Barbara F. Walter has spent more than 30 years studying civil wars around the globe, and according to her new book, the US is a lot closer to one than most people think.
Walter is a political scientist and professor at the University of California, San Diego. She is a member of the Political Instability Task Force, a group of analysts that study data to predict where violence is most likely to break out.
In her new book, "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," Walter outlines three factors researchers have identified that presage civil conflict and explains in detail the ways in which the US exhibits those warning signs.
Walter writes that the same patterns have emerged in Bosnia, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Northern Ireland, and Israel.
One of the best predictors of civil war is if a country is moving away from democracy. If a country is anocracy, they are more likely to experience violence than full autocracies or democracies.
According to Walter, the US is an anocracy for the first time in more than two hundred years. The country's recent slip on the democracy scale started with the 2016 election, which observers said was marred by politically driven rules and Russian interference.
When the president refused to cooperate with Congress's first impeachment inquiry, the US slipped further on the scale. It slipped again after the January 6 insurrection.
Walter points tofactionalism as a warning sign.
She writes that countries that factionalize have political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology, and these parties then seek to rule at the exclusion and expense of others.
Walter points to a phenomenon known as "downgrading" as an indicator. A dominant group's loss of status in society is referred to as downgrading. She said researchers found that the most powerful determinant of violence was the group's political status.
She writes that people were more likely to fight if they had once held power.
The key is that the group feels a "status reversal," not just a political defeat, according to Walter.
Some whites think that Black Americans or other minority groups are being treated unfairly. She points out that Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" is a reference to those who feel they have lost something.
Where is the United States today? We are a factionalized anocracy that is quickly approaching the open insurrection stage, which means we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.
Walter says that a civil war today might look different than in the past. She points to examples of violence, like the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov.
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