ROW Episode 31

In this episode I aim to raise awareness about ways in which a nation can avoid slipping into civil war by highlighting some important insights gleaned from the book “How Civil Wars Start” by Barbara Walter and offering reflections on them.

Episode Transcript

Sovaida (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast
dedicated to envisioning abetter world and to infusing
hope that we can make theprincipled choices to build that
world.
In this episode, I aim to raiseawareness about ways in which a
nation can avoid slipping intocivil war by highlighting some

(00:32):
important insights gleaned fromthe book,"How Civil Wars Start,"
by Barbara Walter, and offeringmy reflections on them.
Some of you have been asking inthe chats on YouTube who I am.
I am the founding director ofthe Center for Peace and Global
Governance.
You can find out more about usat cpgg.

(00:52):
org.
And suffice it to say that it isan entirely and strictly non
partisan center, and it iscompletely non affiliated with
any institution, organization,or ideology.
Okay, let's dive into today'stopic.

(01:13):
A lot is being said about therise of autocracies and how do
autocrats come into power, and alot is being written about this,
and a lot is being discussedabout the subject on the various
television panels and so on inthe media.
But despite that, I feel likewe're missing an even more

(01:38):
important question, and that isthe question of how we can avoid
sleepwalking our way into acivil war, even if our country
is not an autocracy.
And this is a really importantand interesting topic.

(01:58):
The reason I've chosen to coverit today is because I think as
part of this program, it'simportant to continue raising
our collective awareness andconsciousness.
If we want to reimagine a betterfuture for ourselves, we have to
be fully aware of the choiceswe've made in our past so that
we don't repeat the past.
We also have to imagine wherewe're going to end up if we

(02:21):
continue on the trajectory thatwe're on.
In other words, will we end upin a civil war unwittingly, not
because we want to go there, butbecause that's where our current
behaviors will take us.
And then we need to imaginewhere else we might rather be,
and what steps we need to taketo get there.
So the book that opened my eyesto this whole topic was a

(02:45):
recently published bookentitled,"How Civil Wars Start,"
by Barbara Walter.
I actually commend it to you.
I don't know Barbara Walter.
I've never met her.
I don't get any a cut of anyroyalties.
I just happen to think it's aneasy to read book that conveys a
lot of very useful information.
What I'm going to try and dotoday is to share with you some

(03:08):
highlights, obviously goingthrough my filters, and add some
reflections on some of thesehighlights.
Suffice it to say again thatthis book has opened my eyes to
the grave dangers that we faceregardless of country we live
in, even if we live in a westerndemocracy that we believe is
strong.

(03:28):
The good news is that robuststudies have been done showing
that there are certain commonfactors, apparently, that spark
all civil wars everywhere,regardless of geography,
regardless of time.
And therefore, we can predictwhere a civil war is likely to
happen, and most importantly, wecan then take steps to avoid

(03:50):
unwittingly slipping into it, oras I have put it, sleepwalking
our way into it.
Now, I want to begin by sharingwith you an analogy that is the
conceptual framework for the wayI see what this book,"How Civil
War Starts," proposes and whatit teaches us.

(04:10):
Imagine that you have a forestthat has been subjected to a
long period of dryness, lack ofrain.
The conditions become ripe forthat forest to catch fire
because of the tinder likequality of the wood and the
dryness of it.
Then what you need is a spark,something that sets this tinder

(04:34):
on fire.
And the third thing thataggravates a wildfire that
starts is an accelerant likegusts of wind.
And we've seen this recently inthe United States and in many
parts of the world.
We've been seeing this in NewMexico with the fires that have
been raging there.
So in this analogy, the civilwar is the conflagration, the

(04:55):
fire that we're trying to avoid.
We want to understand what arethe conditions that lead to the
dryness, that makes ussusceptible as any country or
nation to have a civil war?
And then what are thetraditional sparks that we know
from these studies are likely toignite this civil war?
And then what are theaccelerants, as Barbara Walter

(05:18):
refers to them or one particularone that we'll come to that
exacerbates the Civil War andkeeps it going?
Okay, let's dive in.
The first factor that is anexcellent predictor of civil
war, so this is what conduces tothe dryness, is something called
an anocracy.

