How Civil Wars Start

And How to Stop Them

By: Barbara F. Walter

Narrated by: Beth Hicks

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A leading political scientist examines the dramatic rise in violent extremism around the globe and sounds the alarm on the increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States

“Required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

WINNER OF THE GLOBAL POLICY INSTITUTE AWARD • THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, The Times (UK), Esquire, Prospect (UK)

Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country.

Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it’s the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today.

Over the last two decades, the number of active civil wars around the world has almost doubled. Walter reveals the warning signs—where wars tend to start, who initiates them, what triggers them—and why some countries tip over into conflict while others remain stable. Drawing on the latest international research and lessons from over twenty countries, Walter identifies the crucial risk factors, from democratic backsliding to factionalization and the politics of resentment. A civil war today won’t look like America in the 1860s, Russia in the 1920s, or Spain in the 1930s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind.

In this urgent and insightful book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face—and the knowledge to stop it before it’s too late.

©2022 Barbara F. Walter (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“[A] bracing manual . . . Walter’s book lays out America’s possible roads to dystopia with impressive concision. Her synthesis of the various barometers of a country heading to civil war is hard to refute when applied to the U.S. . . . Indispensable.”—Financial Times

“Like those who spoke up clearly about the dangers of global warming decades ago, Walter delivers a grave message that we ignore at our peril.”—David Remnick, The New Yorker

“Rigorously researched and lucidly argued, How Civil Wars Start is an arresting wake-up call.”—Esquire

Critical reading/listening for the times

This book is crucial and the themes in it are woefully underreported. We are careening toward disaster with fewer and fewer chances to change course and avert crisis every day. Awareness is a start, and a necessary ingredient in solving what feels like an unsolvable problem. This book needs to be your next read/listen. It is so incredibly vital.

Timely Commentary

I appreciated this review of the history of civil war within my lifetime. What occurred in the countries where civil war broke out and in those that skirted it. The polity scores and the concept of anocracy was well defined and eye opening.

Interesting and useful, but hindered by bias

I enjoyed listening to this book and found it useful. However, in the final 2 chapters I found the author got a bit off track and unacknowledged biases became much more prominent. Overall I would recommend this book, but would be frank about some of the biases and assumptions that don't seem to be recognized or acknowledged by the author.

Very Important Reading for Our Time

So worth it if all you give is a listen to the last 10 minutes.

One day they will call our time "The Madness". Professor Walter says we must regain control of Social Media's grip on our psyche and unite again as a people before we succumb to our enemies plans.

Emotional

I see the ubiquitous divide between liberals and conservatives as I read some of these reviews on this book. Conservatives bash it, liberals rave it.

This book gives you some of the info you need to start understanding the topic, and I think it’s a good beginning. It’s not the ultimate analysis.

Now, unless you have not been paying attention, it’s not whether or not we’re on the brink of a civil war. We ARE already in a (cold) civil war. The violence has been steadily been spilling out to the streets. And with a heavily armed population, all the piles up hate all over, it just a matter of time the flames get to the powder kegs.

If you control your emotions, bias, impulses and approach this book rationally, you will see the parallel between what’s going on in this country today, and what history has shown us. Unless you refuse to pay attention.

Emotion is rational thought’s worse enemy.

Walter relies on tautology

This is a really interesting book overall and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about civil war. However, setting aside the fact that the U.S. was only coded as an anocracy for a single year, my main concern about the text is that Walter emphasizes the anocacy tautology. Although evidence once seemed to indicate that anocracy was a major cause of political instability, Vreeland's (2008) research shows that this was a tautological artifact of the data. As a result, I am surprised to see how central this tautology is to Walter's recently published book. I'm not sure if Polity 5 has fixed this problem, but the Polity scores we use to quantify regime type used to include civil war and other forms of political violence in their coding schemes. As a result, Vreeland shows that anocracies are violent by definition. This then becomes a meaningless tautology, because all it tells us is that civil war is correlated with itself. In any case, Vreeland goes on to show that when we take civil war out of the regime type coding scheme, Polity measures for anocracy cease to be significant predictors for civil war.

Chilling preview of coming attractions

This was a quick, but impactful read. In many ways a wholesale indictment of the modern GOP, it provides thoughtful analysis of the road to factionalism and conflict.

Now I am really scared

An excellent treatise well supported with examples and demonstrations. It is well written and easy to listen to. I am now very afraid for democracy in America

All of us

Every voting American needs to read and try to understand this book’s contents. Any citizen who thinks that violence or a new civil war would bring about a single improvement to what we are so blessed to have already, needs to think again.

What should be a required read for all Americans

What's really fascinating is reading the reviews by American right wing cultists (formerly known as Republicans), that can't seem to understand that the propaganda they absorb from right wing media is just that, propaganda. This leveling of activist movements such as BLM, as organizations looking to overthrow the government like the right wing authoritarian movement, is just fascinating to observe and ironically supports the content and conclusions of the book.

The book takes such a factual and analytical approach to the topic, that it's hard to argue with any of the conclusions. My one push back (possibly because of when the book was written, events are happening so quickly) is instead of 2028, I think the Chapter 7 hypothetical is more likely in 2024, when Trump will run, lose and then because of his mental illness combined with him knowing if he's not in office he risks imprisonment, will do exactly as described in the book, essentially start a false flag event.