Chapter 1
Democracy on the Brink: When Nations Turn Against Themselves
The year was 2017. Barbara F. Walter, a renowned civil war scholar with decades of experience studying conflicts worldwide, had just joined the Political Instability Task Force-a CIA-funded group of experts who predict civil wars globally. As she applied the same analytical tools to her own country that she'd used to forecast conflicts in places like Syria and Yugoslavia, a disturbing realization dawned on her: the United States was showing the same warning signs that precede civil wars elsewhere. This wasn't just academic speculation-it was the conclusion of one of the world's foremost authorities on political violence.
"How Civil Wars Start" quickly became a New York Times bestseller after its January 2022 release, with readers and critics alike stunned by Walter's prescient analysis of American democracy's fragility. The book has been praised by political leaders across the spectrum and cited in congressional hearings on domestic terrorism. Even more striking, Walter had completed the manuscript before the January 6th Capitol insurrection, an event that would later seem to validate her most alarming predictions.
Chapter 2
When Democracy Falters: The Danger Zone Between Freedom and Tyranny
What makes a country vulnerable to civil war? The answer isn't what most people think. It's not poverty, ethnic diversity, or even extreme inequality that best predicts civil conflict. Instead, the strongest indicator is a country's political structure-specifically, whether it exists in the dangerous middle ground between democracy and autocracy.
These hybrid regimes, termed "anocracies," offer citizens some democratic elements like voting rights while maintaining authoritarian powers with few checks and balances. They score between -5 and +5 on the 21-point Polity Scale that measures democratic qualities. Research shows these in-between systems are twice as likely as autocracies and three times as likely as democracies to experience political instability or civil war.
Why are these partial democracies so dangerous? They create a perfect storm of conditions. Their governments are typically weak-politically, institutionally, and militarily. Unlike autocrats who can crush dissent through brute force, leaders in anocracies often lack the power or ruthlessness to maintain control. Yet they also lack the robust democratic institutions that could peacefully resolve conflicts. These governments frequently appear disorganized, divided, and struggle to deliver basic services or security.
The speed of political transition matters enormously. Rapid regime changes-six-point or more fluctuations in a country's polity score-almost always precede instability. Civil wars are most likely to erupt in the first two years after dramatic reform attempts. When Iraq transformed overnight from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship to an attempted democracy in 2003, the result was catastrophic. Ethnic tensions that had been suppressed for decades exploded into violence. By contrast, Mexico's relatively peaceful democratic transition lasted nearly twenty years (1982-2000), allowing institutions to mature while the state remained strong enough to prevent conflict.
Perhaps most alarming is that countries can become anocracies not just by democratizing too quickly, but also by sliding backward from democracy toward autocracy-precisely what's happening in many established democracies today. When Viktor Yanukovych began consolidating power in Ukraine, the country's polity score slid to +4, approaching the civil war danger zone. Government institutions weakened critically. Parliament became dysfunctional, civil servants went unpaid, and militias formed. As philosopher Mikhail Minakov discovered when he tried to join the Ukrainian army to defend democracy, there was "no government, no police"-an institutional collapse that quickly spiraled into armed conflict.
The warning signs for America? Our own polity score has fallen dramatically in recent years, placing us squarely in this danger zone for the first time since 1800.
Chapter 3
When Identity Trumps Citizenship: How Societies Fracture
When Yugoslavia's authoritarian leader Josip Tito died in 1980, he left behind a complex ethnic landscape of eight peoples, five languages, and three religions. Though he had maintained control through a divide-and-rule strategy that created six republics while preaching "brotherhood and unity," his death unleashed long-suppressed ethnic tensions. Within just two years, Yugoslavia would begin its violent disintegration, introducing the world to "ethnic cleansing."
This pattern-where politics reorganizes around identity rather than ideology-represents the second major risk factor for civil war. Researchers call it "factionalism," and when combined with anocracy, it becomes the strongest predictor of civil conflict.