(05:39):
Now, I had not heard of ananocracy before I read this
book, so I thought you might beinterested in learning about it
just as I did.
Apparently we think of countriesas either democracies or
autocracies.
But as countries move, start tomove, either from being
democracies sliding down towardsautocracy or are autocracies and

(06:01):
start implementing reforms thattake them towards democracy.
This transitional period can bea very dangerous period.
Experts have created what theycall a polity index score that
shows for any given country inany given year where a country
is and its slide betweendemocracy and autocracy.

(06:23):
The scale goes from minus 10 toplus 10.
If a country is between 6 and 10on the scale, then it's
basically a good soliddemocracy, with 10 being like
the highest.
If it's between minus 10 andminus 6, then it's basically in
the domain of being anautocracy.
Now, as countries slide furtherdown the scale, they get into

(06:45):
what Barbara Walter describes asa danger zone, which is what is
called an anocracy, which issomewhere between a democracy
and autocracy, kind of right inbetween.
And the range is minus five toplus five, with the biggest
danger being in the minus one toplus one range.
One of the things that is reallyinteresting is that countries

(07:07):
that start off as democraciesand start to erode various
indicia of democracy.
Like if they start to silencedissent, or if they start to try
and control the media, or theymanipulate elections, or they
start appealing to populism, orthey declare states of emergency

(07:28):
There are a whole bunch ofindicia that show whether a
country's sliding from democracyto autocracy.
Once they start sliding from ademocracy, they become
particularly prone to civilwars.
Interestingly, a country that isa partial democracy is twice as
likely than an autocracy toexperience a civil war, and

(07:49):
three times more likely than ademocracy.
So why are anocracies sodangerous?
Again, a couple of interestingpoints that we learn.
A government that isdemocratizing, so moving from an
autocracy now to a democracy, isweak compared to the government
that came before it.

(08:10):
It becomes weaker politically,institutionally, and militarily.
And so the risk goes up.
And the reason this happens isduring periods of transitions,
the winners and losers in asystem change.
And one of the fascinatingthings that I learned from
reading this book is that thefaster a country tries to

(08:32):
implement reforms, so movingfrom an autocracy to a
democracy, the more likely thechance that a civil war will
break out, especially in the twoyears after reforms are
implemented.
So the lesson actually isdemocratize more slowly.
Take your time and evolve thepolitical system gradually.

(08:56):
Why is that?
Because slow reforms allow acountry's citizens, especially
those who are the elites whohave hitherto held power, it
allows them time to accustomthemselves to the new situation,
and it sets a more conciliatorytone and provides them with an
opportunity to gracefully let goof the power they've held.

(09:21):
And consequently, there's lesslikelihood that they'll be
violent.
Another reason is that electedleaders, now starting with a
democracy, if you get leaders inpower within a democracy who
start ignoring the democraticunderpinnings of a society,
including the guardrails thepowers of the executive and the

(09:44):
checks and balances ofgovernment and a free press,
then again you will start to seecivil war arising, because this
tends to happen quickly, andwhen that change happens
quickly, then we have a greaterchance of civil war.
Now, as they did their studies,these folks happened upon a

(10:07):
really interesting fact.
Many of us think that countriesthat are more ethnically diverse
are more susceptible to civilwars.
But it turns out that's nottrue.
It is not ethnic diversity thatmakes a country susceptible to
civil war, so to creating thattinder that can be set on fire,

(10:31):
but it is something calledfactionalism.
And factionalism is basicallydefined in this book as an acute
form of political polarization,where you get political parties
that are based on ethnicidentity, or racial identity, or
religious identity, rather thanideology.

