HOW CIVIL WARS START: AND HOW TO STOP THEM (audiobook) by Barbara F. Walter

 







Published in January of 2022 by Random House Audio.
Read by Beth Hicks.
Duration: 7 hours, 17 minutes.
Unabridged.

The author of How Civil Wars Start has an extensive background in studying exactly why some countries collapse into Civil War and other countries don't, even when everyone thinks they will, like South Africa after Apartheid.

The first half of the book is a look at countries that slid into Civil War and specific characteristics that tend to make Civil War more likely. Her team has come up with a scale and they get concerned when societies move quickly on that scale. It doesn't matter if they move quickly away from democracy or towards it - generally speaking moving quickly means that groups in power lose power and they don't like it and they lash out. A classic example of this is Iraq. The Sunni had almost all of the power under the dictatorship Sadam Hussein, but once he was overthrown the Shia majority took power and decided that it was time to get even - democratization brought on a civil war because one group feared losing power and another group couldn't wait to abuse their newfound power.

The author explains how her team studies modern examples of civil wars and starts listing out the warning signs. A careful reader will start to compare those clues to the current political climate in The United States

and start to notice uncomfortable similarities. 

This is intentional.

This book is meant as a warning. The author lays out a scenario in which militias start a terror campaign against state governments across the country. By the way, the very existence of group-based militias is a sign of major trouble. The Proud Boys were clearly heavily involved in the January 6 riot (as I am writing this, several are on trial and at least one has made a plea deal) and a group called Patriot Front had 31 members arrested for planning attack on a LGBTQ event in a city park in Idaho.

We are standing on a precipice. Do we fall in, like the former Yugoslavia and Iraq did, or do we somehow decide to go back to working together like South Africa did?

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW CIVIL WARS START: AND HOW TO STOP THEM by Barbar F. Walter.


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