Factional systems score a 3 on a five-point scale from fully competitive (5) to fully repressed (1). Citizens can form parties, but at least one major party organizes exclusively around ethnicity or religion and favors its constituents at others' expense. These identity-based parties are inflexible with rigid boundaries between groups. They often form around dominant personalities who appeal to ethnic or religious nationalism rather than coherent policy platforms.
The risk escalates dramatically when "superfactions" form-groups sharing not just ethnic identity but also religion, class, and geographic location. Such groups are twelve times more likely to engage in conflict than more heterogeneous ones. The most volatile societies are those divided into two dominant groups, especially when one represents 40-60% of the population.
This dangerous factionalism requires "ethnic entrepreneurs"-opportunistic leaders who exploit identity divisions for political gain. These individuals, often at risk of losing power, cynically use a strategy called "gambling for resurrection." They control media to convince citizens they face existential threats from rival groups while simultaneously claiming their own group's superiority and right to dominate.
In Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic exemplified this pattern. After purging disloyal journalists, he controlled numerous media outlets that bombarded audiences with messages of Serbian victimhood. When citizens believe there's even a small chance their opposition might destroy them, they'll turn to protective leaders regardless of their scruples.
Division isn't stoked solely by politicians. Business elites seeking brand loyalty, religious leaders expanding congregations, and media figures growing audiences all function as secondary ethnic entrepreneurs. This network helped expand Yugoslavia's war beyond Croatia into Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In Bosnia, despite high intermarriage rates and the cosmopolitan capital Sarajevo, ethnic entrepreneurs like Radovan Karadzic amplified Milosevic's message. The Serbian Pale TV company seized Sarajevo's transmitters to broadcast nationalist propaganda, including mocking Muslim prayers and dehumanizing other groups. Citizens who once identified simply as "Bosnian" began identifying primarily by ethnicity. When Bosnia voted for independence in March 1992, violence erupted as Bosnian Serb forces quickly seized 70% of the territory and began the four-year siege of Sarajevo.
This pattern of factionalism now threatens even stable democracies. In India, Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist agenda has undermined democratic pillars while stoking religious tensions. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro exploited racial divides during economic downturn. And in America, politics increasingly revolves around identity rather than governance issues, with ethnonationalist rhetoric gaining traction as demographic shifts create uncertainty.
Chapter 4
When Status Slips Away: The Power of Loss
Chapter 3 explores how the loss of political status and power can trigger civil war. It begins with Datu Udtog Matalam, a respected Muslim leader in the Philippines who lost power when Ferdinand Marcos became president in 1965. After Matalam's son was killed by a government agent and his colleagues failed to offer condolences-a profound cultural insult-Matalam established the Muslim Independence Movement in 1968, calling for Muslim areas to secede.
This pattern appears repeatedly in conflicts worldwide. Civil wars often begin when once-dominant groups experience "downgrading"-losing political status they believe they're entitled to. Human beings are naturally loss-averse, and while they may tolerate poverty or discrimination, they rarely accept losing status in what they consider their rightful homeland.
In democracies, indigenous "sons of the soil" groups are typically downgraded through demographic shifts. In Assam, northeast India, local Hindu Assamese watched Bengali Muslims immigrate from Bangladesh starting in 1901. Between 1971-1981, Assam received 1.2 million migrants-the highest per capita influx in India.
The Assamese grew concerned as Bengali became increasingly dominant in homes, business, and government. They feared becoming a linguistic minority, losing political control, and facing economic disadvantage as Bengali farmers cultivated unoccupied land and educated Bengalis secured bureaucratic jobs. When election rolls showed a surge in Bengali voters in 1979, the Assamese formed resistance movements. Tensions escalated into the 1983 Nellie massacre, where local peasants killed as many as 4,000 Bengali immigrants-a desperate act by a downgraded population feeling threatened by demographic change.
Economic factors complicate this picture. While poverty alone doesn't cause civil wars, economic inequities aggravate existing resentments. Even unintentional economic discrimination creates resentment. Modernization and globalization favor educated, urban populations while disadvantaging rural "sons of the soil" groups. In pre-war Yugoslavia, rural Serbs resented wealthier urban Croats and Bosniaks despite Serbs' greater political power.