(10:54):
Because what happens is thatthese parties try to rule at the
expense of other people.
So countries that are consideredfactionalized have identity
based political parties.
And what happens is that theseparties become very rigid, and
it therefore leads to intensecompetition and a winner take

(11:18):
all attitude.
Another feature offactionalization is that very
often you will get a dominantcharismatic figure arising, who
appeals to either ethnic orreligious or racial nationalism,
and they then fight to maintainpower.
Now, the question is, why doesfactionalism make it so much

(11:42):
more likely that a country willslip into civil war?
A couple of interestingobservations from the studies.
When you have identity basedparties based on religion or
ethnicity or race, it makes itimpossible for voters to switch
sides because there's nowherefor them to go.
If you don't fit into thisparticular identity, then you
can't switch to the other partybecause it's not based on

(12:04):
ideology and ideas, it's basedon identity.
And the second thing, and thisis really fascinating, is that
politics, the whole way oforganizing a society moves from
being about doing what's bestfor all the citizens in a
country, taking care of the goodof the collective whole, to

(12:27):
taking care of the good of themembers of the identity group,
of that political group that isidentity based.
Interestingly the factors thathave led to civil wars, the
factional factors, have changedfrom the beginning of the 20th
century, where they were mostlyprovoked by class and ideology,

(12:49):
but starting in the mid 20thcentury, apparently, wars were
fought more based on ethnicityand identification with a
particular religion as opposedto a political group.
So, so far we've considered twobig factors that make it more
likely that you create theenvironment where a civil war
can arise.

(13:10):
Let's stay with factionalism fora second.
There is an aspect offactionalism that exacerbates
the chances of a civil warrising.
And that's when something calledsuper factions arise in a
country.
Experts have found that acountry is more likely to slide
into civil war when one becomesa superfaction.

(13:32):
What does that mean?
When the members start to sharenot only a single ethnic or
racial identity, but also inaddition they share the same
religion or the same class andor a geographic location where
they live.
An example of this is Sri Lanka.
What happened in Sri Lanka wasthat the Tamils and Sinhalese

(13:54):
first were divided and dividedthemselves along ethnic lines.
And then they found that theyhad insurmountable differences,
or so they told themselves,along religious lines with the
Tamils being Hindu and theSinhalese being Buddhist.
In addition to that, they alsosplit along geographic lines

(14:16):
with the minority Tamils beingconcentrated largely in the
north and east of Sri Lanka.
In this manner, these two superfactions formed where they had a
complex of identities withineach faction.
Another example is India, wherefor more than five decades India
with all its amazing ethnicdiversity, struggling economy,

(14:41):
and poverty had managed to stayvery unified, even though 80
percent of the population wasHindu, with Muslims being about
14%, and other religious groupsconstituting 6%, but it was a
strictly secular state.
And then what happened was thatin the second part of the second

(15:02):
decade of the 21st century, westarted to see the rise of Hindu
nationalist groups who reallywere pushing for India for the
Hindus, basically.
They started to take certainsteps in that direction, like
rescinding the special status ofthe only Muslim majority region

(15:24):
in India, Jammu and Kashmir, andalso changing the laws on
citizenship to exclude Muslims,and so on.
And so we're now seeing thisdrive towards factionalism and
superfactionalism based both onethnicity and religion.
Now, superfactions can beexacerbated in a number of ways.

(15:45):
You can have the urban ruraldivide that we see, including in
the United States.
You see this very clearly.
Another thing that exacerbatessuperfactions is the role of
what political scientists callethnic entrepreneurs who stoke
ethnic nationalism.
Essentially, you have somebodywho's willing to be the bullhorn

(16:06):
or the mouthpiece to appeal topeople to act on the basis of
discrimination against anothergroup.
And what ethnic entrepreneurs dois they basically expressly
fight to preserve their owngroups, position, and status in
society.
And by the way, politicians arenot the only ones, as Barbara

(16:29):
Walter points out, who basicallystoke and take advantage of the
division over identity.
There are what she calls lesserethnic entrepreneurs, including
business elites, who maybe aretrying to shore up their brand
loyalty, or religious leaderswho are trying to expand their
following, or media figures whoare trying to grow their

(16:52):
audience.
And we see this, again, in theUnited States, and we've seen
interesting articles over thelast few days about a particular
television personality whosemethod seems to be creating an
us versus them narrative, thatthey are out to get us.
The particular group that he'sreferring to are particularly,

(17:14):
white males.
It's fascinating to see how thisconversation goes.
Feminism is bad, because we getemasculated as males, and
feminism also underminestraditional family values, and
immigration is bad because itdilutes our power and economic
power and opportunities insociety, and this whole idea of

(17:37):
people are trying to replace us.
Replacement theory becomes adominant theory in many
countries that are slidingtowards civil war.
The third factor thatcontributes to creating the
environment where civil war islikely to break out, this
conflagration is likely to breakout, is something that is called
downgrading.

