Transitions - Democracy to Anocracy and Beyond

 

The First of a Series of Blogs Commemorating the January 6, 2021 Capitol Insurrection

Our Department of State and all of our intelligence agencies (NSA, CIA, etc.) use a host of statistical markers to evaluate regional instability. Likewise, other countries and international agencies use a fairly objective set of variables to ascertain where specific risks must be addressed and where danger for American (and other) interests might need protection. They are searching for approaching potential for civil wars. These markers and analytical data points would fill a very complex volume, matrices that are highly predictive of likely explosive points. On a more simplistic level, looking at what the major touchpoints are, Monica Duffy Toft (professor of international politics and the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, also a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway), writing for ForeignPolicy.com (2/18/21) explains, (emphasis added):

“Civil wars are unique in their specific causes, the ways they escalate from clashing interests to violence and the ways they de-escalate, but all civil wars share at least three features in common. First, most civil wars follow some prior conflict (often a previous civil war or, more accurately, the highly skewed and politicized memory of a past civil war). The new belligerents nor the issues need not be exactly the same as the old. Most often, a charismatic leader spouts a narrative about past glory or humiliation that suits their ideology, political ambitions, or even flows from simple historical ignorance.

“Second, national identity is divided along some critical axis, such as race, faith, or class. All countries have fracture lines and cleavages, but some divides are deeper than others. Even initially minor cleavages may be exploited by domestic or foreign actors committed to redistributing wealth or power. For example, the Soviet Union (and now Russia) has successfully devoted serious resources to destabilizing the United States and its allied democracies by intensifying existing cleavages.

“Although necessary, these first two features—a prior war and deepening cleavages—are not sufficient to spark civil war. For that, you need a third element: a shift from tribalism to sectarianism. With tribalism, people begin to seriously doubt whether other groups in their country have the larger community’s best interests at heart. In sectarian environments though, economic, social, and political elites and those they represent come to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is evil and actively working to destroy the community. Enemies of the state come to displace the loyal opposition, with those having been inside another tribe seen as the most disloyal. It’s akin to how some religions treat apostates and infidels. Often, it is apostates, the former adherents of the faith, that are targeted more readily over infidels, those who had always been on the outside.”

For those statistically driven political scientists, used to dealing with banana republics and coups-d’état in unstable Middle Eastern and Asian dictatorship, its was startling to apply their metrics to the United States. Toft, one of the most recognized and salient voices in this analytical field was equally startled by the results: “Until quite recently, a civil war seemed all but impossible in the United States—something of the past, for most citizens, not of the future.

“But the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 [pictured above] and the rise of violent domestic extremism have set off alarm bells about the potential for another descent into internal war. That may seem far-fetched, but there have been literally hundreds of internal conflicts around the world—in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. And more depressingly, in many ways, the U.S. Civil War never actually ended and may indeed be ramping back up… It is hard not to see echoes of this dynamic at play as Republicans condemn other Republicans over their loyalty (or lack thereof) to former U.S. President Donald Trump.” Unfortunately, this is hardly an outlier opinion; rather this is increasingly a shared consensus among a rising majority of political scientists and governments all over the world.

At the core of emboldened aggressiveness illustrated by both China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin is the clear belief that the United States is on the verge of collapse, perhaps accelerated by artificially intelligent disinformation plants by these malevolent powers into our own digital universe, from social media to email bots tailoring their false narratives and supporting nation-killing conspiracy theories to individual Americans vulnerable in their belief systems. 

Yet Russia and China aren’t the only nations looking at these unrelenting negative metrics showing the American transition from democracy to anocracy (a nation moving towards autocracy with some vestiges of democracy). The increasing determination of the European Union and its member states to pursue policies that are obviously different from American wishes and expectations – that lockstep joint consistency is gone – is yet another reflection of this sad reality. 

The January 6th attack on the Capitol was a line of demarcation to most of these political analysts. It signaled a transition from “noise and marches” to a full-on attempt to nullify an election and impose an entirely different system of governance on the United States. Right-wing militias were very much present. The subsequent support for those insurrectionists, about 700 of whom have been charged with a federal crime, from the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress plus the near-uniform effort in red states to limit, restrict, perhaps nullify voting rights and election results, amplified by accelerated gerrymandering, suggest that the risks of a complete fracturing of the nation was moving rapidly to “probable” from “possible.”  As a growing number of retired American flag officers (generals and admirals) believe that the military must be prepared for a full-on violent election-related coup, you know the risk is far greater than most us know.

The proclivity toward violence combined with the massive presence of “legal” firearms (almost one gun for every citizen, including military assault weapons) tells the experts how close to civil war we really are. For those who picture the clearly “blue vs gray” field armies meeting on the many battlefields of our original Civil War as what a new civil war would look like, welcome to the 21st century where that form of insurrection is long gone. If it is not stopped, our second civil war will be very, very different. This is the first of a series of blogs that will address the potential of a shooting civil war rising here in the United States… and what, if that horrible happens, the conflict would probably look like.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for an increasing majority of governments and political scientists, the United States can no longer be classified as a democracy; it has become an anocracy instead.