Her expertise in the ways of insurgents helped lessen the shock of the JanuCapitol riot, she said. These extremists historically target infrastructure and civilians, using domestic terror and guerrilla warfare, Walter said. Insurgencies tend to be more decentralized and are often fought by multiple, sometimes competing, sometimes coordinating groups. "That is the 21st-century version of a civil war, especially in countries with powerful governments and powerful militaries, which is what the United States is," Walter said. Instead, the country is at risk of insurgency, a form of civil war, according to Walter. The US isn't headed toward a North versus South war with countrymen fighting one another in the fields, she said. And, of course, that's not the case at all." "And in their mind, that's what a second one would look like. "When people think about civil war, they think about the first civil war," she said. She said she left "despondent," as attendees accused her of fearmongering. "Watching what happened to the Republican Party really was the bigger surprise - that, wow, they're doubling down on this almost white supremacist strategy," she said.ĭuring the Trump administration, Walter delivered a campus talk, in which she discussed the ways in which the US seemed to be priming itself for civil conflict. 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 dissimilar from many members of the Republican Party's stoop toward embracing white supremacy in recent years. Video: Syrian artist turns artillery shells into art Anocracy is measured using a scale of negative 10 to positive 10, with the former being the most authoritarian and the latter being the most democratic. The term is a measurement used to describe several factors related to a country's government, including how autocratic or democratic that country is. The first, she said, is a variable called anocracy. But as methodology and technology improved, Walter told The Post that several patterns began to emerge, two of which proved to be highly predictive. Walter, the author of " How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," has spent years studying civil wars, investigating risk factors, the difficulties of resolution, and approaches to ending the conflicts.Įxperts long believed each civil war was caused by its own unique set of factors, resistant to parallels or comparisons. 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 in a far-ranging interview that trended on social media this week. She said the US is poised for an insurgency, which is more decentralized.Īn expert in political violence says extremists could be leading the US toward a modern-day civil war.īarbara F. Walter told The Washington Post the US is displaying predictive behaviors for conflict. Brent Stirton/Getty ImagesĪn expert on political violence warned the US could be headed toward a modern-day civil war.īarbara F. Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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