John Paul Lederach is professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, senior fellow at Humanity United and author of “The Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War.”
As a practitioner engaged with peace processes around the world for the past four decades, I am asked with increasing frequency an unsettling question: Are we headed toward civil war here in these United States?
Such a question isn’t preposterous. In other places I have worked, deliberate toxic polarization — exclusion, political control and the dehumanizing of adversaries — has contributed to repeating cycles of armed conflict. Once unleashed, wars become very hard to end.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/american-civil-war-escalation/
