In April 2021, four White men were arrested after beating a Black man on the outside of a bar in Pennsylvania. The men had planned the attack in advance in honor of what they called “stomp a [n-word] night.” Incidents like this are sadly commonplace. According to the FBI, there were 7,554 hate crimes committed in 2020, an increase compared to 7,103 hate crimes committed in 2019. Both figures likely undercount violence against Black, indigenous, and people of color since they only include incidents that police, not prosecutors, reported. Given the 150 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers are likely to be even higher in 2021.
At the same time, there have been concerted efforts by Republican Party supporters of former President Donald Trump around the country to erode the legitimacy of electoral institutions. To win the endorsement of President Trump and many Republican primaries around the country, candidates must officially support the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was fraudulent and stolen from Trump. Republicans are also fielding candidates in critical battleground states to replace state officials that certified Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Republican-led legislatures in states like Texas are passing incredibly restrictive Voter ID laws targeted against BIPoC voters.
To consider the possibility of an unamicable divorce—a civil war—might seem like considering something that is beyond the pale in contemporary American politics. However, this ignores the reality that the American marriage has been on the rocks for a long time.
Hate crimes and the erosion of democratic institutions coalesced on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol and succeeded in disrupting a peaceful democratic process. The insurrection was merely one data point in what has become an increasingly painful reality: We are in the early stages of a second American civil war.
The compromises that have tenuously held together the marriage of convenience that is the American body politic are eroding under unprecedented societal forces: shifting demographics, climate change, a global pandemic, mass unemployment, and massive economic inequality. These forces shock a nation like infidelity, job loss, or family pressures might shock a marriage. To consider the possibility of an unamicable divorce—a civil war—might seem like considering something that is beyond the pale in contemporary American politics. However, this ignores the reality that the American marriage has been on the rocks for a long time. If anything, we are currently in the trial separation stage of our marriage—both sides exploring what life might be like without the other. It is incumbent upon us as Americans to decide whether we want to stay married or proceed with a divorce. And, if we stay married, we should consider what policies to adopt and whether we need marriage counseling or some other treatment.
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Nations, like marriages, are built on a set of mutually agreed-upon principles. In a marriage, partners must agree upon the overall goals of the relationship, have clearly defined responsibilities, and accept whatever sacrifices the relationship requires. Compromises are possible but all sides should be aware of the components of that compromise.
The strengths of nations also resemble those of marriages. Nations are especially strong when they develop an agreed-upon identity, when the constituent social groups know they want to be together. Marriages similarly are strongest when the partners have a strong sense of their own identity within the context of the relationship.
The historical record is rife with examples of groups uniting to gain independence from a colonizing country only to fight soon thereafter.
However, common identification may hide deeper divisions that only come out during inevitable divorces. Marriages and nations formed in opposition to someone or something else face this challenge. When partners get married to spite their families, their relationship is typically not built on something sustainable. We never observe the second act of Romeo and Juliet’s life—what would life in Verona have been like for two people whose only commonality was their defiance to a third authority? Presumably, it would have been filled with difficult conversations about the nature of their relationship.
The first American civil war is a case in point. Disparate interests united to expel the British colonial occupying force. But almost immediately, disagreements between Jeffersonians, firmly entrenched in a proud Virginian political tradition, and Hamiltonians, typically connected to northern economic interests. What is perhaps most surprising about the American civil war is how long the republic held together—with bandage solutions like the three-fifths compromise at the constitutional convention in 1787 or the Missouri compromise in 1821.
In fact, the historical record is rife with examples of groups uniting to gain independence from a colonizing country only to fight soon thereafter. India violently partitioned into India and Pakistan the year after independence from the United Kingdom. Two decades later, East Pakistan separated from Pakistan to form Bangladesh.
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Separation between couples occurs along a spectrum. On one end, a married couple may continue to live together and be legally married. On the other end, one of the parties may file for divorce without the initial consent of the other party. On occasion, separation proceeds along this spectrum, beginning as an amicable trial separation and ending with divorce. This is all true of civil war and political violence as well: it exists along a spectrum and most violence begins on one end and proceeds along.
