Is the US heading for another civil war? ...Middle East

SEATTLE – British filmmaker Alex Garland was adamant his 2024 film Civil War was a warning about what could happen in the United States if the country did not confront its growing divisions. Some felt the director was being overly sensational, but he did not care.

“I think civil war is just an extension of a situation,” Garland told The New York Times. “That situation is polarisation and the lack of limiting forces on polarisation.”

He told another interviewer that the movie, starring Kirsten Dunst as a jaded war photographer, was “a warning” of what could happen when violence erupted between neighbours.

One obvious example from America’s history was the 1861-65 conflict from which the film took its name, a bloody war between members of the same country that resulted in the deaths of at least 700,000 Americans and a further 400,000 wounded.

The war was fought in large part over the institution of slavery and different views on the direction the country should be going in.

Garland’s film, which was popular with both critics and audiences, was released before two assassination attempts last year on Donald Trump, and before the deadly attack in June on Democratic legislators in Minnesota.

It also predated last month’s assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, shot dead as he spoke at an event on a university campus in Utah.

Kirk’s killing prompted many to demand an end to political violence and the rhetoric that led to it. However, when it came to who was to blame, right and left both pointed the finger firmly at one another.

Speaking at Kirk’s memorial service, his widow, Erika Kirk, said she forgave the man alleged to have killed her husband just days earlier. “The answer to hate is not hate,” she said.

In contrast, Trump used his speech to attack the “radical left”, which he blamed for the majority of political violence. “[Kirk] did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them,” Trump said. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

Trump sending in the troops

A recent report by Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative, which tracks political violence, identified a broad escalation of violence marked by high-profile attacks such as those on the Minnesota legislators, an arson incident in April at the home of Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and the killing of Kirk.

Many fear that Trump has seized on Kirk’s killing to justify sending troops into cities such as Chicago, Portland and perhaps even New York, where he was born.

Among the most outspoken has been Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

“The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,” he said earlier this month.

“Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city,” Pritzker added.

The Insurrection Act would allow Trump to call up federal troops to put down domestic rebellion or insurrection, something Trump has claimed is happening in various – usually Democrat-led – cities.

Trump has called the Insurrection Act “the strongest power a president has” and claimed he has the “absolute right” to invoke it.

Fears of an armed uprising

Although most experts say the prospect of another full-blown civil war is unlikely, they say an armed uprising is entirely possible.

Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told The i Paper that the definition for a civil war used by modern scholars is a conflict in which at least 1,000 people are killed.

“I think the American public, despite the hyperbole online, is ready to find points of common ground and work through a lot of chaos of the moment,” he said. “What acts as a barrier are hardened positions online.”

Jensen said that what is more likely is something similar to the 1791 armed uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion, which was against a tax imposed by George Washington to pay off debts from the War of Independence. It lasted for two years and hundreds of rebels took up arms, though casualties were limited.

He said that this could take the form of “sporadic acts of violence that will not be neatly defined by right or left but that stop short of becoming formal, organised parties locked in civil conflict”.

Joel Busher, a professor of political sociology at the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University, also said that a civil war in the US is “unlikely”, even though there is “clearly a heightened risk of political violence”.

Asked to imagine circumstances in which a violent conflict might take place, Busher said: “What would happen if the Republicans were to lose the next election? Would they accept the result and support the process of democratic transition?”

“I hope so,” he added. “But if they did not, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that decentralised networks of armed actors would seek to mete out violence against their political enemies – Democratic lawmakers, minorities identified as being somehow less ‘American’.”

“If such violence were not condemned by senior Republicans, we would be looking at a potential civil war scenario,” Busher said.

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Experts said that to lessen divisions and reduce incidents of violence, US politicians and the public need to take action.

“Our leaders need to stress our national identify. That all Americans want certain things, that we all are part of the same political unit,” said Joseph Young, a professor at the University of Kentucky and author of academic papers on terror, violence and civil conflicts.

“We disagree about policies and how to make our country better, but we are not enemies,” he added. “A fundamental piece of a democracy is that we pursue our disagreements nonviolently and some times we win and sometimes we lose, but we always remain nonviolent.”

Projects like the one at Princeton aim to reduce political violence by supporting efforts to build local community resilience. Its recent report urged officials to continue to call for short-term mitigation support, including improved security at public meetings, and long-term efforts to counter the normalisation of hostility.

The project’s spokesperson, Sam Jones, said that one key point to emphasise in this tense moment is that the “vast majority of Americans reject political violence. Support [for it] is often overstated.”

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