#441 — The Threat of Civil War
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Summary
Stephen M. Marsh joins me to discuss his new book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, and why he thinks Canada should become the 51st state. We talk about his views of the current political landscape in the United States and Canada, and what it means to be a Canadian in the 21st century.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
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Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore
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it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're
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doing here, please consider becoming one. I'm here with Stephen Marsh. Stephen, thanks for joining
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me. Pleasure. So I read your, I think it's your latest book, The Next Civil War, Dispatches from
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the American Future, with great interest. It came out in 2022, however, so I'll be interested to
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see if your view has darkened or not in the meantime. But before we get into the book,
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what is your background as a journalist and writer? What kinds of issues have you focused on,
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and how do you view that? Well, all of them. I mean, basically anything that, I've had a very
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strange career. By the time I was 30, I was a Shakespeare professor in New York, and then I
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became a sort of freelance writer. I was a columnist for Esquire for many years. I've written, you know,
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cover stories and features for The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and pretty
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much everywhere else. And so, you know, in 2016, I was commissioned to write a piece for a Canadian
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magazine about the inauguration of Donald Trump. And that's sort of where this project began, and
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where I really started to work on what is happening in the United States. So your book, as you know,
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paints a very grim picture of the American future and also the American present. Before we jump into
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the book itself, how are you viewing America from Canada at this moment? I'm gathering that
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you guys are not eager to be the 51st state. Can you give us a Canadian's eye view of how our
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political landscape looks at the moment? Well, I mean, for us, it's terrifying. Like it's, I mean,
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to me, it's sort of like your big brother shows up at the door in a meth binge with a knife asking for
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money. I think that would be roughly the take of the Canadian public. I mean, we've gone from
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basically, you know, when I was 33, there was no border with the United States. Like you just drove
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across to, you know, very aggressive statements. Over half of Canadians consider the United States
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an enemy at this point. And we're making the most drastic possible changes to our political life
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because of the second Trump administration. We have to figure out new security arrangements. We have
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to diversify our trade in a very elaborate way. Plus we're just going to be punched in the face
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by the United States. So it has altered the essence of Canadian life, I would say. I don't think it would
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be too much to say that at this point. Does the 51st state talk seem serious to you on any level?
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I mean, I understand the tariffs are serious and just the chaos and disorder provoked by much of what
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the second Trump administration is doing and aims to do is serious. But does the specific idea,
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does that just seem like any more than a troll to you? Oh, very much so. Yeah. I mean, ask the people
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of Venezuela if they think it's just a troll. I mean, countries that slide into authoritarianism,
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which is how I see the current status of the United States, it is absolutely textbook for them to have,
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you know, wars with their neighbors for no good reason to prolong the authoritarian state, right?
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And that's a risk that we just cannot take lightly. And we're, we're, nobody, nobody here is taking
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that lightly at all. But, um, obviously you couldn't really prepare for it, right? I mean,
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if America wanted to conquer Canada, I assume that would be a fairly easy thing to do, right? I mean,
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in the scheme of things. Well, I mean, yes and no. I think, um, you know, America is not very good
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at conquering places, doesn't have a very good track record at actually holding onto them. Even
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poor countries without, you know, we have machine learning experts and petroleum engineers, but I
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think what we're really thinking about, I mean, and these are being widely seriously discussed is
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one option is to become a nuclear power, which is, you know, well within our capacities to do.
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But the other is a strategy much like Finland uses with Russia, which is called whole society defense.
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And I think that, I think something like that is probably coming to Canada. If in effect,
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a kind of national service or conscription where, I mean, Finland knows that if Russia comes for them,
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they will not be able to withstand it indefinitely, but they can make it clear to Russia that it will
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be so painful for them to conquer Finland that it, that it's not worth it. And I think those are really
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options that are both very much on the table, both very much being discussed here. So we're not
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powerless at all. It would be asymmetrical, but, you know, asymmetrical warfare does not tend to work
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out well for the country that is the Goliath and the David and Goliath scenario.
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No, Canada is a very gun heavy country. I think we're like, we're compared to you,
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of course, we're nothing, but you know, we have a lot of wide open spaces. I mean,
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half my uncles would own guns here, right? I mean, there's lots of hunting here. There's lots of
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people who live in remote areas, even people who have acreages probably have a 22. So we're,
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So what most worries you about Trump and his second administration in general?
