Civil Wars A History in Ideas

"There hasn't been a world war in seventy years, yet death and destruction continue to manifest themselves in civil wars, countries tearing themselves apart, either through tribalism, factionalism, or religious sectarianism. In 2013, there were 33 armed conflicts in progress from Afghanistan to Yemen. Recent examples include Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, but Civil Wars does more than discuss recent civil strife--it also covers the idea of a nation or empire engaged in state-breaking rather than state-making. From the Roman Empire to the American War of Independence (revolt against British cousins), to the English rebellions of the 1600s to the Spanish Civil War, the book is a comprehensive exploration of the pervasiveness and particular destructiveness of civil war--"a genealogy of civil war." An elderly priest once said of the Irish Civil War in 1922, "War with the foreigner brings to the fore all that is best and noblest in a nation, but civil war [brings to the fore] all that is mean and base." And more destructive. According to Armitage, a greater proportion of England's population died during the civil wars of the 1640s than perished in the First World War. The same holds for the American Civil War: the death toll was six times larger, relative to the population, than their casualty rate in the Second World War. Simply put: civil wars have become the most widespread, the longest lasting, and most destructive form of organized human violence. And it costs an estimated $123 billion a year to fight them. The age of civil war in the West may be over but elsewhere in the last two decades it has exploded--from the Balkans to Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, and Sri Lanka, and most recently Syria. And there are the as yet unproclaimed civil wars in Iraq and Yemen. Why this shift has taken place is part of this book's message. Its unique perspective on the roots and dynamics of civil war will be essential to the ongoing effort to grapple with this seemingly intractable problem. And that's why we need this timely, authoritative book."--