Climate change presents an alarming new threat, with the World Bank predicting 140 million "climate migrants" by 2050. The Syrian war exemplifies this-a devastating drought drove 1.5 million mostly Sunni people into Alawite-dominated cities, creating sectarian tensions. As natural disasters intensify, driving greater migration, downgraded groups will have even more reasons to rebel.
Chapter 5
When Peaceful Paths Close: The Death of Hope
The historical subjugation of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland illustrates how civil wars erupt when all peaceful options disappear. Their losses began with the Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century and continued through centuries of British colonization. The most devastating blow came in 1922 when Irish Catholics in the north were excluded from Irish independence. Britain kept the six northern counties under its control, deliberately drawing borders to ensure a two-thirds Protestant majority.
Protestants established Northern Ireland as "a Protestant state" and enacted undemocratic laws to exclude Irish Catholics from power. They denied Catholics equal voting rights by tying suffrage to property ownership, controlled housing allocation to favor Protestants, and discriminated in employment. This created a deeply divided society with two superfactions separated politically, economically, and geographically.
The turning point came in August 1969 with the Battle of the Bogside. What began as stone-throwing escalated when the Protestant-dominated police force invaded a Catholic neighborhood. When British soldiers arrived, Catholics initially welcomed them, believing they would provide protection. Instead, the soldiers treated Catholics as enemies, conducting brutal raids on their homes. By 1972's Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians, killing 14, "The Troubles" had officially begun.
Catholics had tried peaceful means for decades-protests, civil rights associations, sit-ins, and marches modeled after the American civil rights movement. When British soldiers sided with Protestants and targeted Catholics, hope finally died. Scholars note that civil wars typically begin not with the first injustice, but when a group loses all hope for peaceful change. The Provisional IRA stepped into this vacuum, offering an alternative path forward.
Syria's path to civil war followed a similar pattern. Assad's response to protests destroyed any hope for peaceful change. When he appeared on television on March 30, instead of announcing reforms as hinted, he blamed "terrorists" and offered no concessions. His belligerence triggered larger protests, which security forces met with increasing violence. By April, Daraa was surrounded by the army with tanks and snipers. Some security officers began defecting by June, refusing to kill civilians, and by July they had formed the Free Syrian Army.
Protests themselves don't cause civil war-they represent hope that the system will respond. It's when protests fail that hope dies and violence becomes attractive. Since 2010, protests have surged worldwide, reaching the highest levels since data collection began in 1900. Most concerning is that these protests are increasingly failing-their success rate dropped from 65% in the 1990s to just 34% since 2010.
Elections, like failed protests, can create dangerous moments in vulnerable countries. They become particularly destabilizing in highly factionalized anocracies when downgraded groups lose. Elections themselves aren't inherently dangerous-they typically give people hope for future change. But when the losing side believes it will never gain power, hope vanishes.
Chapter 6
The Digital Accelerant: How Social Media Fuels Conflict
Myanmar's rapid internet expansion became a catastrophe when Facebook entered the country. Between 2011 and 2015, internet access jumped from 1% to 22% of the population. Buddhist ultranationalists immediately weaponized the platform to target Muslims with viral hate speech and organize deportation rallies. Myanmar's military leaders created thousands of fake accounts spreading disinformation about the Rohingya to maintain power during the democratic transition.
Violence erupted in Rakhine state in 2012, with Buddhist mobs attacking Muslim villages while security forces watched. Despite journalists and human rights organizations repeatedly alerting Facebook about the connection between the platform and violence, the company remained unresponsive. The situation escalated to genocide in 2017, with an estimated 24,000 Rohingya killed, 18,000 women and children raped, and 700,000 forced to flee.
Since 2010, more countries have moved down the democratic ladder than up it. This democratic backsliding affects not just new democracies but also wealthy, established ones previously considered unassailable. The global shift away from democracy has tracked closely with the rise of internet, smartphones, and social media-perhaps the century's biggest cultural and technological change.