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Boy, you asked me to pick one. That's a hard, that's a hard one.
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Well, I mean, I think it's just the chaos, right? Like it's the flood the zone strategy. It's just
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the, the unreliability and the sort of, um, slapdash nature of everything. You just,
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you literally just don't know what's going to happen next week. I mean, that in the broadest sense
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is the real danger because, you know, it seems from here that America is a bus going off the cliff
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and we're pretty attached to that bus. I mean, you know, we, we are, everyone in here has family
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in the United States. I've lived and worked in the United States. Almost everyone I know has. I mean,
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as I said, I, I write for all these American publications. We're pretty intertwined, right?
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Like we're, we're intertwined countries. And so this loss is very painful. And the danger that
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is imminent in it is because of these sort of the broader sense of incipient chaos from emerging
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from America. I understand that's not a very satisfying answer because it's so vague,
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but on the other hand, it's the fact that you don't know what's coming next week.
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That's the really scary part. If you know what I mean.
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So, I mean, I obviously agree with your view of Trump and Trumpism and we'll get into just how
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hyper-partisan and fragmented our political landscape is over here in America. But yeah,
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I mean, what would you say to someone who doesn't see any of this? I mean, I, so I, I think
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we have witnessed just an immense brand damage being done to America in the last 10 months.
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It's just a colossal act of vandalism from my point of view. Yeah. I would think you would share
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that, but as an outsider, as someone who's principally viewing this from across the border,
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how would you explain this to someone in America? I mean, it's probably half of American society still
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at this point who simply doesn't see it this way. I mean, they, they just see a lot of strength. I mean,
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what Trump is doing is he's forcing our European allies to shoulder their, finally, their fair
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share of defense costs. There was a massive free rider problem that he solved. He's, he's brought
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peace or, or a precursor to peace to the Middle East. He's solved a bunch of other wars that no
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one can probably name, but he's claimed credit for. There's just a lot of strength and cutting
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through red tape and norm busting where the norms were preventing progress. All of this tariff
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juggling is just a way of resetting everyone's expectations in a way that is, will redound to
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the advantage of our country in the end. And now everyone knows to really take us seriously. I mean,
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finally the, the, the sheriff's in town and rather than an octogenarian who can't utter complete
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sentences, we have a strong near octogenarian who speaks in a very persuasive word salad.
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And, uh, this is fantastic. We're born again as a strong country. How is it that you can't see
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that strength for what it is? Well, I guess the question that I see, you know, the, the Canadian
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point of view would be a, it's to the side of that in a certain sense. I mean, because to me,
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power in the 21st century is a combination of things. One, it's Alliance networks and trade
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networks, right? That is the, the, the, the scope of your trade networks is the size of your power.
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That's why Europe formed the European union to get more powerful. It's your scientific community and
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your engineering base, which was until a year ago, you know, everyone was trying to get a tiny fragment
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of what America possessed in that space. And you're just throwing those people to the world for free
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basically. And also I wouldn't underrate soft power as well. Like, I think the idea of America
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as an aspirational place and ideal, um, is totally shattered, but you know, like, I don't think I
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need to explain that to Americans. I mean, like there are a large number of Republicans who believe
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that the 2020 election was stolen. This is truly the collapse of the United States as apparent to
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people on both sides. And I mean, I think when you look at American polling, you see people
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consistently who are under the impression that their country is in collapse. Like I, I certainly would
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never lecture Americans on the subject because I think they know all too well what's happening to
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them. And I don't think it's left and right that knows what's happening to them. They both have
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figured out that this system is breaking and the constitutional order is falling apart and
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everything that sustained America from that constitutional order is collapsing. Right. And
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so that, that is apparent. It's just, everyone is happy when their side is winning for now, but you
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know, the, the other side always comes in and then you're under the impression that the breakdown is
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totaled. So I don't think Americans need a lot of convincing that they're in a country that is
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not stable. I think that is, that is very apparent to people on both sides. And I would also add
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that, you know, the case I make in the book and which I really do believe is that Trump is really
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just a symptom, right? And you can get infuriated by him and he, he does damage in himself, but what
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he represents properly understood is a breakdown in trusted institutions, a breakdown in, you know,
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the, the, the American dream of your children doing better than you and a lot of other breakdowns.
