For those societies that have experienced them, the danger of civil wars is not just a hypothetical but a menacing specter of their actual past. Survivors of past civil wars (like most African and European countries and a significant number of Asians) are haunted by their memories. So might be those who read History and books such as Barbara Walter's How Civil Wars Start and How To Prevent Them.
The central argument of How Civil Wars Start and How To Prevent Them is that in a spectrum of political systems that go from total tyranny (-10 on Walter's scale) and stable, strong al well-functioning liberal democracy (+10), Civil Wars tend to happen in those Walter call "emocracies" -somewhere between -5 and +5 of that scale.
In her study of multiple civil war cases -from Ancient times to Kosovo and Rwanda, Iraq or Afghanistan- Walter found two common elements:
Identity politics pit one ethnic/cultural group against another -usually the "son of the land" against immigrants or perceived "elite" groups in power. ("critical race" theory on the Far Left and 'ethnic replacement" on the Far Right mirror the same populist argument to fuel hatred and distrust.
Replacement of the current republic: The idea that if the rival win will mean the destruction of the US constitution and descent into some form of dictatorship with massive loss of rights for the losing faction.
The United States under Trump descended from an 8 to a dangerous 5 in the civil war risk "zone" during Trump's first term (so far) to return to 7 after Trump's contentious defeat in 2020. (At least for 25/30% of hard-core Trumpists and the majority of mainstream republican voters that get their information from Tucker Carlson and other conspiratory hacks)
Critical Review
Walter's study has many eye-opening points of contact with the current crises in EU and US liberal democracies with several important caveats:
It's a mid-term scenario for the US. Institutions are still able to contain dictatorial takeovers -as the June 6 hearings and the Republican Party business establishment's reluctance to go with Trump's anti-globalization policies. It would take more than a small mob storming the Capitol to bring down 248-year-old and tested constitutional institutions installing a Putin- Xi or a new version of Jefferson Davis.
It downplays and neglects the analysis of the illiberal Left in promoting civil wars -from BLM, Antifa, and the Quad- to the illiberal 'woke' left identity politics that drive the 2022 Democratic party presided by fading octogenarian leadership (COTUS and POTUS) without moderate and government-tested succession line.
It underestimates the historical size and power of the mainstream center in the US that rejects both extremes that demand sensible politics that address inflation growth and security.
The book proposes a clever, innovative, multi-perspective model to understand and analyze more than globalization itself, the politics, and political reactions to it.
The authors do not take sides but offer what can be a useful tool to foresee and even negotiate policies beyond politics that address the impacts and unintended consequences of globalization processes and their ups and downturns.
It is a good complement to my "cat whiskers' analysis methodology.
Here I quote their main theses for the sake of brevity:
"The Top Face of the
Cube: Everybody Wins
According to some
economists, if you think that globalization impoverishes countries and destroys
communities, you have it all wrong. Sure, you may have lost your job because
workers.
in other countries are paid less, but that is not at all
different from losing your job because workers in the factory next door are
more efficient or because technological progress has rendered your skills
obsolete. The market is simply doing its work. You should improve your
qualifications to get a better job; in the meantime, you still benefit from
globalization since it gives you access to cheaper products. The process of
adjustment may be hard at times, but it is a short- term cost that we have to
accept in the interest of long- term prosperity. The end result will be a more
efficient economy, lower prices, and more abundant consumer choice. In this
view, the pushback against economic globalization by people who feel that they
have lost out is simply a natural reaction to the creative destruction cycles.
We call this “everybody wins” view the establishment
narrative, because it was the dominant paradigm for understanding economic
globalization in the West in the three decades following the end of the Cold
War. The view reflected a consensus of the main political parties in most
Western democracies and beyond, and it has been espoused by many of the
institutions that serve as the guardians of the international economic order,
such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the WTO.
Many powerful actors still endorse this narrative, arguing that free trade not
only increases prosperity but also supports other goals, such as promoting
peace. Since the establishment narrative has been ruling the world and also
represents the sunniest view of globalization, we visualize it as situated on
the top of the cube.