The civil war is coming and, in many ways, is already here. The sooner Americans come to grips with that fact, the sooner we can take the necessary steps to stop it.
The first American civil war remains the deadliest conflict in American history. Two clearly defined militaries fought each other on battlefields over four years to devastating effect. Yet such wars do not occur with regularity in the international system in the twenty-first century. Instead, sporadic communal clashes that escalate only over time, typically in response to national events like contested elections or controversial domestic policies, tend to be more common. Such conflicts are especially common in countries where politicians increasingly perceive themselves to be unaccountable to democratic audiences, governance institutions work poorly, and an abusive domestic security sector that lacks the trust of the population.
This is the situation in the United States in the 2020s. Sporadic violence by individuals motivated by political ideology and, typically, White supremacist beliefs have become increasingly common. Large segments of the population fears an abusive police force that has disproportionately targeted Black men and women. Even larger segments distrust the police. American institutions have struggled to evolve with the needs of the population, rarely reflecting the policy preferences of the majority population. These are all worrisome predictors of larger-scale violence.
For many Americans, American exceptionalism extends to these indicators, believing that a civil war will never come to the United States. The truth is unfortunately more dire. The civil war is coming and, in many ways, is already here. The sooner Americans come to grips with that fact, the sooner we can take the necessary steps to stop it.
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To begin with, it is important to understand exactly what it means for a country to have a civil war. Political scientists have grappled with this question for decades as they have attempted to identify the cases that are relevant to study. Political scientists broadly agree that civil wars as we know them—including the American civil war—share three broad features.¹
- The government is involved as a party to the conflict.
- A politically organized movement forms in opposition to the government that recruits exclusively locally from the population of the country.
- A high level of violence occurring exclusively within a country’s Internal borders is sustained over an extended period of time
At the moment, the government is not directly involved as a party to any conflict in the United States. However, the government has been the target of attacks by violent protestors. The January 6, 2021 insurrection explicitly targeted the Capitol because it housed members of congress who were about to certify the electoral loss of their preferred candidate in an election. This is a political goal carried out by a politically organized movement in opposition to a government.
Thanks to the bravery of one Capitol police officer, the insurrectionist did not find Congress. However, these events could have easily become more violent. Some reports suggest that the mob was looking to hang Vice President Mike Pence. In Côte d’Ivoire, things were different and a civil war broke out immediately after elections in 2011. The oppositions there did not remain relatively peaceful in that instance, leading to a horrifying civil war that killed thousands.
In addition, the government has at times sanctioned, officially or not, violence against civilians, particularly violence by White militias against BIPoC people. Over the course of his presidency, President Trump famously equivocated when pressed to condemn violence by his supporters. During a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, six White supremacists beat a Black man in a parking garage. President Trump refused to condemn the violence by those men and others in Charlottesville, saying that there were fine people on “both sides” when pressed. Indirectly sanctioned violence by governments who do nothing to stop it is a pervasive feature of political violence in the twenty-first century. For example, in the Indian state of Gujarat, Indian authorities led by now Prime Minister Narendra Modi, allowed violent riots against Muslims to occur.
Moreover, security sector actors in the United States have committed horrifying abuses against civilians from minority groups. United Nations peacekeepers make security-sector reform a core target of peacekeeping operations because police, militaries, and government-affiliated militias have the power to commit harmful abuses that can disrupt peace processes. In Mali, for example, ethnically targeted abuses by the Malian police and army have forced civilians to form their own self-defense groups to protect their communities. Police targeting of Black Americans received an increased amount of attention in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. However, even modest attempts to reform these institutions have been met with staunch opposition. Similarly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have responded brutally to immigrants of color from Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the future, the government could also become involved more directly in opposition to armed extremists. For example, if armed militias storm vote-counting centers in battleground states then elected officials may have no choice but to call in security forces to protect the vote.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there have been 389 hate-crime-related killings in the United States in the past decade, the vast majority of which were committed by White supremacists. For quantitative political scientists, these numbers alone suggest as sustained level of violence that is sufficient to categorize the United States having a low-intensity civil war.