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So, I mean, I, I, I think blaming Trump is just, um, that's just a mug's game. That's not clarity of,
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of vision to me. Okay. We'll get into the details here. First, when, when did you write the book? It
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was published in 2022. I forget when in the year, but when were you actually writing it?
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It was based on a magazine article I wrote in 2018. So that was the first, like I, the first thing I
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wrote called the next civil war came out in 2018. None of my editors then believed it was, they thought
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it was all alarmist. And then of course my publisher went, he thought it was alarmist. And then I've been
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called alarmist the entire publication history of it. But yeah, I worked, I worked on it from 2018,
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And how did you go about researching it? First, describe what you do in the book. I mean,
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you, you basically in a semi-fictional way, you, I mean, you're, you, there's a, it's a nonfiction
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book, but the fictional vignettes where you present a plausible case for how a civil war
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in the 21st century in America would unfold. Would unfold. I mean, you know, just to be
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clear, like what the strength of the book is really the models. I mean, and what I wanted to do was take
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these political models of various things, agricultural models, political decline in faith in the legal
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system models, you know, the models from Pete Prio about civil war, because the United States
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is a textbook case of a country headed for civil war, take those models and synthesize them and
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then present sort of projections of what that might look like. All the while being very clear that like
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no one knows what the future brings. Some models are stronger than others. All models are wrong.
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Some models are interesting. And also, you know, I crossed America multiple times talking to
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white power groups and far left groups and, you know, ordinary people being torn up by this. So
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I interviewed about 200 people for the book. And then I brought those insights together into one
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place and then provided sort of projections just to give flesh to the bones, right? Cause the models
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can be a bit dry if you're just trying to read them. You must've seen Alice Garland's film civil war.
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Yes. Yeah. Well, what did you think of that in terms of how it depicts the kind of the mechanics
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and, and unraveling culture of the situation? Look, it's a very entertaining film. I have,
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and I, and I think it was a necessary film for its time, but you know, for one thing,
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as a journalist who knows a lot of like war reporters, you probably know them too. That's
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not really what war reporters are like, um, that character, but also, you know, the civil war,
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when I talked to the experts on it, what they don't imagine is like, you know, I mean, in his film,
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Texas and California are on the same side fighting the federal government. I mean,
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if Texas and California could agree on something, we wouldn't be having this conversation, right?
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Like, like you wouldn't be having me on your show. Like, and also I think the nature of the civil war
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that I'm talking about certainly isn't pitted armies against each other, like blue coats versus
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gray coats in some kind of battle. Like it's the rise of political violence where it explodes.
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And then, I mean, what really becomes dangerous is that the attempt to suppress the political
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violence itself becomes a cause of the political violence. And this is what, this is what has
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happened in all the major civil wars from Algeria, Vietnam, and many, many others, Iraq, Syria,
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and so on. So like the vision of, of civil war in my book is really about expanded political
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violence. It's not, you know, state against state or anything like that.
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Yeah. Yeah. That's a hangup that some people have with the phrase civil war. They're imagining-
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It makes better television. I mean, it makes better movie, right? But like, but that's not
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Well, the, the, the film is, uh, really must be seen for at least one scene with, uh, the scene
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with Jesse Plemons where he's wearing those, those red kids' glasses.
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Anytime a guy with a, um, AR-15 is digging a mass grave and he's wearing a kid's dime
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store glasses, you know, that civilization has properly unraveled.
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Well, I'm sure that I know also like having talked to snipers in very, like in various
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situations that those scenes are very close. That's like the, those, those scenes are not
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wrong. I just think the political framework is wrong, but you know, emotionally correct
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So you did, uh, you said 200, around 200 interviews?
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Yeah. Around that. I mean, around that, if you, if you include all the people I talked
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But talking to military experts and people who've kind of modeled this out.
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Yeah. And people who I tried in the, in the military stuff. I mean, I talked to quite a
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few military people. I tried to get, you know, multiple perspectives on civil war because,
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you know, America has been fighting these, you know, partisan conflicts for, you know, 80
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years and there's a lot of expertise. I mean, the vast bulk of that opinion is don't
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ever start one, but there, I wanted to get different perspectives on it. And I did.
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So we'll talk about the problem with counterinsurgency and how that creates the chaos it's trying to
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solve. But what are the risk factors as you view them for civil war in America?
