Latest / America's Why Project / Episode 21: 2026 Midterm Election Special – Why Political Violence Persists and How We Can Break the Cycle

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Episode 21: 2026 Midterm Election Special – Why Political Violence Persists and How We Can Break the Cycle · America's Why Project

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: In survey after survey after survey, including our most recent one, 70% of the American public on both sides of the aisle abhor political violence.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is the untapped resource for us to lean into.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the America's Why Podcast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, I'm your host, Matt Leavinger.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: In early October 2026, just a few weeks before the U.S.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: midterm elections, I flew to Chicago to interview Dr.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Robert Pape.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Pape is a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: He's an expert on suicide terrorism and the use of strategic bombing in warfare, among other topics.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: In February 2026, three days before the start of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, he launched the Escalation Trap Substack, which analyzes the dangers of another American forever war in the Middle East, and which quickly attracted tens of thousands of followers.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: But he also writes about U.S.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: domestic politics.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: And he spoke in a recent episode of this podcast about his new book, Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to learn more about the connections between these two important lines of research.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Specifically, why do political leaders sometimes continue escalating conflicts, even when their strategies are not achieving the intended results?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: How do these dynamics appear in American domestic politics?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And, perhaps most relevant, at a moment of high political uncertainty in America, how can nonviolent civic participation and democratic engagement help break these destructive cycles?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: I asked Dr.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Pape to begin by explaining the concept of the escalation trap and its importance.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: The escalation trap occurs when uh one actor, strong actor, uses force and has tactical success.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Bombs hit targets, bombs kill leaders.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that tactical success does not lead to strategic success.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it leads to strategic weakness because the other actor, the target, lashes back, gains power, and by gaining power, you're now in a cycle of violence.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because once you're in an escalation trap where violence has started and the other side has not conceded, hasn't collapsed, and in fact has gained power, now there are incentives for the cycle of violence to continue.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: For the actor that started it to keep trying to move up the rung of escalation, the escalation ladder, and as climbing uh each rung, trying to find the point where uh the they can reassert dominance in a situation.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the uh the the original target um finds itself in a position where since it hasn't been broken, it hasn't collapsed, it can sometimes gain power and continue to gain power because the truth is there's not an automatic connection between use of force and victory.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So many people think that um uh use of heavy force will win, and the only reason it doesn't happen is because we're too nice to do that.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really want to hurt somebody, so that's the reason the heavy force is not being brought out, and that's why you lose.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that leads to the argument: well, we got to stop being Mr.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nice Guy, we got to be tough, and we have to exert dominance.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a lot more to escalation dynamics, there's a lot more to conflict than that simple idea.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that idea is the core reason how states get into an escalation trap, and it's the core mistake even smart leaders make.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, in other words, the attempt to use force in order to achieve dominance fails.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And consequently, the lesson that is drawn is that we haven't used enough force.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: You've got it exactly, Matt.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So just to think back on um the whole concept of fighter flight, where you have uh one actor exerting force trying to produce fighter flight, thinking it's more likely to be flight than fight.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what actually happens is um you get more fight than flight almost all the time.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you are we're dealing with um not uh two uh kids on a playground, we're dealing with large societies.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So even if we get some flight uh in response to our use of heavy-handed force, you often get far greater fights coming back.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that is how you get into escalation traps, cycles of violence that seem to perpetuate themselves over and over and over again.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's go back to the beginning of the post-9-11 wars, which are sometimes called forever wars.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: And and it seems to me what you're saying with this concept of the escalation trap is that it's not just that the wars go on for a really long time, but that these wars are an example of how escalation fails.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's a tremendous amount of frustration, both among the leaders who are launching the wars and among the public who is asking what's going on here?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: How come we're engaged in these wars that don't seem to be productive?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, at some level, would you say that there's a continuity between the immediate post-9-11 responses to the 9-11 attacks all the way up through what's currently going on between the US and Iran?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Well, there are a number of continuities.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the most important continuity that helps to explain how the actors get stuck in an escalation trap.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because keep in mind, what I'm saying is that there's an initial escalation that's tactically successful, but a strategic failure.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's seen by the actors themselves within a relatively short period of time, um, within three to six months for sure, and then they're stuck in a trap.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they stuck?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about that.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And let's let's compare why the Bush administration got stuck in a forever war escalation trap after 9-11 to why we're stuck in this trap now with Iran.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's one key feature, and that is the um domestic election cycle.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: The domestic election cycle.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So what we had happen, we invade Iraq in March 2003, and we discover we're in an escalation trap.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's true I was warning about that, but I would say the Bush administration really got the message here starting about spring of 2004.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's when I think they fully got that they were in the trap and widely across the administration, but they didn't they didn't get out.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why not?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why didn't they get out?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: They uh the president had an election when November 2024.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, 2004.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: November 2004.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, an election is coming up.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So given that six-month time frame, President Bush is stuck in an escalation trap where there's two choices because he's only got six months, in those six months, he can either double down on escalation, move up the rungs of escalation, or he can concede, pull out of a rock.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens if he concedes and pulls out of a rock?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: He loses to John Kerry in the November 2004 election.