Neighboring a Civil War


Book Description

This paper analyses the issue of how Turkey’s border security policy has been shaped since 2013.




Things Fall Apart


Book Description

"Iraq is rapidly descending into all-out civil war. Unfortunately, the United States probably will not be able to just walk away from the chaos. Even setting aside the humanitarian nightmare that will ensue, a full-scale civil war would likely consume more than Iraq: historically, such massive conflicts have often had highly deleterious effects on neighboring countries and other outside states. Spillover from an Iraq civil war could be disastrous." Thus begins this sobering analysis of what the near future of Iraq could look like, and what America can do to reduce the threat of wider conflict. Preventing spillover of the Iraqi conflict into neighboring states must be a top priority. In explaining how that can be accomplished, Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack draw on their own considerable expertise as well as relevant precedents. The authors scrutinize several recent civil wars, including Lebanon, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Bosnia. After synthesizing those experiences into lessons on how civil wars affect other nations, Byman and Pollack draw from them to produce recommendations for U.S. policy. Even while the Bush Administration attempts to prevent further deterioration of the situation in Iraq, it needs to be planning how to deal with a full-scale civil war if one develops.




The Iroquois in the Civil War


Book Description

Despite the perennial interest in the American Civil War, historians have not examined sufficiently how Native American communities were affected by this watershed event in U.S. history. This ground-breaking book by one of the foremost Iroquois historians significantly adds to our understanding of this subject by providing the first intimate look at the Iroquois' involvement in the American Civil War and its devastating impact on Iroquois communities. Both fascinating and fast-moving, The Iroquois in the Civil War exposes many myths about Native American soldiers. To correct old stereotypes about American Indians, Hauptman discusses the Iroquois' distinguished war service as commissioned and noncommissioned officers as well as ordinary cavalrymen and common foot soldiers. Drawing upon archival records and personal wartime letters and diaries never before used by ethnohistorians, Hauptman portrays the dilemma the Iroquois experienced during this era. He assesses the Iroquois' military volunteerism, their loyalty to the Union, and their concurrent effort to maintain their lands, sovereignty, and cultural identity just at a time when new pressures for tribal dissolution were increasing. He not only provides us with a remarkable glimpse into the hearts and minds of Iroquois Indians on the battlefield but also adds significantly to our understanding about the conflict affecting the women and children remaining on the reservations.




Alliance Formation in Civil Wars


Book Description

Some of the most brutal and long-lasting civil wars of our time involve the rapid formation and disintegration of alliances among warring groups, as well as fractionalization within them. It would be natural to suppose that warring groups form alliances based on shared identity considerations - such as Christian groups allying with Christian groups - but this is not what we see. Two groups that identify themselves as bitter foes one day, on the basis of some identity narrative, might be allies the next day and vice versa. Nor is any group, however homogeneous, safe from internal fractionalization. Rather, looking closely at the civil wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia and testing against the broader universe of fifty-three cases of multiparty civil wars, Fotini Christia finds that the relative power distribution between and within various warring groups is the primary driving force behind alliance formation, alliance changes, group splits and internal group takeovers.




The Border Between Them


Book Description

The most bitter guerrilla conflict in American history raged along the Kansas-Missouri border from 1856 to 1865, making that frontier the first battleground in the struggle over slavery. That fiercely contested boundary represented the most explosive political fault line in the United States, and its bitter divisions foreshadowed an entire nation torn asunder. Jeremy Neely now examines the significance of the border war on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri line and offers a comparative, cross-border analysis of its origins, meanings, and consequences. A narrative history of the border war and its impact on citizens of both states, The Border between Them recounts the exploits of John Brown, William Quantrill, and other notorious guerrillas, but it also uncovers the stories of everyday people who lived through that conflict. Examining the frontier period to the close of the nineteenth century, Neely frames the guerrilla conflict within the larger story of the developing West and squares that violent period with the more peaceful--though never tranquil--periods that preceded and followed it. Focusing on the countryside south of the big bend in the Missouri River, an area where there was no natural boundary separating the states, Neely examines three border counties in each state that together illustrate both sectional division and national reunion. He draws on the letters and diaries of ordinary citizens--as well as newspaper accounts, election results, and census data--to illuminate the complex strands that helped bind Kansas and Missouri together in post-Civil War America. He shows how people on both sides of the line were already linked by common racial attitudes, farming practices, and ambivalence toward railroad expansion; he then tells how emancipation, industrialization, and immigration eventually eroded wartime divisions and facilitated the reconciliation of old foes from each state. Today the "border war" survives in the form of interstate rivalries between collegiate Tigers and Jayhawks, allowing Neely to consider the limits of that reconciliation and the enduring power of identities forged in wartime. The Border between Them is a compelling account of the terrible first act of the American Civil War and its enduring legacy for the conflict's veterans, victims, and survivors, as well as subsequent generations.




