‘The Romans got it right: civil war breeds civil war’

David Armitage is Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and author of Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Yale University Press, 2018)

Scheming plotters and foreign ideas; class conflict and moral decline; ancestral division and innate instability – these are a few of the favourite things Romans thought made civil wars happen. The Romans were the ones who nominally invented civil war, meaning literally ‘war between citizens’. They were also the first to experience that kind of conflict as civil war, using not just a precise vocabulary for it (the Greeks hadn’t, for instance) but identifying it as a particularly gruesome form of conflict with its own pathologies and specific causes. As Rome suffered serial civil wars, its historians asked repeatedly what made them happen: internal enemies, Greek notions of democracy, the restive plebs, the luxury spawned by imperial victory, perhaps the primal dissension between Romulus and Remus, or just something that doomed Roman civilisation to replay its founding fratricide again and again.

Fast forward to our own times and the world since 1989, and we find modern versions of ancient explanations. Roman plotters have become entrepreneurs of division, as in the former Yugoslavia. The mythic collision of brothers hovers behind prejudicial explanations based on ‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ hatreds in Rwanda or Sudan. And political scientists who study patterns of civil war tell us that the Romans got it right: that civil war breeds civil war; that, as the poet Horace put it 2,000 years ago, it was like a volcano, always ready to erupt, ‘smouldering under ashes’.

Those same contemporary students of internal conflict now tell us that civil wars happen for other, more modern reasons: battles over scarce minerals or economic inequality, ethnic fragmentation or even physical geography, combined with political polarisation, can all determine the likelihood of strife. But one lesson learnt from the Romans endures: that civil wars come not singly but in battalions and the more civil war a polity has endured, the more likely it is to suffer civil war again. Asking why civil wars happens matters most if it can help to prevent them. The paradoxical answer is clear: if you don’t want civil war in future, make sure you didn’t have one in the past. Note to the US: beware.

‘Most explanations focus on division, but divisions in democratic polities are normal’

Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and author of The English Civil War: A People’s History (HarperCollins, 2006)

Civil wars have a single overwhelming cause: the government becomes illegitimate in the eyes of a significant number of the people it governs. By illegitimate, I do not simply mean disliked or distrusted; rather that a particular government is seen as actively working against the constitution or the norms of the polity.

The subsequent question must therefore be how a government becomes illegitimate. Most recent (alarmist) writings about the likelihood of civil war in the 21st-century US usually draw only on relatively recent history in order to assess the situation. Looking back a little further to the civil war in the British Isles lets us extract a useful timeline of the breakdown of legitimacy: all of these events are causally connected.

Firstly, the two sides stop listening to one another. Atrocity stories then circulate. The two sides begin to fear one another. The fear leads people to conspiracy theories. At this point, religion or some ideology external to the polity comes into it. The government loses automatic legitimacy. There are open displays of contempt for government authority, some of which come from within the government itself. The government is forced to try to legitimate itself, which is experienced as a power grab by its opponents. The fear escalates to the point where one or both sides begin to arm themselves – and repeat.

Most explanations of the causes of civil war focus on deep division, but divisions in democratic polities are normal, even bitter divisions. What makes the present moment in Anglophone countries seem perilous are the delegitimation strategies. Intensely patriotic rhetoric – in the English Civil War, about the ancient constitution and rights of the monarch – while intended to intensify commitment to a side becomes instead a cause of conflict because it makes backing down seem like treason. At this point patriotism becomes synonymous with choosing a side. Each side will present the conflict as a short-term effort to restore normality. Typically, both will claim that the other side is led by just a few bad apples. Efforts to remove those bad apples will lead directly to further pushback. And we are off.

‘Attempting to explain what causes civil wars is no easy task’

Clive Webb is Professor of Modern American History at the University of Sussex

In his second inaugural address of March 1865, US president Abraham Lincoln lamented how slavery had led to war between the Union and Confederacy. ‘All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of war’, he affirmed. ‘To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union.’

His counterpart, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, took exception to that interpretation. According to his memoir, ‘the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict’. Rather than slavery, it was right of the southern states to determine their own affairs free of Northern interference that had led them to secede.

So divided were North and South that it seemed the two sides could not even agree why they had gone to war with one another. As this example suggests, attempting to explain what causes civil wars is no easy task.

The circumstances are distinctive to each conflict but there are some common factors. Understanding them is essential to resolving current wars and helping to prevent future ones.

Right now conflicts are being fought in countries including Cameroon, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Regional struggles elsewhere also have the potential to escalate nationwide.

Civil wars are not only many in number but also long and bloody. Sectarian violence has afflicted Myanmar since what was then Burma gained independence in 1948. Worldwide, intra-state conflict has claimed the lives of as many as 16 million people and displaced countless more since the Second World War.

One way to assess the causes of civil wars is to determine what is needed to maintain national stability. That includes a government accountable to all its citizens and an economy that protects and promotes their standard of living. The absence of either is a potential cause of conflict. That division can occur on class, ethnic or religious lines, the flames of anger and resentment stoked by charismatic leaders.

Whether, as some commentators suggest, the United States could be afflicted by a second civil war is a matter of debate. That it is even a talking point should concern us all.

‘There has never been an apolitical civil war in Africa, or anywhere else’

Paul D. Williams is Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University and author of War and Conflict in Africa (Polity, 2016)

Political scientists often define civil wars as armed contests for governing authority of a state resulting in more than 1,000 battle-related deaths and where both sides suffer significant fatalities. Civil wars are very rare events but are most likely in large, populous and poor countries with favourable terrain for rebel military campaigns such as mountains and forests. States transitioning from authoritarian to more democratic forms of government are also at heightened risk. Africa’s deadliest civil wars since the 1960s fit this mould, including in Algeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Uganda.

Why did these civil wars happen? My research suggests four main factors. First, people choose to fight. Structural factors can increase the risks, but civil wars are a choice and people are the triggers. They occur when political leaders and enough of their followers think they have more to gain from war than surrender. Africa’s worst contemporary civil wars – South Sudan, Ethiopia and Sudan – didn’t start in the bush but from violent competition among ruling elites, who decided to mobilise their supporters.

Second, political grievances drive rebellion. Despite some popular arguments about economics and greed, there has never been an apolitical civil war in Africa or anywhere else. Since the 1950s grievances about governance have had most salience in Africa, initially in wars of national liberation but subsequently over contested sovereignty. Similarly, while foreign meddling can prolong civil wars, it doesn’t start them.

Third, civil wars require durable insurgencies. Many groups have had serious grievances with African governments, and many took up arms. But most rebels were crushed or disbanded before violence reached the intensity of civil war. That said, many weak African governments have had such small, poorly equipped and fragmented security forces that rebels haven’t needed huge numbers or exceptional strategies; they just needed to endure.

Finally, for future civil wars, look to history repeating. Sadly, one of the most powerful predictors of where future civil wars will happen is where they have most recently occurred.