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The different forms of political violence in America are connected by a common thread: American political institutions reflected a fundamentally White supremacist power structure that a large minority of Americans do not want to give up. Indeed, many Americans would rather take to violence than give up the secure power afforded by these institutions. The populist rhetoric of Donald Trump has seized upon and mobilized this sentiment to generate power. But the underlying structural dynamics made this inevitable.
Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, has made the case that almost all civil wars that break out are recurrences of past civil wars with the same sides reconstituted.
Conflict is often inevitable when power dynamics and populations shift faster than institutions. In the beginning of the 1990s, Serbs in the country of Yugoslavia found themselves in an undesirable position: their fellow citizens in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia did not wish to be a part of a federation where Serbs had an outsized say in how they would be governed. Mobilized by a populist leader, Slobodan Milosevic, Serbs chose war over reform.
The United States has been here before. In fact, the challenges faced today reflect the inability to overcome the core original sin of this country, slavery. Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, has made the case that almost all civil wars that break out are recurrences of past civil wars with the same sides reconstituted. For example, the battle lines in ongoing civil war in the West African country of Mali resemble those from past civil wars fought in 1960, 1990, and 2006 in that country. Warlords in Afghanistan fought the same battles in the 2000s that they fought in the early 1990s.
In many ways, the United States is preparing to do the same in the 2020s. Many of the same fault lines that existed in the 1850s remain in the 2020s. Walter explains that civil wars recur over and over again because majority groups do not produce institutions that leave them accountable to minority groups. Radical Republicans strove to reform American institutions during the period known as Reconstruction. The failure of White America to fulfill the promise of Reconstruction remains its greatest failure. The civil rights movement strove to recapture some of the promises of Reconstruction. Unfortunately, much of that has come undone in recent years as far-right groups have recognized that popular power is shifting against them.
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Using the term civil war to describe the ongoing political crisis in the United States is not merely a semantic issue. The diagnosis determines the treatment—the nature of the political crisis determines the type of solution presented.
Some observers have called this a constitutional crisis in the making or an electoral crisis. This is a problematic misdiagnosis. A vote to bind local election officials to the popular vote is an important step to ensure the integrity of future elections. But it is a small part of a much bigger solution. It is a bandage.
The problem for the United States faces is that its political institutions do not reflect the will of the people. Extremists have shown that they are willing to use violence to maintain these institutions, even if they are racist and unfair to millions of Americans.
We should not hold out hope for a governing coalition to emerge that might pass a new wave of constitutional amendments. It is worthwhile remembering that former President Donald Trump invited a foreign government to interfere in an American election and fomented a violent insurrection and was not removed from office. This is not the political coalition eager for a democratic reforms.
Thankfully, there are several possible avenues for reform if we recognize this crisis for the structural problem it is. For example, changing the electoral system in even some states away from a first-past-the-post system to ranked-choice voting would put pressure on moderates to take less radical positions. Moreover, moving toward a more parliamentary style of democratic representation where voters can choose from a multitude of different parties would likely change the political landscape.
Some observers have called this a constitutional crisis in the making or an electoral crisis. This is a problematic misdiagnosis. A vote to bind local election officials to the popular vote is an important step to ensure the integrity of future elections. But it is a small part of a much bigger solution. It is a bandage.
For those of us on the other side, violence is not an option. But mobilization, agitation, and protest should be. The American political system is fundamentally broken and the defenders of American democracy should not be afraid to think outside the box—and perhaps break it—for solutions. Supporters of democracy—and those of the Democratic party—should think in new ways about how to win elections in the short term to pass these reforms in the long term.
The question facing the American people moving forward is whether the national marriage is salvageable, or if divorce is a better solution for all involved. One thing is clear: The current trial separation is quickly coming to an end. As radical as this may seem, Americans should come to terms with the idea that regardless of the actual vote outcome, one of the two major political parties will likely reject the results of the 2024 presidential election. This will mark the end of democracy as we know it in the United States. This will be the end of the trial separation. What will the supporters of American democracy do in response?