(17:57):
What this means is when membersof a particular group that has
been in power start to feel likethey're losing power.
It is based on the idea ofentitlement and expectation,
like we are entitled to have thestatus, whether it's economic
power or political power orcultural power, it can be all

(18:19):
kinds of different power, and ohboy, we're losing it.
Now, it's very understandablebecause human beings don't like
to lose anything they alreadyhave.
So in some sense, you canunderstand why it happens.
It becomes very interestinglater when we talk about
solutions, how do we overcomethis natural human tendency?
And it happens all over theworld.

(18:40):
An example is what happened inAbkhazia, which is the breakaway
province in Georgia, next toRussia.
The Abkhazians were anindigenous group of people who
were referred to as the sons ofthe soil.
They were the original nativesof this part of the world and
that's how they view themselves,and they have no other homeland

(19:02):
outside of the country ofGeorgia.
They had been subjected by manydifferent peoples and empires,
and Stalin tried to wipe themout, but they survived and under
his reign, they actually secureda status of being a protected
minority.
Then when the country of Georgiacame into being, the Georgians

(19:22):
also tried to dilute them andthe Georgians became the
majority.
The Abkhazians were reallyworried about losing their
hitherto status under Stalin,and so they fought back against
it.
In fact, in 1992, they engagedin acts of ethnic cleansing,

(19:43):
trying to get rid of theGeorgians so that the number of
Abkhazians again would go up, sothey wouldn't be diluted as
much, and so they could regainthe power that they felt had
unjustly been taken away fromthem.
That's a really interestingexample that one finds in the
book, and it's a story thatplays itself out all over the
world, in the Philippines, inthe former Yugoslavia, in

(20:07):
Myanmar, in Northern Ireland.
Pick a part of the world and youwill see that at some point the
story has played out in the samefashion.
Now, people can feel downgradedin many different ways.
They can feel like theirlanguage and culture is being
taken over.
They're not allowed to use theirlanguage and culture.

(20:28):
It's no longer the dominantlanguage and culture, and so
they're being forgotten and leftbehind.
An interesting example of thatis the section of India called
Assam.
It's in the northeast of India.
The Assamese people, when theywere colonized by the British,
had their own regionalgovernment, but then the British

(20:51):
started to bring in workers fromBangladesh and, over time, the
number of Bengalis started toexceed the number of native
Assamese.
We have the story repeated.
The Assamese feared the loss ofpower, cultural power, political
power, and economic power,because they were left with low

(21:11):
skilled jobs while the Bengaliswere in administration and had
the well paying jobs and got tomake decisions, and the language
changed, the official languageand culture, and so it led to a
resistance movement on the partof the Assamese.
And they also, the Assamese, whowere then the minority, tried to

(21:32):
engage in ethnic cleansing ofthe Bengalis in order to restore
the balance so they could getback into power.
So you see how this works, veryoften ethnic cleansing is there
because people feel,"Well, we'regetting diluted.
We need to restore ourselves interms of number and become the
majority again and regain allkinds of power." People can feel

(21:56):
downgraded because of loss ofeconomic opportunities, and
because of economic inequities.
A very interesting point that ismade in the book that I feel is
worth highlighting is thateconomic discrimination doesn't
need to be deliberate.
It can happen just as a resultof modernization.
So we can, if we're not aware,if we don't have leaders who are

(22:17):
conscious and farsighted andaware of historical realities,
they don't take the steps toensure that, as modernization
happens and has its upsides,that they make sure that they
bring along the people who areotherwise likely to get left
behind.
Ms.
Walter points out in her bookthat sons of the soil, the

(22:37):
natives of any land, tend togenerally be disproportionately
affected by these huge shifts.
They feel like they were thefirst on the land and now it's
become a handicap becausethey're more vulnerable to
competition and they're beingforgotten and ignored.
So again, one can understand theemotions, the thinking and
emotions that prompt people toget angry and resentful, and

(23:01):
then act in violent wayseventually, if their needs are
not met and their voices are notheard.
Okay.
We've talked about the threemain factors now whether a state
is an anocracy, sliding in thedanger zone of an anocracy;
whether there'sfactionalization, and even more
importantly, superfactions; andthirdly, whether a particular