A Separate Civil War


Book Description

Most Americans think of the Civil War as a series of dramatic clashes between massive armies led by romantic-seeming leaders. But in the Appalachian communities of North Georgia, things were very different. Focusing on Fannin and Lumpkin counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains along Georgia’s northern border, A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South argues for a more localized, idiosyncratic understanding of this momentous period in our nation’s history. The book reveals that, for many participants, this war was fought less for abstract ideological causes than for reasons tied to home, family, friends, and community. Making use of a large trove of letters, diaries, interviews, government documents, and sociological data, Jonathan Dean Sarris brings to life a previously obscured version of our nation’s most divisive and destructive war. From the outset, the prospect of secession and war divided Georgia’s mountain communities along the lines of race and religion, and war itself only heightened these tensions. As the Confederate government began to draft men into the army and seize supplies from farmers, many mountaineers became more disaffected still. They banded together in armed squads, fighting off Confederate soldiers, state militia, and their own pro-Confederate neighbors. A local civil war ensued, with each side seeing the other as a threat to law, order, and community itself. In this very personal conflict, both factions came to dehumanize their enemies and use methods that shocked even seasoned soldiers with their savagery. But when the war was over in 1865, each faction sought to sanitize the past and integrate its stories into the national myths later popularized about the Civil War. By arguing that the reason for choosing sides had more to do with local concerns than with competing ideologies or social or political visions, Sarris adds a much-needed complication to the question of why men fought in the Civil War.




The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War


Book Description

No one questions the horrific impact of the Civil War on America, but few realize its effect on American Indians. Residents of Indian Territory found the war especially devastating. Their homeland was beset not only by regular army operations but also by guerillas and bushwhackers. Complicating the situation even further, Cherokee men fought for the Union as well as the Confederacy and created their own “brothers’ war.” This book offers a broad overview of the war as it affected the Cherokees—a social history of a people plunged into crisis. The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War shows how the Cherokee people, who had only just begun to recover from the ordeal of removal, faced an equally devastating upheaval in the Civil War. Clarissa W. Confer illustrates how the Cherokee Nation, with its sovereign status and distinct culture, had a wartime experience unlike that of any other group of people—and suffered perhaps the greatest losses of land, population, and sovereignty. Confer examines decision-making and leadership within the tribe, campaigns and soldiering among participants on both sides, and elements of civilian life and reconstruction. She reveals how a centuries-old culture informed the Cherokees’ choices, with influences as varied as matrilineal descent, clan affiliations, economic distribution, and decentralized government combining to distinguish the Native reaction to the war. The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War recalls a people enduring years of hardship while also struggling for their future as the white man’s war encroached on the physical and political integrity of their nation.




Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865


Book Description

The first phase of the Civil War was fought west of the Mississippi River at least six years before the attack on Fort Sumter. Starting with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Jay Monaghan traces the development of the conflict between the pro-slavery elements from Missouri and the New England abolitionists who migrated to Kansas. "Bleeding Kansas" provided a preview of the greater national struggle to come. The author allows a new look at Quantrill's sacking of Lawrence, organized bushwhackery, and border battles that cost thousands of lives. Not the least valuable are chapters on the American Indians’ part in the conflict. The record becomes devastatingly clear: the fighting in the West was the cruelest and most useless of the whole affair, and if men of vision had been in Washington in the 1850s it might have been avoided.







How Civil Wars Start


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A leading political scientist examines the dramatic rise in violent extremism around the globe and sounds the alarm on the increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States “Required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) WINNER OF THE GLOBAL POLICY INSTITUTE AWARD • THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, The Times (UK), Esquire, Prospect (UK) Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about her own country. Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it’s the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today. Over the last two decades, the number of active civil wars around the world has almost doubled. Walter reveals the warning signs—where wars tend to start, who initiates them, what triggers them—and why some countries tip over into conflict while others remain stable. Drawing on the latest international research and lessons from over twenty countries, Walter identifies the crucial risk factors, from democratic backsliding to factionalization and the politics of resentment. A civil war today won’t look like America in the 1860s, Russia in the 1920s, or Spain in the 1930s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind. In this urgent and insightful book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face—and the knowledge to stop it before it’s too late.