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The problem is if that gets bad enough, state governments and the feds eventually have to take sides. People including myself will often point out how the first American Civil War was militarily not much like a traditional civil war, and more like a war between two nations. But the political breakdown leading to that actually does look a lot like a civil war and you can see the progression:
Weirdos like us began to see the risks of future political breakdown over the slavery question as early as 1820, look at Jefferson’s “fire bell in the night” letter.
This political breakdown actually begins happening in 1832. The Nullification Crisis wasn’t over slavery, it was over taxes, but everyone could see it could apply to other things too. Like slavery.
Actual incidents of bloodshed start to happen periodically. Nat Turner’s revolt happens in 1832. Elijah Lovejoy is murdered in 1837. It’s 20 years out from the beginning of major hostilities, but already everyone is on edge.
Mass scale lawfare begins in the 1840s. There are highly contentious compromises over admitting various slave and free states.
Large scale paramilitaries begin to form in the early 1850s. By 1854, there is actual low-intensity guerrilla warfare breaking out in Kansas.
The scale of the violence gets high enough that state actors and influential people are beginning to take sides. By the mid 1850s Pro-slavery and Pro-freesoil militias are getting lots of funding from somewhere to buy sophisticated military hardware including artillery.
Things boil over in the late 1850s with the twin shocks of the Dredd Scott decision and John Brown’s raid. The Dredd Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act mean that major institutions of the federal government are now openly taking sides in the conflict. John Brown’s raid shows that large scale business entities in the north are now willing to directly fund paramilitary attacks against the South with the aim of overthrowing their social order by force.
Lincoln is elected in 1860. The South begins to panic. The federal government they had weaponized is now going to be turned against them.
Most southern states still have no interest in secession. One particularly radicalized state, South Carolina, secedes from the union in 1860.
The first shots between South Carolina and the federal government are fired in early 1861. The lines are now drawn, and state governments now have to actually take sides. The political order rapidly crumbles as state after state begins to secede.
America today seems to be in the 4-5 range, with worrying indicators that it’s about to go to stage 6.
What’s your model for a “traditional” civil war? I’d like to see this analysis applied to the Romans, the English, the Bolsheviks, whichever you think is most typical. I suspect the extreme asymmetry of various third-world conflicts is a modern phenomenon more than a traditional one.
Also, I don’t think Jefferson was slumming it with weirdos like us.
Vance on the other hand...
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I’d say it applies fairly well to all three of those.
The lawfare and sporadic outbreaks of violence started a lot earlier with Rome (about 40-80 years before formal military activity). The formal state apparatuses got dragged in a lot faster. But otherwise this mostly holds.
It applies less well to the English Civil War, since that originated as jostling between two branches of the government. But you do see lawfare (arrest warrants and royal prosecutions) before the outbreak of formal hostilities.
There was an increasingly intense pattern of SR terrorist activity and labor strike actions beginning in the 1880s, that then eventually dragged in the people and the military against the Tsar.
Sh-sh-shut up! * sobs *
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