When recently asked, Barbara F. Walter, author of the book, How Civil Wars Start and How To Stop Them, answers the question, are we in a civil war? She answered no, thankfully.
She goes on to say, the reason I can say this is the CIA has a manual called Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency. This is a 2012 manual that’s been declassified. It outlines the steps that our government has seen other countries go through.
There are three stages:
- The Preinsurgency Stage
- The Incipient Insurgency Stage
- The Full Insurgency Stage
As of 2023, we are in the second stage.
The Preinsurgency Stage is when these groups are starting to form. They’re starting to have a mission statement. They’re starting to stockpile weapons and get training, but they’re not launching attacks yet.
The Incipient Stage is the most dangerous phase because they’re now launching attacks. It could be an attack on an African American church, or it could be a grocery store where lots of Latinos shop, or it could be trying to assassinate a judge who they don’t like or somebody in the opposite political party or LGBTQ+ groups who are involved in a parade.
It’s dangerous because these seem like isolated attacks and oftentimes governments and citizens write these off as well. These are not something that are part of a bigger movement, but they usually are part of a bigger movement.
The Full Insurgency Stage is when you start to see a consistent set of attacks over time. You start to piece them together. We could have been at the start of Stage Three on January 6, but the FBI has been doing a great job bringing a lot of those attackers to justice, getting them off the street, and basically making it harder for them to move forward.
So that’s where we are today. We have these isolated attacks. We still see them, but we don’t see a series of coordinated, consistent attacks yet.