these wars. And it's not the poorest groups in society. It's not the immigrants, it's not the groups that are most against the groups that tend to start civil wars are the groups that were once politically dominant and have either lost power or are in the process of losing power. You've
Speaker 1: (02:36)
Studied civil conflicts in countries throughout the globe. Uh, is America today unique from other countries you looked at and how is it the same?
Speaker 2: (02:45)
Well, we like to think of ourselves as unique. Every country likes to think of itself as unique, but when you look at across countries and over time, and I've been studying civil wars since 1946, and there's been over 200 of them, you start to see patterns and these patterns emerge no matter what, the unique conditions of that country. So when I was serving on this task force, we never looked at the United States. We were not allowed to look at the United States. It didn't occur to us to look at the United States, even if we had been allowed to, but of course, over the last five years I've been watching what's happening in this country. I've been watching our democracy decline. I've been watching our politics become more, more and more racially determined. It used to be back even as late as 2008, white Americans were split almost evenly between the democratic party and the Republican party. In fact, for white, the white working class here in the United States, the democratic party was a better home for them because the Democrats tended to support social policies that has changed. Now, the Republican party is 90% white. And so I've watched this emerge. These two factors emerge over the last five years, and it was impossible not to not to inform the American public about what was going on.
Speaker 1: (04:07)
One factor. You mentioned that often sparks civil conflict is hopelessness. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: (04:13)
People don't generally like to, uh, use violence. People don't want war, but they turn to violence when they lose hope in the existing system. And here in the United States, I do think, uh, the, the subset of the white population that is deeply threatened by changing demographics has come to realize that democracy no longer works for them.
Speaker 1: (04:39)
Going back to, to the let's talk about hopelessness. What do you make though, of that in terms of who you feel is really, uh, causing a lot of the civil unrest and violence, uh, as it pertains to January 6th, you've got a group of people who have somewhat who have benefited and thrived in institutions of systemic racism. Now suddenly feeling hopeless. What are your thoughts on that? We know
Speaker 2: (05:06)
That far right militias have increased dramatically since 2008. Um, when Obama came into power, when he was elected president, I think this was just the, the physical manifestation of all of the fears of the far right. Um, especially white supremacists on the, on the far, right? The fact that we had an African American president, the fact that a majority of, uh, of his cabinet in his first term were non-white. Um, I think this put them into a panic. And you saw surge since then in the formation of these militias,
Speaker 1: (05:41)
In an essay for the New York times on last year's attack. Uh, former president Jimmy Carter writes that our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening Abys without immediate action. We are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. What types of immediate action do you feel are needed to bring the temperature down in this country?
Speaker 2: (06:05)
So I think there's three things that we can do. And, and we know the warning signs of, of civil war and political violence, it's democracy, and it's this highly racialized politics. If you know the warning signs beforehand, you can do something about it. So the three things that I think we could do right now are one, get the message out, inform Americans that, uh, the decline in democracy is far more dangerous than they actually believe. The real threat is not that we're gonna become an authoritarian country like Iran or North Korea. The real threat is that we're gonna become this in this that's this type of government that's that's in between. And that tends to be where much of the instability and much of the violence occurs. The second thing that we can do, um, is to get partisan politics out of, out of elections. Um, you know, the fact that parties are in, in charge of, of running elections at the local level, state level and counting the vote.
Speaker 2: (07:12)
I mean, this is unheard of in almost every other democracy around the world and they, then we have to strengthen our democracy, the United States for historical reasons, because we, we originally were a slave holding country, um, included in its constitution, all sorts of deeply undemocratic features that are, that are now archaic and are, are, are harmful to the strength and, and arrival of our democracy. And that includes the ability to gerrymander the, the filibuster, which actually came afterwards money in politics. Uh, all of these things are, are ways in, in, in which the minority can increasingly gain power at the expense of the majority. And the one thing that we have learned, um, by looking at all of these other cases outside the United States is that full liberal democracies don't experience civil wars. It's the ones that are in the middle. It's the weaker ones that do.
Speaker 1: (08:12)
I've been speaking with Barbara Walter author of the book, how civil wars start and how to stop them, which comes out next week. Professor Walter, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: (08:22)
It's my pleasure. Thank you very much.
