In a U.S.-China war, domestic fragmentation would sap American will to fight

Evidence

Despite their plausibility and popularity, the fragmentation measures did not survive multivariate testing; they showed only weak, inconsistent associations with civil war. The robust associations were the following: … But Fearon and Laitin also challenge the alternative view proposed by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler: namely, that the availability and marketability of valuable, portable natural resources such as diamonds promote civil war by making it feasible to support dissident military forces (Collier 2000b; Collier and Hoeffler 2001). Nevertheless, both analyses agree that the prevalence of antigovernmental grievances and the confrontation of ethnic or religious fragments have little effect on the likelihood of civil war. What matters is the ease with which armed insurgents can organize, challenge, and support themselves. In language none of these authors uses, political opportunity structures (POS) matter, and vary enormously from one sort of regime to another. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 809 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US wars abroad activate an internal racial border against domestic enemy-representatives — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 548; Ethnic and religious fragmentation weakly predict civil war; feasibility of insurgency does — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 809; External wars are waged partly to keep the domestic population pliant. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 278

Broader Connections

• Ethnic and religious fragmentation weakly predict civil war; feasibility of insurgency does #complicates (0.72) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 809