249. Barbara F. Walter on How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, including in the United States

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2022

⏱️ 105 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 is a professor of political science and an expert on international security, with an emphasis on civil wars. Her current research is on the behavior of rebel groups in civil wars, including inter-rebel group fighting, alliances and the strategic use of propaganda and extremism. She has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq 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. 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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show.
0:11.6	Welcome to the... The Michael Sherman Shower Show.
0:16.0	Welcome to the Michael Sherman Show. I'm your host Michael Sherman.
0:17.0	My guest today is Barbara F. Walter,
0:20.0	and her new book is How Civil Wars Start and how to stop them, which just made the New York Times
0:26.5	Best Sellis, I think for pretty obvious reasons that this could happen here.
0:31.5	It almost did in January 6th, sort of almost. We'll talk
0:34.6	about that in the conversation, but how it could happen in 2024. So we do get
0:38.9	into details of all that. Barbara is a professor of political science and Row chair and Pacific
0:46.4	international relations at the school and an adjunct professor at
0:51.0	UC San Diego Department of Political Science. She's an
0:54.4	expert on international security with an emphasis on civil wars. Her current
0:59.6	research is on the behavior of rebel groups and civil wars including inter rebel group
1:04.3	fighting alliances and the strategic use of propaganda and extremism.
1:10.2	Barbara Walter received her PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and completed postdoctoral research at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and at the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.
1:24.4	Walter is on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review,
1:28.6	International Organization, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly.
1:37.0	He is also the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including awards from the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
1:44.9	Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.
1:49.8	In this conversation we talk about how social scientists think about the multiple
1:56.4	factors that go into civil wars and basically how they start which factors
2:02.1	are most influential.
	...

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