The Four Sides of the Cube: Winners and Losers
"The establishment narrative now finds itself besieged from
all sides. Concerns about the impact of free trade on workers and the
environment have bubbled up previously, but discontent with economic
globalization tended to be suppressed in mainstream circles in the West. In the
decade following the global financial crisis, however, narratives that
highlight how economic globalization produces both winners and losers have
returned to the center of political debate. These currents have pushed us off
the sunny top of the cube, over the edges, and down to the four faces on the
cube’s sides (Figure 1.2). Instead of relatively limited squabbles between the center-
left and center- right
Proponents of the four challenger narratives do not
necessarily contest that economic globalization has produced absolute economic
gains at the aggregate level, whether measured nationally or globally. However,
they focus on the distribution of those gains, both within and across
countries, and derive much of their energy from channeling the disappointment,
fears, and anger of the losers.
2. On the left of the political spectrum, we see two narratives that emphasize how gains from economic
globalization have flowed upward to rich individuals and multinational
corporations. The left- wing populist narrative focuses on the ways in
which national economies are rigged to channel the gains from globalization to
the privileged few.
Left- wing populism expresses itself
in vertical hostility; its proponents stand up for the ordinary people who have
lost out to the corrupt elite.
Whereas some proponents point the finger at chief
executive officers (CEOs), bankers, and billionaires (the top 1 percent),
others take aim at the educated professional class and the upper middle class
more broadly (the top 20 percent).
Instead of singling out domestic elites, proponents of
the corporate power narrative argue that the real winners from economic
globalization are multinational corporations, which can take advantage of a
global marketplace to produce cheaply, sell everywhere, and pay as little in
taxes as possible.
The left-wing populist narrativezeroes in on domestic problems, highlighting the
explosion of inequality within countries.
The corporate power narrative, by contrast, adopts a transnational approach and treats
multinational corporations and the transnational working class as the key
actors.
The two narratives are often intertwined in places such as
the United States and the United Kingdom, where many on the left are broadly
critical of owners of substantial capital, whether individual or corporate.
In many western European countries, by contrast, where
levels of domestic inequality are lower, the corporate power narrative features
more prominently, as was evident in the protests across Europe in 2015 and 2016
against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
3. In the right- wing populist narrative, workers, their families, and their communities lose from
globalization, both economically and in a cultural sense.
This narrative’s emphasis varies in different countries.
In the United States, where the loss of blue- collar jobs to China and Mexico
has devastated manufacturing communities, the narrative has a strong anti-
trade element.
In western Europe, anti- immigrant sentiment and concerns
about a loss of sovereignty are central features of the narrative, whereas
anxieties about the impact of international trade are less pronounced.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, many of those who
voted for Brexit did not oppose free trade; they rebelled against what they
perceived as dictates from the EU institutions in Brussels and longed to regain
control over immigration.
The right-wing populist narrative shares with the left-wing
version a deep distrust of elites, but the two narratives part company on what
they blame the elite for.
whereas left- wing populists fault the elite for enriching
themselves at the expense of the working and middle classes, right- wing
populists denounce the elite for failing to protect the hardworking native
population from threats posed by an external “other.”
The right- wing populist narrative thus has a strong
horizontal us- versus- them quality, whether expressed
through concern about protecting workers from the offshoring of jobs or
guarding them against an inflow of immigrants who might compete for those jobs,
live off the welfare system, or threaten the native community’s sense of
identity.
The right- wing populist narrative also highlights
geographical divisions within countries, such as the diverging fortunes of
thriving cities
The geoeconomic narrative also focuses on an external threat, but of a different kind: it
emphasizes economic and technological competition between the United States
and China as great- power rivals.
Although the narrative features most prominently in
America, it is gaining ground in other Western countries as well, where China
is increasingly regarded as a strategic competitor and a potential security
threat rather than merely as an economic partner. Instead of applauding trade
and investment as enhancing economic welfare and increasing prospects for peace,
the geoeconomic narrative emphasizes the security vulnerabilities created by
economic interdependence and digital connectivity with a strategic rival.