Initially hailed as democratizing tools that would connect people and encourage free exchange of ideas, platforms like Facebook have proven to be a Pandora's box. These platforms opened unregulated pathways for misinformation and disinformation, giving voice to previously marginalized charlatans, conspiracy theorists, and anti-democratic agents. What began as a small problem in 2009 exploded within five years, creating a clear pattern: as social media penetrated countries, ethnic factions grew, divisions widened, and violence increased.
Social media's business model requires keeping users "engaged" as long as possible to maximize advertising revenue. Studies show people engage more with fear than calm, falsehood over truth, and outrage over empathy. Posts with moral or emotional words get 20% more retweets, while "indignant disagreement" receives nearly twice as many likes and shares as other content. The recommendation engines create self-reinforcing information silos that channel users toward increasingly extreme content-what one computer scientist called "a radicalization pipeline."
Social media has become the vehicle launching outsider candidates with autocratic impulses to power. Disinformation campaigns influenced elections in at least seventeen countries. What's different today is the mechanism: autocracy now arrives through voters themselves rather than military coups. Social media allows candidates to sow doubts about democracy, attack institutions, stoke fear, and question election results.
Social media doesn't just drive democratic decline-it heightens ethnic, social, religious and geographic divisions that create factions. Algorithms encourage divisive content and segregate people by design, driving those with different values into diverging realities. As one Facebook executive noted, "Right-wing populism is always more engaging," triggering "incredibly strong" and "primitive" reactions by appealing to "nation, protection, the other, anger, fear."
There's no better organizing tool than social media for aggrieved people today. While it enabled positive movements like the Arab Spring, when combined with extremist narratives and violence-seeking individuals, it creates a powder keg. Extremists use the internet to find each other, organize, disrupt peaceful protests, share bomb-making information, and even access online arms bazaars.
Chapter 7
America's Descent: How Close Are We?
The January 6, 2021 insurrection demonstrated how close America has come to political violence. Trump supporters, convinced the election had been stolen, gathered at the Ellipse before marching to the Capitol. For years, Trump had normalized political violence, from offering to pay legal fees for supporters who roughed up protesters to suggesting "Second Amendment people" could stop Hillary Clinton, to praising "very fine people" after Charlottesville.
His rhetoric culminated in the Capitol siege, where thousands of supporters-many armed and prepared for violence-breached the building to stop the electoral vote certification, resulting in five deaths. Despite eventually telling them to go home, Trump praised the rioters as "very special" and urged them to "Remember this day forever!"
Political science offers a structured framework to analyze democracy's decline, which often happens so incrementally that citizens fail to notice it happening. The United States has officially become an anocracy for the first time since 1800, with our polity score dropping to +5-no longer ranking alongside stable democracies like Canada and Japan. We've lost our status as the world's oldest continuous democracy, with Switzerland now holding that honor.
America's polity index score has fluctuated since 1776, with the country briefly rated as an anocracy (+5) between 1797-1800 due to limited political competition under Federalist dominance. After the 2016 election, America fell to +8 due to partisan election rule changes and Russian interference. By 2019, after Trump refused to cooperate with Congress during impeachment, we dropped to +7. Following the 2020 crises and January 6th insurrection, America fell to +5-officially an anocracy.
Some democratic guardrails held firm against Trump's challenges. Courts dismissed over fifty election fraud lawsuits, the Supreme Court rejected his election challenge, and Republican state officials resisted pressure to overturn results. Military leaders maintained their constitutional role. Yet America's democratic decline has been alarmingly swift-dropping from full democracy to anocracy in just five years, which experts call "precipitous" and "unprecedented."
Race has become the strongest predictor of American voting patterns, with two-thirds of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans consistently voting Democratic while about 60% of white Americans vote Republican. This represents a dramatic shift from mid-20th century when the ethnic minority vote was split between parties and most white working-class Americans voted Democratic. As recently as 2007, whites were equally likely to identify with either party, but today 90% of the Republican Party is white.
