Expert on civil wars says the US is heading toward insurgency — the 21st-century version of civil war

Extremists could be leading the US towards a civil war according to an expert.

Barbara Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, spoke to The Washington Post earlier this year about the perilous state of American democracy.

Walter has spent years studying civil wars, investigating risk factors, the difficulties of resolution, and approaches to ending the conflicts.

Each civil war was caused by its own unique set of factors. Walter told The Post that several patterns began to emerge as technology improved.

Anocracy is the first variable she mentioned. The term is used to describe how democratic or autocratic a country is. The most authoritarian and the most democratic are measured on a scale of negative 10 to positive 10.

The anocracy variable was found to be accurate in predicting which countries would be prone to civil wars. Civil war is not a risk for full democracies or full autocracies. Walter said that the middle zones are vulnerable to instability and violence due to weaker governments.

Walter said that the US had a positive 10 rating for many years. Since then, it has been raised to an 8.

The second risk factor, according to Walter, is when people in these unstable democracies begin to organize political parties along the lines of racial, religious, or ethnic identity, not completely different from the Republican Party's stoop toward embracing white supremacy in recent years.

She said that watching what happened to the Republican Party was the biggest surprise.

Walter talked about how the US seemed to be preparing itself for civil conflict during the Trump administration. Attendees accused her of fearmongering as she left.

People think about the first civil war when they think about civil war. That is what a second one would look like. That isn't the case at all.

She said that the US isn't heading toward a war between North and South. The country is at risk of civil war.

The United States is what the 21st century version of a civil war is called.

Insurgencies are often fought by multiple groups. Walter said that these extremists target infrastructure and civilians.

She said that her expertise in the ways of insurgency helped reduce the shock of the Capitol riot.

Walter told The Post that people who study this have seen these groups for over a decade. They have been getting bigger. They are training. We know that they have been in the shadows. I wasn't shocked.

Relief was the biggest emotion she felt after the siege. Walter said the public nature of the insurrection brought the cancer to the forefront of society.

Walter said that the US is not necessarily headed for all-out chaos. The threat grows stronger the more days go by.

She told The Post that countries that are put on the watch list have less of a civil war risk than others. It's not really small. Every year the risk increases because of those two factors.