Although both the right- wing populist and geoeconomic
narratives emphasize external, horizontal threats, they differ in key ways.
The former focuses on cultural as well as economic losses, while
the latter is more mindful of relative economic power of countries and its
capacity to undergird political and military power. The former primarily laments the loss of the manufacturing jobs
of the past, while the latter focuses on winning the race in the technologies
of the future, such as fifth- generation (5G) networks and artificial
intelligence.
And the former targets Polish plumbers who undercut local
workers, whereas the latter casts a critical eye on Chinese scientists and
engineers who might steal Western technology.
4. The Bottom Face of the Cube: Everybody Loses
"on the bottom face of the Rubik’s cube, we locate
narratives that see all of us as at risk of losing from economic globalization
in its current form. These narratives portray economic globalization as a
source and accelerator of global threats, such as pandemics and climate change.
Some of these narratives focus on how global connectivity
increases the risk of contagion, both of the viral and economic kind.
Others warn that
the skyrocketing carbon emissions associated with the global diffusion of
Western patterns of production and consumption are endangering both people and
the planet.
The Rubik analogy is a rich and thought-provoking
framework to "frame" political and social reactions
toward globalization. The book presents five reactions to the "mainstream"
idea of globalization as "faces" or "sides" of the Rubik
cube. The Rubik analogy frames the analysis within certain constraints or pre-condition
that can help or hinder the search for practical problem-solving alternatives:
1.There
is no one "optimal" "win-win" but 6ⁿ possible
options. The Rubik model presents the non-zero-sum, "win-win"
option as "the establishment narrative" (two popular populist derogatory
terms) and "the dominant paradigm" (another). To find a "win-win"
option within the tangled Rubik model, all other facets must be fulfilled on
their terms -whether they might be objectively correct or wrong, feasible or
not. Everybody has to be happy to find a happy ending, or at least, the problem-solver
has to conciliate six positions at politically, ideologically, and socially odds
with each other.
2.All
six facets are presented antagonistically, which defeats the purpose of the
Rubik model, which has multiple collaborative solutions to "fill"
the six desired sides' optimal" (no facet can have "mixed" or
blended elements).
A All six "facets" in the Rubik model are political and ideological "narratives", not objective country/ industry ./ social segment, region objective P&L data
3.There
is a "lose-lose" mandatory option to solve all other five, and
Rubik's simplistic logic does not have a 'losing side."
The Rubik analogy is academically
and visually attractive but intrinsically drives to endless unsustainable "solutions"
unless there is an optimal "win-win," non=zero-sum alternative.
Such an alternative requires "mixing"
elements of each side
And also to have a "guiding
star": a solution that is not "a side" but a multi-dimensional "win-win"
optimal, like the Prisoners' Dilemma.
How about a Minimal Ideal Vision
(MIV) for a shared, sustainable human future?
That goes beyond quick fix
diplomacy and appeasement. We got one in 1945-48 after two World wars. And a
third, with the fall of the USSR.
We must find a new MIV or get entangled in an unsolvable, unstable mess of a self-made maze.
On February 18th, 2019, Intelligence Squared brought together a panel of experts to argue the causes behind the rise of populism and to debate what should happen next. Should mainstream parties adopt the policies of the populists in an attempt to appeal to people who have hitherto felt unheard? Or should liberals refuse to abandon principled and economically necessary immigration policies? Hear the arguments and have your say.They are today even more valid than then.
The term populism (or populist) has become a placeholder for a growing gamut of extreme politics. Let's look at some common components of populism and its stages of evolution.
Definitions
Merriam-Webster
Definition of populist
(Entr
y 1 of 2)
1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common peopleespecially, often capitalized: a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2: a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
Brittanica
populism is a political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favorable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment.
Populism usually combines elements of the left and the right, opposing large business and financial interests but also frequently being hostile to established liberal, socialist, and labor parties.