(23:23):
group, particularly the originalnatives, feel like they're being
downgraded.
Those factors create theconditions for this
conflagration to happen, butthen you need a spark.
And the question is, what arethe sparks?
Let's identify them so we can beaware of them.
Now the first spark, reallyinteresting according to this

(23:45):
study, is loss of hope.
It turns out that human beingsare fundamentally really
hopeful, and we always want tobelieve that our life is
actually going to get better nomatter how bleak, and we're
willing to actually go throughdecades of hardship and
suffering, injustice andiniquity, if we somehow believe

(24:07):
that over time, our lot willimprove.
That's really interesting.
But hope can be lost, and it canbe lost in a number of ways.
There are two ways, typicallywhere people get to the point
where they realize,"You knowwhat?
Nothing's ever going to change,and we lose hope." The first is

(24:28):
failed protests.
When people are initiallyunhappy, one of the natural
things they do is they go outinto the street and they
protest.
They say,"Hey! Listen to us.
We've got these grievances."Protests are really a warning
sign to a society and governmentthat, that citizens believe
that,"Hey! We're not doing sowell and our system needs

(24:51):
reform." But it's the failure ofprotests that eliminates hope
and that takes us then into thedanger zone, because, if the
factors exist that we've talkedabout, that spark of the loss of
hope can then ignite a civilwar.
Now, a couple of observationsthat I found interesting.

(25:12):
Both democracies and autocraciescan handle protest really well,
but once you're in that middlestate of an anocracy, protests
can become really dicey and canlead to violence.
The same is true offactionalization.
If you've got factions andparticularly super factions in a
society, if one of those superfactions or factions starts

(25:35):
protesting, it's less likelythat the government will listen
to them.
A government is more likely tolisten to protests if they
represent many elements insociety as opposed to a single
element that they view as agroup.
Very interesting.
So if one wants to bring aboutchange through peaceful
protests, it's best to gettogether an array of people.

(25:57):
And honestly, when I think backto what happened during the
pandemic in the United States,one of the things that was
heartwarming and fascinating wasthat for the first time protests
had people from all racialbackgrounds and all ages
participating.
It wasn't just the Blacks outthere saying,"Hey! We're an

(26:17):
aggrieved group.
Don't be unjust.", but it wasall of society turning out and
saying,"Hey, listen! We need todo something here, because this
is just not just." I thoughtthat was an interesting connect.
Another way in which hope can belost is through elections that
are lost.
Again, if you already have ananocracy or a super

(26:38):
factionalized society, loss ofelections can be interpreted as
meaning several things topeople.
That the ruling party is notwilling to play fair, and it's
not really committed todemocracy, or tells people that,
"Oh.
One side can manipulate anelection." So people feel that
an election is fraudulent,whether it's true or not, just

(27:00):
that very feeling is dangerous,because then they think
conventional means can't be usedto regain our status, especially
if they are the downgraded groupor feel like they are losing
something.
And so they resort to violencein order to regain access to
authority.
And again, the U.
S.
is a good example of that.

(27:20):
Another example is Ukraine,where civil war began in 2014
after Mr.
Poroshenko won a specialelection that was designed to
replace the incumbent, PresidentYanukovych, because there were
mass protests.
And so the Russian speakingpeople in eastern Ukraine who
had been represented by Mr.

(27:42):
Yanukovych thought,"Wait aminute! The system is stacked
against us." So they started tofight for independence and they
took up arms.
And another really interestingpoint that's made in this book
is that in the United States, itwas the election of President
Lincoln.
He was the first president whowas able to win power without
the support of SouthernDemocrats.

(28:03):
That's what convinced theSoutherners that they needed to
break away and secede from therest of the nation.
These are all really interestingNow, a prime example that
demonstrates loss of hope is thestory of Northern Ireland, where
the Irish Catholics had lived inthe north until way back a few

(28:24):
centuries ago the Brits came andtook over, and they encouraged
Protestants to come across thechannel from Scotland and take
up residence in the north ofIreland.
Once the Republic of Ireland wascreated in the south, the Irish
Catholics in the north remainedas part of this separate place
called Northern Ireland, inwhich their numbers had become

(28:47):
diluted by all these Protestantscoming in who were Scotsman and
British.
And it ended up that theProtestants were two thirds of
the population and the IrishCatholics became one third of
the population.
The government was semiautonomous.
So the Protestants ended upcontrolling education, law,

(29:09):
social services, industry,agriculture, and everything.
Now, the Irish Catholics,although they suffered for many
years.
They lived geographically indifferent places.
They had a different religion.
They basically had more of themenial tasks: they were
construction workers andlaborers, whereas the
Protestants were theadministrators and so on.

