it. and you write throughout the book that the united states is not a democracy anymore, it s an anocracy. what is that? that is just a fancy term for partial democracy. it s a government that s neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic. it s something in between. and the term comes from a data set that the u.s. government uses. in 2017 i was asked by the government to join a task force that they run called the political instability task force. and the job of the task force is to hey help the government predict where political instability is likely to break out. the task force put together a model that included lots of different variables, things that we thought would matter in the outbreak of civil war, poverty, inequality, how ethically diverse a country was.
three retired u.s. generals are among those warning about the possibility of another insurrection. we spoke to two of them this week here on democracy in peril. january 6th was not a one-off. we are going to see it again. we need to imagine the unimaginable. imagine what happens if we get people like stewart rhodes out there creating havoc. so these generals say that the u.s. military needs to prepare for another potential coup attempt. they re actually worried about a possible civil war, and they re not alone in that concern. my next guest has studied how civil wars erupt around the world and the early signs that are often missed. barbara walter is the author of how civil wars start and how to stop them. that s also a member of a cia advisory panel called the political instability task force. barbara, thank you so much for being with us.
our first guest is one of the people who started this public discussion with the publication of her new book how civil wars start. barbara f. walter is a professor of international relations at the school of global policy and strategy at the university of california san diego. she studied at harvard s institute for strategic studies in colombia university s war and peace institute and she served on an advisory committee to the cia called the political instability task force. that group ranks countries around the world on a scale with fully functioning democracy at one end and dictatorship at the other end. the united states always had the highest positive score for democracy a plus ten but it has slipped down the scale recently to a plus five. that moved the united states into the zone that this scale
are we see more likely facing another civil war? tonight we begin, what will be a series on this program called, a house divided. it will offer a range of thoughtful and educated responses to the question, is a civil war head? our next guest is one of the people who started this public discussion. with the publication of her new book, how the civil war started. barbara walter is a professor of international relations of at the university at the san diego. she s studied at the war in peace institute. and she served on and advisory committee to the cia called, political instability task force. it rates countries on a scale of functioning democracy on one