The term populism can designate either democratic or authoritarian movements. Populism is typically critical of political representation and anything that mediates the relation between the people and their leader or government. In its most democratic form, populism seeks to defend the interests and maximize the power of ordinary citizens, through reform rather than revolution
Political Science (Francis Fukuyama)
Common characteristics:
"Anti-Elitism": Politics that blame the situation of a group -usually considered a majority of low and middle income "native" working class- on the policies and privileges of "elites" or minorities with un-earned access to wealth, property, power, or education, including foreigners, immigrants and ethnic or religious groups (Jews, Arabs, White, Men, European) or industries (Finance and banking, oil, Technology) and places (rural, small towns vs, big cities, high-end vs poor neighborhoods and slums)
Zero-sum, victimization logic: the "gains" and superior wealth, status, and access to education of "the elites" is taken away from "the people" by an unfair system.
Group and class antagonistic and unresolvable (by institutional and peaceful means) conflict there is no "middle ground" or 'melting pot" but segregation, expulsion, or warfare among classes, ethnic groups, locals vs foreigners.
Protectionism, nationalism
Secessionism, autonomism, separatism
Isolationism, anti-"cosmopolitanism"
Xenophobia and "kin-based" trust (and distrust)
Extreme conspirative views shared in "communication bubbles" with highly exclusive beliefs and even language and behavioral codes
Strong leaders totally empowered by faithful followers
Avoidance of "unpopular" positions. "The people" are always right.
Use of direct and circumstantial majorities: rule by the crowd, rally, street, referendums.
Evolution and Stages
Institutional degradation
Populist politics and policies erode those institutions designed to check and balance power. They usually start by defacing and storming the Congress -as in the cases of 19717 Russia, 1924 Italy, 1932 Germany, 2003 Venezuela, 2020 US, and 2022 Chile.
Soon Congress's compromise and legislation are replaced by referendum and special executive orders justified by some kind of "national emergency".
2. Popular Dictatorship
Contrary to conventional wisdom, dictators most often are popularly elected; Mussolini and Hitler reached office by vote and were reelected by 90% of the popular vote. Chavez, Maduro, and Putin stayed decades in power through elections.
Populist leaders "elect" their voters in exchange for benefits. Patronage, fraud, and opposition illegalization make indefinite reelections safe. Nepotism and dynastic succession secure power beyond life terms.
Common policies:
Protectionism
Clientelism & patronage
Anti-free market capitalism
State and crony capitalism
3. Imperialist Expansion
The constant depletion of wealth and resources to sustain corruption and clientelism requires continuous expansion -"Lebensraum" - Hitler's term for our modern "secure borders". Hitler's annexation of Sudetes and Putin's of Crimea follows that same pattern. Hitler's outright invasion of Poland (with Stalin's help) and Putin's invasion of Ukraine show the same type of escalation.
In its imperial expansionist phase, populist dictatorships provoke territorial wars culminating in global conflicts until their regimes are destroyed with large devastation and loss of lives.
In his book "Liberalism and its discontents", Francis Fukuyama revisits critically his earlier views of "The End of History" and makes new observations about the status of liberal democracy twenty years into the 21st century.
Fukuyama starts by defining liberalism in the widest possible way:
By “liberalism,” I refer to the doctrine that first emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century that argued for the limitation of the powers of governments through law and ultimately constitutions, creating institutions protecting the rights of individuals living under their jurisdiction.
Classical liberalism is a big tent that encompasses a range of political views that nonetheless agree on the foundational importance of equal individual rights, law, and freedom.
And makes a clear distinction with plain democracy:
Democracy refers to rule by the people, which today is institutionalized in periodic free and fair multiparty elections under universal adult suffrage.
Liberalism in the sense I am using it refers to the rule of law, a system of formal rules that restrict the powers of the executive, even if that executive is democratically legitimated through an election.
He finds that, after a triumphant expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union and China's opening to some degree of free market, global capitalism, a new series of challenges have risen from within liberal democracies, both established and new.
Right- and left-wing populism has captured the dissatisfaction of those groups left relatively behind or even threatened by global liberal democracy and free markets.
From the right, rising immigration from developing and Third World countries exacerbated by liberal policies pursued in the US by the Democratic party and in the EU by the center from the left Schengen consensus combined with the 2008 financial crisis and rising unemployment has fueled the rise to power of strong nationalist and xenophobic right-wing populism.