Beyond race, other identity markers became increasingly politicized over decades. Religion emerged as a major dividing line when Republicans courted evangelical support through pro-life positions while Democrats embraced women's rights and abortion access. The parties have also split along rural-urban lines, with Republicans winning rural white voters through gun rights advocacy and stoking anxieties about immigration and changing demographics, while Democrats embraced urban diversity and gun restrictions.
By Obama's presidency, political division had become deeply intertwined with ethnic and social identities, with group affiliations becoming more politically important than policy positions. The Republican Party has transformed into what experts rate as similar to radical right anti-democratic parties like Turkey's AKP and Poland's PiS. It has become primarily ethnic and religious-based, elevating personality above principle.
For 219 years, America's leadership was dominated by white men, with a founding mythology that glossed over genocide and slavery. Obama's election shattered this myth, coinciding with demographic shifts showing minorities would outnumber whites by 2045. Many white Americans, particularly in rural areas already experiencing economic decline, felt abandoned by the government. Trump capitalized on this alienation, framing white Christians as victims whose legacy had been stolen, promising to "Make America Great Again."
According to CIA analysis, insurgencies develop in predictable stages. The United States likely entered the pre-insurgency phase in the early 1990s following Ruby Ridge and Waco, with militias forming nationwide. These groups surged after Obama's election, growing from 43 militias in 2008 to 334 by 2011. Unlike earlier left-leaning extremist groups, today's militias are predominantly right-wing with white supremacist elements, better armed and more numerous than their predecessors.
Chapter 8
The Shape of Violence to Come
Most Americans envision the 1861-1865 Civil War with uniformed soldiers on battlefields, but this outdated image prevents us from recognizing modern civil conflict. Today's civil wars avoid conventional battles against powerful governments, instead employing guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Modern combatants wouldn't gather in fields or wear uniforms-they'd communicate on encrypted networks, train in small groups across the country, and create chaos that forces Americans to choose sides.
Extremist movements are often guided by canonical texts. For American far-right extremists, "The Turner Diaries" serves as "the bible of the racist right," offering a fictional blueprint for an Aryan revolution overthrowing the U.S. government through terror attacks and mass casualty bombings. This text directly inspired Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing and influenced the El Paso Walmart shooter and Capitol insurrectionists.
Gregory Stanton's framework "The Ten Stages of Genocide" reveals how countries progress toward ethnic cleansing through seemingly innocuous early stages. The United States has already moved through the first four stages: classification (our deep ideological divides by race, geography, and beliefs), symbolization (Confederate flags, Proud Boys' orange hats), discrimination (racial discrimination in employment, housing, and voting rights), and dehumanization (rhetoric calling immigrants "animals" and "rapists").
We're now solidly in stage five, "organization," with militias like the Oath Keepers training and arming themselves, and possibly entering stage six, "polarization," as extremist Republicans endorse violence against Democrats while moderates face censure or threats. The seemingly normal early stages of genocide often go unnoticed until it's too late.
Today's American extremists embrace "accelerationism"-the apocalyptic belief that modern society must be hastened toward collapse to create a new order. Finding peaceful methods ineffective, they seek to trigger violence that will spark a chain reaction, hoping moderate citizens will join their cause once they witness government "oppression." The Boogaloo Bois represent a leaderless movement that emerged online, unified by their desire to trigger a second civil war despite lacking a coherent ideology or leadership structure.
Insurgents typically employ several strategies against powerful democracies. A war of attrition involves steady attacks on people and infrastructure to inflict pain until citizens demand government concessions. Intimidation targets government agents directly-law enforcement, civil servants, politicians, judges-to prevent rule enforcement. In America's gun-rich environment with legal militias and open-carry laws, this threat is amplified, especially in rural areas where federal reach is weaker and local law enforcement might support extremists.
