Barbara F. Walter
Barbara F. Walter
Barbara F. Walter is a political scientist who has researched and written about civil wars, including why they start, how they escalate, and how they can be prevented. She is the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the University of California, San Diego and the author of How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them (2022).
"The internet has created incentives for warring factions to frame their struggle in global terms in order to attract the widest audience of supporters. This creates greater opportunities for outside states to become involved in the war to try to influence the outcome."
"People are desperate for high quality analysis, especially of complex current events."
"Scholars know where civil wars break out and who tends to start them: downgraded groups in anocracies dominated by ethnic factions. But what triggers them? What finally tips a country into conflict? Citizens can absorb a lot of pain. They will accept years of discrimination and poverty and remain quiet, enduring the ache of slow decline. What they can’t take is the loss of hope. It’s when a group looks into the future and sees nothing but additional pain that they start to see violence as their only path to progress."