(29:29):
Despite all of this, what wasfascinating is that they didn't
revolt.
They only revolted when theyrealized that their voices were
not going to be heard and thatthe British, they had always
thought that the British wouldhave their backs in the end,
when push came to shove.
It wasn't until there was amarch next to Bogside, which was

(29:51):
a place where the IrishCatholics lived, that sparked
riots, and the British for thefirst time sent troops in.
Irish Catholics initiallywelcomed the troops because they
thought,"The Brits will have ourbacks and they will separate us
from the Protestants and theywill maintain peace." But no,
what they saw instead was thatthe British troops opened fire
on them, started searching theirhomes and singled them out and

(30:13):
targeted them.
That's when they lost hope.
And it was then that theystarted to take the next step of
creating militias, and theprovisional IRA was established
in order to protect theinterests of the Irish Catholic
minority, even though they hadbeen the natives, the sons of
the soil.
Very interesting example.

(30:34):
All right, the second spark whenyou have these conditions is
that extremists step in whenthey realize that the terrain is
already dry and a spark will dothe trick.
They manipulate theopportunities and they step in
and they say,"Hey, listen! Yeah,we know you're unhappy.
We have an amazing alternativeto offer you." And what actually

(30:58):
ends up happening interestinglyis that it starts with a very
small group of extremists.
Sometimes it's exiled students.
Sometimes it's dissidents.
Sometimes it's former members ofthe military.
And these folks, unfortunately,tend to think more about their
own power than the good of theiraverage citizens.

(31:19):
They're basically takingadvantage of a situation where
people are unhappy anddiscontented with their lot.
By the time average citizensbecome aware that a militant
group has formed, they'reusually more entrenched than
anybody has realized.
And that's when you get theseconflagrations.

(31:42):
The spark is lit that leads towar and conflagration.
If you want examples, again,feel free to read the book,
there are wonderful examplesthere.
Okay, we've talked about the twosparks, now there's a third
thing that when added to the twosparks acts as an accelerant,
and that is social media.
Social media acts both as aspark and an accelerant in

(32:06):
triggering civil war.
Extremists are very good,generally, at using social media
in order to get out theirdivisive messages.
They've found this amazing,powerful new weapon.
It's cheap, it's fast, and itdoes a really good job of
triggering anger and resentmentin people.

(32:28):
A nice example of this isMyanmar.
So again, going back inhistorical times, the British
occupied what was known as thecountry of Burma.
They occupied it between 1826and 1948, and they used to bring
in Muslim and Indian skilledworkers to run the British
industries there.

(32:48):
The Burmese were Buddhist, andthese folks coming in were
Muslim, and so resentment againstarted to build up as the
natives, the Buddhists,realized,"Oh gosh.
We're being left behindeconomically." And there's
discrimination; they weredemoted from citizenship.
And it was very difficult.
Before 2012 in what becameMyanmar and is today's Myanmar,

(33:13):
former Burma, only 1 percent ofthe people had access to social
media, Facebook.
By 2012, Facebook entered and bythe time Aung San Suu Kyi came
into power, 20 percent of thepeople of the country had access
to Facebook.
That was when the Buddhistultranationalists started taking

(33:33):
to Facebook to target theMuslims.
In short order, a few monthsafter that, you started to see
violence breaking out in theRakhine State, where the
Rohingya live.
And we now have been hearing alot about the Rohingya, who have
been mistreated, where egregioushuman rights abuses have taken
place, where they've beendisplaced and forced from their
land.