The path to ethnic cleansing follows predictable stages, with a crucial shift occurring when a dominant group forms an army and leaders indoctrinate the population with fear, claiming "if we don't kill them, they will kill us." Contrary to common belief, genocide isn't primarily driven by hate but by fear-the existential anxiety that you must destroy your enemy before they destroy you.
U.S. gun sales hit an all-time high in 2020, with seventeen million firearms sold between January and October, primarily to conservatives responding to Democratic electoral gains. Many were first-time buyers driven by fears of lawlessness and government instability. Sustained terror campaigns typically push citizens ideologically rightward, favoring law-and-order candidates and bringing more conservative politicians to power.
Chapter 9
Choosing a Different Path: Preventing Civil War
When I was in college in the mid-1980s, South Africa seemed the likeliest candidate for civil war. With its apartheid system, anocratic government (+4 on the polity scale), minority rule, and white citizens who saw themselves as rightful heirs, South Africa possessed all the risk factors. Yet war was averted when economic sanctions from major trading partners forced a pragmatic calculation by new president F.W. de Klerk, who recognized that continued white rule would lead to economic collapse and an unwinnable conflict against the Black majority.
De Klerk lifted bans on Black liberation parties, restored press freedom, and released political prisoners including Nelson Mandela. This demonstrates the crucial role of leadership: while Mandela chose reconciliation over revenge despite 27 years of imprisonment, de Klerk's pragmatic reforms were equally essential in averting bloodshed.
Civil wars occur in less than 4 percent of at-risk countries annually, but they tend to repeat themselves because conditions driving original grievances remain unaddressed or worsen. Countries that avoid second civil wars typically strengthen their governance quality. My World Bank study of conflicts between 1945-2009 showed that nations doubling down on democracy by moving up the polity scale were less likely to experience repeated violence.
Three democratic features stand out as particularly important in preventing civil war: rule of law (equal application of legal procedure), voice and accountability (citizen participation in selecting government, freedom of expression and media), and government effectiveness (quality of public services and civil service independence). These features reflect how well a government serves its people and the strength of its political institutions.
Unlike many democracies, America lacks an independent, centralized election management system. Most new and established democracies like Uruguay, Costa Rica, South Korea, Australia, Canada, India, and Nigeria have central independent election systems that build trust in electoral processes. The Electoral Integrity Project found that U.S. elections from 2012-2018 scored lower than other established democracies, ranking alongside Mexico and Panama.
Strengthening the Voting Rights Act would help eliminate voter suppression and build trust. Automatic voter registration has increased turnout in states like California, Oregon, and Washington. Other needed reforms include addressing gerrymandering, which brings more extreme candidates to office by favoring primary voters who tend to be more partisan, and reconsidering the electoral college system that exacerbates urban-rural divides by giving small states disproportionate power.
Americans must understand how power operates in their democracy or risk losing it. A 2016 survey found one in four Americans couldn't name the three branches of government. Civic education has declined for decades but must be reinstated to teach youth how democracy works and the values needed to maintain it.
The United States has been slow to identify far-right infiltration of security services-a common threat before civil wars. A 2009 Department of Homeland Security report warned about rising right-wing extremism and noted veterans might be susceptible to recruitment, but was withdrawn after political pressure from congressional Republicans and veterans groups.
The best strategy to neutralize budding insurgencies is reforming degraded government: bolstering rule of law, ensuring equal voting access, and improving government services. The federal government should renew its commitment to vulnerable citizens across racial lines, reversing fifty years of declining social services and investing in education, healthcare, and higher wages.
Regulating social media would strengthen liberal democracies worldwide and minimize foreign meddling in domestic affairs. The Capitol insurrection revealed how U.S.-based extremist movements connect to global networks, with alt-right propagandists in Berlin and demonstrators in Tokyo supporting the rioters.
As America faces demographic shifts projected to make it a majority-minority nation by 2045, the country confronts the challenge of creating a truly multiethnic democracy. Despite initial resistance, places like California have thrived economically since becoming minority-white in 1998. America stands at the beginning of a remarkable new era with the chance to finally live up to its founding motto: E Pluribus Unum-out of many, one.