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Well, I mean, what the typical model, like the model that I got from Prio is that civil wars
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tend to be a complex cascading system. So that means that it's not any one thing. What it is,
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is it's the factors that combine into each other. And some of them are very deep. Environmental
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considerations play a surprisingly big role, a country becoming a minority majority country.
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So like that was one of the biggest bellwethers of civil war. And that's not a, we know that that's
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coming in America. Like white people are about to be by 2040 or will be a minority majority. They
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will no longer be over 50% of the country. Wherever that happens in the world, there's political
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violence. And that's not a white people thing that happens in India. It happens, it happens in
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Let's linger on that point because this is obviously a politically toxic left of center. I mean,
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there's this mantra, diversity is our strength, which said in scare quotes, makes you sound like
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a white supremacist. Like, oh yeah, diversity is really our strength. Oh, tell me about it. But
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this seems to be a pattern wherein a truly pluralistic open society is vulnerable to this
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negative attractor on the landscape, which is diversity does actually undermine social trust.
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And this was Robert Putnam's argument. Yeah. No, I mean, and I say this as a, I mean,
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I am a multiculturalist to my fingertips, like to my essence. I was raised in a multicultural society.
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I it's the only society I could live in, but there's no question that it does undermine social
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trust and that it, and that it has causes to that. But I mean, what is more interesting,
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there's a really fascinating study by out of India where, you know, the, the sort of
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the Muslims are sort of the lower caste in India and Hindus are higher. And when Muslims get higher
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spending power in relation to Hindus, so not higher, but just coming up to equality, that's,
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you can, you can literally chart the violence on that nature. So on that reality. So it's not
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Hindus losing, it's just losing in relation to a sort of underclass. Right. And this is a very
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horrific aspect of human nature that, as I said, is not, you know, that's not some problem with just
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white Americans, you know, American diversity. It is the, one of the most diverse countries in the
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world. I think by far, like, I think it is the most diverse country in the world by far. Right.
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Like other countries talk about it. America actually lives it in a way that is unique,
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frankly. And a lot of the American strengths is a lot of its economic strengths, a lot of its
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political strengths, a lot of its aspirational strengths and soft power strengths have come
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from that. But you know, that's a, that's one element of this as well. The other one is just
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the decline in trust in institutions that's been on course since about 1980. Right. And which,
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which is just a continuous line and it's all institutions, it's the church, it's the media,
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it's government, it's the Boy Scouts, it's everything. And so that's, that's also Putnam
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talked about that a lot. Right. So you have this decline in social trust. Then you also have
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inequality at both horizontal and vertical, vertical inequality at these just simply unbelievable
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levels. I mean, much higher than America in 1776. Right. So you have, um, economic stressors,
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you have political stressors, you have social stressors, you know, they're what they're what
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the CIA calls a threat multiplier. Right. And America has a lot of threat multipliers at the
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time. As I said, it's not one thing. It's just all of them folding in on each other. Add to that. I
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mean, I didn't even mention hyper-partisanship. Yeah. Right. Which is like, which is sort of the tip
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of the spear, if you will. But that too is, you know, that's a very classic precursor to civil war.
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Yeah. That's the one that is truly visible, I think, to everyone. I mean, obviously there's
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wealth inequality and other of these factors, but those can be kind of out of sight and out of mind
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to many people much of the time. What you really can't ignore, and certainly if you have any
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online life and consuming the stream of current events on any level, you can't ignore
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this hyper-partisanship, which seems to have achieved a new level. I mean, there's just frank
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hatred of the other happening in our society politically. And there's just one norm violation
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after another in the sense of, there's like, there's no expectation of fairness or collegiality
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at the level of politics anymore. It's simply, if you can do something and get away with it,
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then you're going to do it now, lest it be done to you the next time around. So there's a kind
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of a tit-for-tat sort of political war happening here, which is, seems genuinely new. I mean,
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I'm sure we've had periods of it in the past that people can recall or reference, but-
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It's pretty new since about 1876. Like the last time it was this bad was, you're really
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going into the pre-modern era to get hyper-partisanship levels like you have now, genuinely. Like there
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was not this level of hyper-partisanship during the Great Depression, for instance.
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Right. And also trust in institutions was, I mean, even when, you know, I think you make
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this point in your book, when Kennedy was shot and MLK was shot, and those were happening in
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contexts where trust in institutions was much, much higher, and it was even higher after Watergate.
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