(33:54):
Many of them have ended up inBangladesh and other countries,
but most of them in Bangladesh.
So social media is anaccelerant.
It's the gusting winds when youhave a wildfire that just
spreads the wildfire further andmakes it very difficult to
control.
Now, we've now examined, thethree main factors, the two big

(34:15):
sparks, and we know what theaccelerant is that is likely to
start and then spread a civilwar.
What we need to be very carefulof, especially those of us who
live in Western democracies, isthat we are susceptible to civil
wars.
We start analyzing how each ofour countries is doing.

(34:37):
Are the factors there?
Is the ground getting ready?
Has there been a drought that isdrying the the societal terrain?
And are there sparks in the air?
And, are there winds blowing?
And therefore if a fire starts,will we be able to control it?
What is interesting is that thedecline towards civil war with

(34:59):
all these factors and sparkstends to be very incremental,
happens very slowly, andtherefore we tend to miss it
because it's imperceptible.
Again, the author of this bookdoes a wonderful job at taking
the United States--I guess she'sAmerican and wrote this book for
everybody, but also to alert, toraise consciousness in this

(35:21):
country, to say,"Hey guys! Let'swake up and look and see that
these factors are present, thatwe are susceptible as a nation,
and if we see that this train ishurtling off the cliff, we need
to ask ourselves, do we want tohurtle off the cliff into civil
war, or do we want to change thetrajectory of where our society
is going?" The United States, inshort, in 2021, officially

(35:44):
became an anocracy.
It got to plus five on thepolity index scale, so that's
factor number one present.
It is highly factionalized, andin fact we now have super
factions.
It started in the 1960s withrace becoming one of the factors
of factionalization, followedquickly by religion.

(36:06):
We've got the urban ruraldivide.
We've got people feelingdowngraded, people who had power
before now feeling that they arebeing left out being left out of
the equation, that they don'thave the same economic and job
opportunities, that theirculture and values are being
overtaken, their homeownership.
They're having a hard timeearning enough to have homes.

(36:28):
Their life expectancy isdropping.
All of these factors are there.
The loss of hope is there.
They feel rightly or wrongly,there's been a lot of
disinformation--, but they feellike maybe an election has been
stolen from them.
And we know that loss of hope isa spark that can trigger civil
war, so we have to be reallycareful.

(36:49):
There's more analysis that I'mnot going to go into.
This is where the United Statesis today, in a place where we
need to really sit up andlisten.
We simply can't afford to becomplacent and to sleepwalk our
way into a civil war.
There's no need for that tohappen.
We've done the assessment.
The question then is, how can weavoid civil war?

(37:11):
There are many things that canbe done.
The most important thing seemsto be the role that leaders
play.
The book makes a reallyinteresting observation that
South Africa was closer 1989than we are here in the U.S.
today, and yet they avoided itbecause political leaders,
opposition leaders, businessleaders came together and were

(37:34):
willing to compromise to facedown the danger and not to sink
into civil war.
If they can do it, we can do it.
There's several things thatleaders can and should do.
The first is to deal with allareas in which people feel that
they're unjustly treated.
We need to examine carefully theareas of society where reforms

(37:57):
are necessary in order to makepeople feel like they are not
forgotten, not left behind, thattheir voices are heard, and that
they are participating indecisions.
The second thing is thenundertaking reforms, whether
that means reforming voterregistration, stopping
gerrymandering, doing all kindsof reforms that are necessary

(38:19):
for everyone.
The third is civic education,making sure that we all
understand how our system ofgovernment actually works: where
it's weak; where it's strong;where it can be easily
manipulated; why we have thesafeguards we have; why it's
important to maintain them.
The fourth is actually changingthe conditions that extremists
tend to exploit.

(38:40):
So when they see weaknesses,they go in and they use those as
wedge issues to divide thecountry further.
By actually resolving thoseissues, we take away the
possibilities, the weaknesses.
Another is to take away thesocial media bullhorn, as
Barbara Walter describes it.

(39:01):
There are many ways in which wecan do that.
Again, we need to come togetherand decide on what reforms and
legislation is necessary to dothat.
So these are all things that canbe done.
But I want to end with what Ibelieve the place we should
start.
If we are to avoid theconditions and the sparks that
trigger civil war, we need tobegin by radically

(39:26):
reconceptualizing andrestructuring our society
because Humanity has grown.
We've come a long way, but wehaven't revised and revisited
our identity, who we believe weare.
We're still playing out oldnarratives and stories of who we
were 200 years ago or 100 yearsago or, 50 years ago.