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So now if you're a Democrat and you want John Kerry to win, you are all for it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: President Bush, please just get out of a rock.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if you're not just President Bush, but if you are at all on that, on that side, and if you're in a messy middle where you're not quite sure, you can see right away the electoral pressures on leaders um keep them stuck in an escalation trap.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Let's have the parallel to today with with President Trump.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, President Trump, um, we start the war February 28th.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was warning three days before the war, we would get in an escalation trap, literally lay out the phases of it, very similar to what happened before the 2003 war.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm laying it out for the whole public to see, not just a handful of elites, so it's public record.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what happens?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: We do get in an escalation trap.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: We are now um well into the eighth month of the war.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite clear it's an escalation trap.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: But why is it the case that we can't get the president Trump can't get out of the trap?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: You've got people telling him, oh, just concede, get out, make a deal, just give Iran whatever it wants to get us out of this.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what happens if President Trump does this during the midterm season?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: What's gonna happen is he will become Jimmy Carter.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: He will become the lamest of lame duck presidents.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: He will become uh, and by the way, Jimmy Carter's presidency was wrecked over the Iran hostage crisis.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: So again, it will be Iran wrecking the presidency of another president.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, now if you're a Democrat, you all for that happening.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: But this is not realistic in real politics.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what you see here is President Trump, just as President Bush just before the 20 the 2004 um election that he was facing, is doing what?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: He is doubling down.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: So for many international crises, the domestic angle really throws a wrench into strategic decision making, in that the political leader, even if he or she knows that a course of action may not be productive in achieving the strategic objective, is still forced into escalating in order to demonstrate political strengths.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And where we have actual textual, real-time information on this, which is very hard to come by because you'll think right away, smart leaders won't put it on paper, they won't be recorded.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, over time we get that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And where we have it most voluminously is with Lyndon Johnson escalating in Vietnam in 1965 onwards.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so what he explains, and he's on tape saying this, so there was tapes.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the Nixon tapes.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there were tapes in the Oval Office going back to Kennedy.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: So Nick uh Lyndon Johnson is on tapes.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's also in direct conversation with journalists who have recorded these conversations.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've published them on my uh various substacks so people can follow these, especially if people are looking on the Professor Pape uh Substack where I've laid these out, these the evidence.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what Lyndon Johnson says is rather directly that um he is in a bind politically.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: He knows that the next escalation, starting rolling thunder, is the key example, um, is unlikely to uh win the war in Vietnam.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: He he thinks there might be a tiny chance it might win, but it's not a big chance.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the reason he's doing it is because he's a Democrat.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: He has a great society program that he thinks is going to be critical for civil rights and the future of America.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: He is judging that he needs the Southern Democratic vote to get that through Congress.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Lyndon Johnson was nothing if not a tactician in Congress.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So before he was president, he was a major political tactician in Congress.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what he explains is he is going to do these escalations, not mainly because he thinks they're going to win the war, but because without the escalation, he will lose the Southern Democratic vote and lose Medicaid, Medicare, he will lose the civil rights agenda, and America will be worse off.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: In the second part of our interview, I asked Dr.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: Pape to elaborate on the connections between domestic political forces and the escalation of the use of violence in international affairs.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things I found really fascinating in our last conversation was your discussion of how the escalation trap involves a quest for dominance that is not successful.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you suggested that when people seek dominance and fail to get it, there's a tendency to escalate both out of frustration and also because they know that they might be more popular among the electorate uh or among other constituencies if they escalate than if they show weakness.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: So you do you see some of the dynamics of international politics and international conflict as also being reflected here in the dynamics of domestic politics in America?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in uh my book, Our Own Worst Enemies, I have a concept called the legitimacy shock cycle.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that is um um uh a cycle that is very similar to the dynamics of the escalation trap I use to talk about international conflict.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And let me just explain what I mean, um, which is that when with the legitimacy legitimacy shock cycle, you have an actor, and let me just choose ICE as an actor, uh, that uses heavy-handed militarized force in uh residential areas to target individuals on a search and capture or search and kill sometimes mission.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um that you might say, well, that's just ICE, right?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, our opinion poll survey, and we've done 20 national uh surveys of American public, and we've done one just in the last few weeks, it shows that 17% of Americans, which equate to 40 million Americans, virtually all of them MAGA, support that heavy-handed use of force by ICE to do exactly that mission.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not just um um Christy Noam, that's not just Donald Trump, that's not just Stephen Miller.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: 40 million Americans support that.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a pretty, this is this is what I mean by uh a use of force.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't say there's anything like a majority of the public who agrees with that.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the case.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what you have is ICE then doing these heavy militarized raids in residential areas, but it is and it's supported by a determined minority.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens on the other side?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: On the other side, you have tens of millions of Americans who are extremely upset by that.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want militarized search and destroy, search and capture raids that are bursting down doors, sometimes wrong doors, in their neighborhoods.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what are they doing?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're protesting.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're protesting.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Again, tens of millions support those protesters.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you end up with what I call a legitimacy shock.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's each side thinks they're legitimate, each side thinks they've got the support.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: What you have is violent populism, where there's literally tens of millions on each side here.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the few minutes we have left, let's zoom out a little bit to the bigger picture.