Gideon Rachman selects some of the best new writing on politics

Gideon Rachman / The Financial Times

When an academic book on the origins of civil wars hits the bestseller lists in the US, it is probably time to start worrying. The amount of interest that Barbara F Walter’s How Civil Wars Start (Viking, £18.99) has aroused is indeed a disturbing testament to current levels of concern about political division and violence in America. Drawing on examples such as the former Yugoslavia, Syria and Myanmar, Walter, a professor at the University of California, argues that America ticks many of the boxes that predict civil conflict — including a politics of ethnic resentment, democratic decay, widespread gun ownership, an urban-rural divide and a fearful population.

One small comfort is that Walter’s definition of civil war is relatively constrained. She is not predicting that rival armies will once again clash in the US, as they did at Gettysburg or Bull Run in the 1860s. Instead, her well-documented account points to the danger that political rivalries will become so out of control that the US falls prey to an upsurge in violence and terrorism, at a sustained enough level to meet the definition of civil conflict.

The most common causes of civil conflict have changed over the centuries. Religious differences were central to the English civil war in the 17th century. The protagonists in the Russian and Chinese civil wars of the 20th century often defined themselves along class lines. But, in recent decades, ethnic and tribal divisions are much more frequently at the centre of conflicts. Divisions are stoked by leaders whom Walter labels “ethnic entrepreneurs”, such as Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, who appeal to groups that fear a loss of status, wealth or land. Such tensions can burst to the surface quite suddenly in countries that had been stable for decades, such as the former Yugoslavia and Syria. They may now sound uncomfortably familiar to anxious Americans.

Conflicts centred around race and ethnicity are clearly becoming more common — but they are hardly new. Slavery and race were, after all, fundamental to the first American civil war — and they continue to underpin the domestic divisions that are leading to talk of a second civil war. But, as Chandran Nair makes clear in his book Dismantling Global White Privilege (Berrett-Koehler, £19.99), a backlash against “white supremacy” is also taking place on a global level.

A Malaysian intellectual and think-tanker, Nair argues that the imperial age has left behind a global racial hierarchy that is still very much in place. His argument is that the pursuit of economic advantage and wealth means that the West continues to tacitly support forms of white supremacy — and that many Asians and Africans have internalised feelings of inferiority that sustain racial hierarchies. In clear, calm prose, Nair tries to demonstrate that forms of white privilege continue to be built into the structure of geopolitics, international business, culture, the media, education, fashion and sport.

Nair, however, acknowledges that racism and the oppression of minorities are not evils that are committed only by whites. For example, Muslim minorities are being persecuted and brutalised in both China and Myanmar. With a Hindu nationalist government in power in New Delhi, the status of Muslims across India is also increasingly precarious. In Violent Fraternity (Princeton, £28), Shruti Kapila, a historian of ideas at the University of Cambridge, offers an innovative and original study of Indian political thought — showing that the threat of violence between Hindus and Muslims has long shaped Indian political thinking, even before independence and partition.

The persecution of minorities is also a theme of The Vanishing (Bloomsbury, £20), a new book by Janine di Giovanni, an award-winning war correspondent with a particular expertise on the Middle East. She examines the persecution and “vanishing” of Christian communities in the Middle East — the birthplace of the religion. Focusing in particular on Egypt, Gaza, Iraq and Syria, di Giovanni looks at the impact of Islamist militancy and tells the stories of the individuals and families affected. In the hands of a skilled storyteller, this is a sad and moving account of a historic change.

A lot of contemporary political commentary centres around the same disturbing puzzle — why is authoritarianism making a comeback? Moisés Naím is a US-based commentator who originally hails from Venezuela, which makes him well placed to understand the dangerous interplay between populism and authoritarianism. In The Revenge of Power (St Martin’s Press, £23.99), he skilfully combines reportage with social-science research to identify and analyse the three “P”s driving the global resurgence of authoritarianism: populism, polarisation and “post-truth”.

Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café