"Civil War Comes to the West" - Part 1
First, thank you to the handful followers who sent me David Betz’s fantastic essay entitled “Civil War Comes to the West.”
Betz, a professor of war at King’s College London, concludes that the greatest threat to Western countries is not external, but internal. This means civil war is coming to Western countries. Here’s a summary of the high points of his essay:
Civil wars and domestic conflicts are growing more likely due to ‘fractured societies, economic stagnation, elite overreach, collapse in public confidence in institutions’ ability to solve problems, and the realization by anti-status quo groups that these systems can be disrupted by attacking critical infrastructure.’
The risk is particularly acute in Britain and France, with the United States and at least eight other Western European countries not far behind.
Current literature estimates a 4% annual chance of civil conflict in these countries. Betz assumes an 18.5% chance over five years. But of the 15 examples he examines, the chance of civil war breaking out in any country is 87-95%.
Once one Western domestic conflict starts, there’s a 60% chance of additional conflicts spreading to the other countries over five years.
Even if his calculations are only half as bad, there’s still a substantial risk for domestic conflict.
His message to governments is that the risk is real. His message to citizens is that they are not crazy for fearing these possibilities. And his message to military commanders and the defense establishment is that they need to start reorienting to this reality.
The characteristics of civil wars could vary greatly, but they all have three things in common:
‘Serious depredation’ of ‘societal cultural infrastructure’ (historic objects, art, etc.)
Destruction of human capital and internal displacement
Risk of foreign predation and intervention
From 1945 to 1999 the median length of a civil war was six years. Foreign involvement tends to lengthen civil wars, and the length of conflict is correlated with higher death tolls.
One problem is that Western governments “are losing their ability to peacefully manage multicultural societies.” As a result, large cities are turning “feral” and getting worse.
These cities are seen as the epicenter of everything that’s wrong with ‘the system.’
The infrastructure of these cities runs through rural areas, which are populated with people who dislike the system [i.e., the urban-rural divide]. Much of this infrastructure that passes through rural areas into the city is vulnerable and can be seen as viable targets to disrupt a city’s support systems, ultimately leading to urban collapse.
Worsening conditions in cities lead to migration – first by the people with enough means and sense to leave, and then by refugees.
Displacement can happen quickly, and refugees impose huge humanitarian challenges and other risks. Governments should work to secure certain strategic areas where daily life continues as normal as practicable, by controlling access and keeping disruption to a minimum.
As a conclusion, Betz says that defense establishments need to guard against normalcy bias and it-can-never-happen-here thinking. Domestic armed conflicts are more common and deadly than interstate wars, although the latter get most of the focus of military planners.
Lastly, one civil war researcher found that while civil wars were in decline by volume, they were becoming “far less ordered and conventional,” which is to say messy.
What we’re talking about so far in the United States is called Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), which is conflict beneath the threshold of conventional war (so no tanks or bombers) but above routine, peaceful competition.
A conventional would be Russia-Ukraine or World War II — high intensity conflicts. LIC, on the other hand, is an umbrella term that includes everything from protests and violent social movements at the low end, to terrorism, guerrilla conflicts, gray zone warfare, popular revolutions (to include Color Revolutions), all the way up to and including insurgency and counterinsurgency.
The United States has seen most of these forms of warfare, either at home or abroad, in the past 20 years – which is to say that we are no stranger to these concepts.
My baseline expectation is that we will remain in this period of lesser or greater conflict through at least the end of this decade. Now, whether this low level violence turns into something far worse can be debated.
One of the reasons why I rarely use the term “civil war” is because it’s actually very vague and it conjures up a lot of different types of conflict. So let’s define it.
Typically, a conflict is recognized as a civil war when it meets four criteria:
The government is involved as a belligerent.
The military is involved as a belligerent, which is to say that it is not a police action.
There has to be fighting on both sides, which is to say that it’s not a genocide.
Finally, a civil war must pass a threshold of 1,000 combat-related deaths in a calendar year. This is the most tenuous position because it seems kind of arbitrary, but the underlying principle is that a civil war produces a massive death toll (most of which are always civilian), regardless of the exact number.
So, the question is: Will the United States experience a civil war before the year 2030? There three follow-on questions:
Is it possible or feasible?
What is the likelihood?
Lastly, what form will it take, or what will it look like?
Yes, a civil war before 2030 is obviously possible.
Right now or on any given day, the likelihood of civil war breaking out is obviously quite low. By 2030, however, I can see at least three possible events that I think would lead to organized political violence, which is coordinated, deliberate armed political violence conducted by groups of people. So under the right conditions, the likelihood could grow rapidly.
Lastly, we have to describe what this conflict will look like, which I think heavily depends on the conditions and underlying causes, or the trigger events, and I'll answer this last question in tomorrow’s post. Thank you for reading. - M.S.