(39:48):
We need to update our identity.
Because human beings tend toalways gravitate towards the
self identity, the conception ofself identity that we have in
our minds, both as individualsand society.
How do we do that?
Step one, raise awarenessamongst ourselves at the
grassroots.

(40:08):
How do we do it?
Using the principle ofconsultation.
We've had a whole episode onthis, so feel free to go back
and take a look.
Making sure that diverse voices,that all voices are heard, that
we're actually listening to eachother, that we're actually
valuing diversity because ourcollective understanding is

(40:28):
enhanced as we listen to eachother and see things the
gemstone of truth from differentangles.
We raise awareness that way.
The second thing we do at thegrassroots is to identify
certain key principles.
that we want our society to bebuilt on.
I submit that the most importantprinciples are those of justice

(40:51):
or fairness, if you like, andtruth.
Truth is something that hasdefinitely suffered a lot of
damage especially with the mediaand social media.
I was stunned to hear one of thetalk show hosts, when asked
about a particular subject thathe had commented on: Didn't you
tell the truth?

(41:11):
And he says,"Hey, look! I can'tgo and on my show and tell the
truth.
That's not what people arewatching me for.
I'm here to entertain." So thiswhole idea of news as
entertainment is something thatwe really need to think about.
If the fundamental foundationupon which we want to build all
our institutions and processesand policies is truth, then we

(41:34):
need to reconceptualize also therole of the media and how the
media should operate.
Once we've identified theseprinciples, we then need to make
sure they get woven into all ofour reformed institutions and
processes.
The second thing we need to dois learn to elect fit leaders

(41:55):
who are capable of doing a bunchof things.
First of all, that they havequalities like the courage to do
the right thing, even if it'snot popular.
Again, we've had a whole episodeon this.
The courage to also make changeswhen it's time to make change,
like in the face of climatechange and global warming, we
have to change our behaviors.

(42:15):
We need leaders who are strongenough to do that.
We need leaders who are free ofprejudice and do not stoke
prejudices that members ofsociety have.
In fact, we need leaders who areunifiers, who are able to
harmonize people and bring themtogether and give them a loftier

(42:37):
view of their own reality andtheir future.
We need truth tellers.
No matter how difficult andpainful the truth is, we need
leaders who can speak thosetruths.
We need them to be farsightedand not wait for emergencies to
happen, but to think about whatto do in the face, for instance,
of a looming pandemic, globalwar, nuclear war, a conflict

(43:00):
like Ukraine.
We need leaders who can say weneed a system of collective
security, which was the topic oflast month's episode.
And we need leaders who canbring us all along and harmonize
our perspectives and help ustranscend our differences.
So this is what I believe isnecessary over and above the

(43:22):
suggestions that are made inthis book.
And in fact, I believe that thisis where we need to start.
So the very first thing we do isstart having conversations with
each other at the grassroots,bridging the artificial divides
between us, taking the labelsoff each other so we don't view
each other as labels, Democrat,Republican, White, black, woman,

(43:45):
man, whatever gender.
That's not what defines us ashuman beings.
We need to really listen to eachother and to listen to each
other's concerns and fears andthen have a consultation on how
we can address these.
If we can go to the moon and wecan go to planets, we can, I am
confident, come up with ways tospeak to everybody's fears and

(44:09):
resolve them and create a systemof governance that works for
all.
The good news is that theseconversations are happening at
the grassroots all around theworld, even as we speak there.
And that's very exciting.
You should go and find out wherethese conversations are taking
place in your own backyard.
If you want to get in touch withme, I can probably tell you more

(44:32):
about some of theseconversations.
But I look forward to hearingyour comments.
And if not today, then please goon YouTube or Facebook and
comment and start a conversationwith each other.
All right.
Thank you all.
It was a pleasure to be here andI look forward to seeing you
again.
Bye bye.

(44:55):
That's all for this episode ofReimagining Our World.
I'll see you back here nextmonth.
If you liked this episode,please help us to get the word
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podcast platform.
This series is also available invideo on the YouTube channel of
the Center for Peace and GlobalGovernance, CPGG.