In established liberal democracies, it is the liberal institutions that have come under immediate attack. Leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński, Brazil’s Jair Bolsanaro, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and America’s Donald Trump were all legitimately elected, and have used their electoral mandates to attack liberal institutions in the first instance. These include the courts and justice system, nonpartisan state bureaucracies, independent media, and other bodies limiting executive power under a system of checks and balances."
And also a rise in left-wing populism in Spain, the US, and Latin America
Liberalism has been challenged in recent years not just by populists of the right, but from a renewed progressive left as well.The critique from this quarter evolved from a charge—correct in itself—that liberal societies were not living up to their own ideals of equal treatment of all groups.
There is ample evidence that democracy not necessarily favors liberal systems, particularly when these bring rising unequal outcomes for certain groups -blue-collar native whites on the Right and immigrants from illiberal cultures on the Left.
These new realities are turning upside down the traditional Right and Left political constituencies and clientele: blue-collar workers vote for Far Right candidates and immigrants fleeing Third World socialism vote for an open-borders Left in the EU.
A growing polarization goes hand in hand with ethnic, class, and nationalistic divisions fueled by populist vote-capturing rhetoric.
Fukuyama notices a growing number of democracies that are turning illiberal by exacerbating the power of an executive strongman favored by local ethnic majorities: blue-collar whites in the US follow if not Trump, "trumpist", 'Tea Party" nationalistic ideas. In Europe, France's centrist government is under siege from the "yellow jackets" disaffected native French rejecting liberal "elites" that tolerate massive unassimilated Islamic immigration. The same situation occurs in all of Western Europe. Russia is also promoting a pan-Slavic, pan-Russian redesign of the post-WWII borders following ethnic and linguistic lines.
The Left wing's challenge to liberal democracy in Latin America and Europe also exploits historical ethnic nationalism -from the pre-Colombian descendants in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina carving land through rewriting constitutions and referendums to the Catalan and Basque separatists in Spain-.
The world that Fukuyama describes bears an eery resemblance with the one that preceded WWI a hundred years ago. The war in Ukraine resembles the territorial annexations and alliances that triggered both World Wars of the 20th century.
Russian military's embarrassing failure in invading Ukraine shows an interesting contrast between autocratic and democratic governance, not just in the civilian but in the military action.
Reports from the front are eloquent:
Russia’s failings appear to trace to factors ranging from the Kremlin’s wrong assumptions about Ukrainian resistance to the use of poorly motivated conscript soldiers. They suggest that Russia and the West overestimated Moscow’s overhauls of its armed forces, which some military analysts say appear to have been undermined by graft and misreporting.
miles-long convoys of tanks and support trucks have stalled on highways out of fuel,
Hundreds of Russian military vehicles have been destroyed and others abandoned, sometimes because of mechanical breakdowns and poor-quality equipment, said Western officials and military analysts closely following the campaign.
Russian troops turned to use open telephone and analog radios following the failure of encrypted communications systems, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has said, making them vulnerable to intercept or jamming. Russian officers were likely targeted after their positions were exposed by their use of open communications, Western military analysts said
Russian military uses central planning where all decisions are made at the top and unmotivated draftee soldiers wait for orders and are punished if they act on their own,. The jammed lines of vehicles reflect the lack of experience and leadership that makes soldiers pack together in fear, offering a better target to their rivals.
The WSJ reports:
The movement of troops in bumper-to-bumper convoys is a clear sign of “soldiers who are untrained or undisciplined,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe and now chair in strategic studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. “You need sergeants or NCOs constantly telling them to spread out. It’s a human instinct to huddle together when you’re in danger,
Ukrainians follow an opposite set of rules, gotten from their NATO and Marine Corps trainers, who emphasize mobility, individual initiative, and taking the decision level to the soldiers on the battlefield,
The contrast reminds of Rambo, the Silvester Stallone "army of one" marine beating up dozens of marshalls and regular soldiers by improvising on the terrain.