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: How do we start to break out of this escalation trap that's driving us in our international affairs and in our domestic policy?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: What are the ways that we make our system more adaptive, more responsive to the needs of the public, so that we can diminish the sense of powerlessness and anger that seems so dominant in our politics today?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, in both situations, Matt, it's about policies for stability, not domination, not winner take all.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if um in either international escalation trap or domestic legitimacy shock cycle, the concept of victory is winner take all, then you're likely gonna continue these traps.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: But there is an alternative, which is stability.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: We spend a lot of time talking about the uh the violence, and we just have done that, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: But there's another big finding in the book, and that big finding in the book is that in survey after survey after survey, including our most recent one, uh 70% of the American public on both sides of the aisle abhor political violence.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: They just abhor political violence.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they're the big part of the democracy.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: We need to understand that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So even though we have determined minorities uh here that are supporting political violence for their perceived goals, and they both think, by the way, they're in doing it in self-defense.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: There are 70% who just abhor political violence because they understand it can lead to this cycle that I'm describing.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we have some clear examples where we have leaned into that 70% to very good results.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I try to bring those examples out as much as I can when I talk to political leaders on any side of the aisle.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and let me just use one that I think many people will remember very recently: the No Kings protests.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the No Kings protests, which happened um in numerous cities, seven million, uh, the the numbers are something like seven million uh turn out in uh on one weekend in October 2025, just and 250,000 literally in the city of Chicago here.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's virtually no violence.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I would say no violence in that, in those protests.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really something to focus on because those protests were crucial in raising consciousness.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of those political leaders who are running for office on the Democratic side, they're on the coattails of the no kings.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: So this idea that the no kings don't matter, no, this is this is a very important part of the future for these politicians.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very important lesson, Matt, that we should take forward here, which is the power in our country is, I don't believe, with the violent part.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I know the violent part gets all the press, and and I understand that I'm studying it, I'm explaining it, but there's another message here in this book, and that is the 70% solution.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very important to understand because this is the uh the untapped resource for us to lean into.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's important in a couple of ways.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, most of the people listening to this podcast, I dare say probably maybe even all of them, Matt, are going to be part of the 70%.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they may feel frustrated, they may feel isolated.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing they need to know is they're not alone, they're part of the 70%.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they may not notice that when they're watching television or they're watching social media, because if social media and also CNN and also uh Fox News, they're playing to the more extremes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: They just do.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what people need to hear is they're part of the 70%.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Then they need to hear that it's very important for them to communicate with their um the the political leader they most want.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: It really doesn't matter which side of the aisle it is with the political leader they most want, uh they most respect.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they they need to communicate with them, not just by voting.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Voting is is very important in droves because if the 70% will vote in droves, they will drown out the others.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it goes beyond voting.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: All the political leaders I've ever met in Congress, in particular, have staffs, and you know the number one position they have often with their staff is full-time paid people to do nothing but read constituent emails and mail and phone call messages.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because uh a lot of constituents think, well, nobody cares.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just a little old, you know, you know, small potatoes here or something like that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's not how that's not what what a lot of political leaders I see.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: See, most political leaders, they don't have the money to pull their constituents, they just don't have it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a member of Congress and you're one of the 435 members of Congress, where are you gonna get the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to do these net these surveys of your district?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the smaller the pool of people, the more expensive it is to get a good survey.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: The fact of the matter is you don't.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you how are you reading what your constituents think this way?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're reading, and so the more that the squeaky wheels are uh the more aggressive, and those calling for more extreme, no surprise that you have politicians uh catering that way.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: There is real opportunity to lean into the 70 percent, and there's real opportunity for the 70 percent um um to do something.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a real power in this message of nonviolence.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, huge.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, people underestimate that power, and that's why the violent messages seem to predominate.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: You've got it, Matt, by underestimating their own power in the 70%.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is um an this is why this is the untapped resource that's our true advantage as we go forward.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why the book it's doing diagnosis in order to understand better futures.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that you talked about how this compares, same conversation we just had on the escalation trap with international.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Understand diagnose in order to have better futures.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is what the 70% solution is all about.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Robert Pape's reflections on the dangers of the escalation trap and the promising possibilities of this 70% solution illustrate the power of political narratives and storytelling, which is a central theme of the America's Why podcast.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Pape shows how the stories we tell about political strength, victory, compromise, and legitimacy influence the choices we make.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: When political conflicts are presented as winner-take all struggles, compromise can appear to be weakness.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: But democratic stability depends on the ability to manage disagreement without violence.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: At this pivotal moment in American history, peaceful political participation is more important than ever.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Positive political narratives and cooperative action can help us move away from cycles of escalation and overcome hard challenges together.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the America's Why Podcast.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Our music is by James Fernando.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more information and to join the conversation, please visit our website at America's Why Project.com.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.