Ukrainians play Rambo while Russians fight as the clumsy marshalls in the film.
This is, actually, a contrast between liberal democracy, based on free initiative and entrepreneurship, and autocratic rule, based on central planning, fear, rigid rules, and punishing independent thinking.
There are, of course, other factors, such as one army defending its country and another of invaders that don't even know well the land (there are reports of Russian tank crews lost in the backroads asking locals for directions), but the key difference is between nimble and resourceful, well-motivated militias (such as those that George Washington led to defeat the British in the American Revolution War ) and what Milton Friedman called "An Army of slaves" when he proposed ending the draft during the Vietnam War,
One last note: autocracies are slow, clumsy learners, prone to repeat mistakes.
Putin's invasion of Ukraine seems to defy logic. From The Long View perspective, based on analyzing societal performance over time, it is a crystal-clear example of perverse incentives at work. Putin got a 620 billion USD war chest from the hikes in oil price provoked by his previous military invasions of Crimea and Georgia. Those billions went to his war chest to cover military expenses, further military buildup, cover the finances of his failing economy, and feed a corrupt oligarchy that includes Putin himself.
Armchair psychologists' analyses about Putin's personality or madness are both puerile and irrelevant. If anything, Putin's behavior and decisions are perfectly rational responses to a perverse incentives system that reminds that of the old Peter Sellers film The Mouse that Roared. In the film, a small Andorra-like European country declares war on the US, seeking to be occupied and rebuilt with American aid.
Putin is doing exactly the same calculation: war pays in higher oil revenues and increased bargaining power with an oil-dependent EU.
Iran builds nuclear armament for the same reason. Sanctions are compensated with higher oil prices and bargaining power. Pakistan built and supports the Taliban and fundamentalist terrorism to get US aid to... fight them -not too hard-
Let's remember a simple principle of human and societal performance:
behavior is a function of consequences
And ask two fundamental questions:
Are there rewards for bad behavior?
Are there punishments for good behavior?
Obviously, Putin received 620 billion dollars for 1. and complains about 2, explaining that if he does nothing, NATO enrolls former allies around Russia, turning them into viable threats and rivals.
It doesn't take a Nobel laureate to figure this out. Just looking from The Long View perspective and using a little societal performance analysis.
How can you stop Putin?
Just put a real punishment or disincentive to his military adventures. Not sanctions, but cheap oil. If the US opens its shale spigot as it did before, oil prices can go down fast enough to paralyze the Russian tanks on their tracks. Just a credible announcement from POTUS would change Putin's personality on a dime (or a few billions more)
Why is it so hard, then?
The answer is simple: domestic US and EU politics.
US:
Biden has outsourced his energy policy to his Left, putting dogma before results. Shale is bad, green is good, and Putin knows it and exploits that weakness.
EU
Here green dogma has been the law for years and special interests pushing wind, solar and other green industries blocked shale long ago, More dramatically, outsourced energy to... Putin, who has now control over the gas spigots to force the EU into a quick surrender, toasting with Vichy water.
The
anti-vaccine movement -which has taken on a lethal dimension and impact in
this pandemic- unites the extreme right with the extreme left and has very old
roots that go back to Eduard Jenner's first vaccination in the 18th century.
Even
then there were movements of organized ignorance and rumors against
vaccinations. This continued with polio and other pre-COVID diseases and will
surely continue because there are lobbies of lawsuit attorneys in the US who have bulti a cottage industry out of making lawsuits for alleged negative effects of vaccines.
Although
those lawsuits invariably fail, they generate billionaire fees for the
lobbyists who make a living from them.
Among
them, the eldest son of Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr, stands out sadly
these days. Kennedy Jr. has broken with his family and combines the power of his last name with a mix of left-wing
environmentalism and anti-vaccine propaganda supported by Donald Trump.
This
movement, whose factual base descends into a mix of the most grotesque ignorance and disproven claims by repentant authors of discredited papers, is dangerous due to the billionaire figures it mobilizes in social
media, lobbies, and paid militants.
It is another example of the
reactionary nature of extremism -coming from the Left or from the Right end of the political spectrum-.
