Connecting the Dots

 So what do my three posts immediately preceding this one have in common? They are all signs of a country lurching toward civil war. In "Reflections on Homeland Insecurity: The Strategic Anatomy of Civil Wars to Come" by David Betz and M.L.R. Smith, argue that Western countries are already well down the road to civil war, if not in the early stages. Not a civil war marked by the fissure between regions and provinces, but "characterised by insurgency, demographic sundering and elite-popular estrangement." Moreover, the authors warn, "[i]ts contours are not speculative; they are already visible." 

    The precondition for the coming conflicts is "the collapse of legitimacy that once allowed governments to function without coercion." 

... It then turns to the new ‘peasant wars’ of revolt and ethnic fracture, before examining the silence of academia and the failures of elites to heed obvious warning signs. Along the way, it maps the expectation gap between rulers and ruled, the rise of leaderless movements, insurgent narratives, the fragility of global cities and the rural–urban divide, and the corrosive triad of digital networks, unconstrained immigration and declining social capital. The argument concludes that with the systematic undermining of the social compact, Western societies are not experiencing passing turbulence but entering the long twilight of civil war. 

The authors use Brexit as an example of the loss of legitimacy of the British government. After a popular vote directing the government to leave the European Union, "[w]hat followed, however, was less the execution of a democratic mandate than a prolonged demonstration of elite obstruction. Parliament, the civil service, the courts, and much of the media conspired—openly and without embarrassment—to resist, delay and dilute the outcome." (Footnotes omitted). And, although not mentioned by the authors, one can hardly escape noticing the harm to legitimacy that followed  censorship and, even, criminal punishment of dissent against the choices of the ruling elites. Not only doe the ruling elites not care what the people think, but they will not abide anyone thinking them wrong. "The decay of legitimacy, in short," the author's explain, "is not an accident of mismanagement but a built-in feature of a governing order that no longer trusts—let alone believes in—its own people."

     Worse, however, is that elections have been shown to be shams. Although the authors are concerned with cases in Europe where the will of the people have been ignored, such as the Brexit vote, one must also consider the case where the elites have conspired to disenfranchise voters in one way or another; whether it be political parties that normally are opposed to one another joining forces to prevent a conservative party from forming a ruling coalition, to incidents of what appear to be election fraud. As Betz and Smith point out: "Governments can survive policy failures; they rarely survive the public perception that democratic choice is irrelevant."

     The loss of government legitimacy is one prong. The other is the actual breakdown of unity and outbreaks of conflict. The authors explain (footnotes omitted):

    The first vector resembles a modern ‘peasant revolt’—a mass uprising against political elites who are perceived to have violated the ‘social contract’. Historically, such uprisings erupt when those in power alter the rules of the political game to the detriment of the governed. In contemporary Western societies, this cleavage is marked above all by the divide between nationalism and post-nationalism.

    David Goodhart’s taxonomy of the ‘Somewheres’ and the ‘Anywheres’ captures the schism with forensic clarity. The Somewheres—rooted in place, community and national identity—are the mass of the population who insist that they ‘want their countries back’. The ‘Anywheres’—mobile, globalised and educated—dismiss such attachments as parochial. A former senior British civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, expressed to Goodhart the creed openly when he declared that his role was to ‘maximise global, not national, welfare’.

    The second vector is inter-ethnic and inter-tribal, driven by demographic change and the accompanying perception of cultural dispossession. Here the primary tension lies between native citizens, who sense political and economic decline as their demographic share falls, and migrant populations, whose enclaves grow in size, cohesion and confidence.

    Patterns of poor integration vary, but certain communities have proved especially resistant to assimilation into Western societies. Relative size, internal solidarity and cultural distance all play a role, making incorporation over generations less likely rather than more. Surveys suggest, disquietingly, that second and third generations in some groups often express greater alienation than their parents or grandparents. Muslim communities illustrate the problem most visibly: their demographic weight and cohesion have rendered multiculturalism’s promise of gradual convergence illusory. 

* * *

    The interaction of these two vectors produces a distinctive geography. Western nations are already fragmenting into three types of zones:

Zone A: urban enclaves where non-native populations dominate,[39] often non-contiguous but defensible, akin to France’s ‘zones urbaine sensibles’ (sensitive urban zones)[40] or the migrant-dense corridors of northern England.

Zone B: mixed regions where instability will be fiercest, particularly capital cities where state authority still exerts influence.

Zone C: largely contiguous native-dominated areas, comparable to the French regions voting National Rally in 2024, forming bases for counter-mobilisation.

Over time, migration flows are likely to propel further assortative segregation: indigenous populations abandoning major cities (‘white flight’), migrants consolidating in enclaves. Urban centres may slip into the condition once described by US military theorists as ‘feral cities’—Mogadishu being the epitome—ungoverned, unpoliceable, and unsafe, but still minimally functional. This pattern mirrors the Balkan wars of the 1990s, when once-integrated communities disintegrated into warring factions with startling speed.

    How the conflict will be fought will also differ from past civil wars. The authors explain (footnotes omitted):

    Unlike classic understandings of civil wars as clashes between distinct armies along the lines of the English or American Civil Wars, future Western conflicts are more likely to be fought by militias, paramilitaries and communal defence groups. Small arms, explosives, improvised devices and drones—whether for direct attack or arson—will dominate. More strategically significant than weaponry, however, will be infrastructure sabotage. Food distribution, energy and utilities are inherently vulnerable; their disruption multiplies instability and intensifies demographic reshuffling. Anti-status quo groups across Left and Right already grasp this logic.

    The state, stripped of legitimacy, will be a reactive and brittle actor. Lacking the ability to mobilise through patriotism or collective tradition, elites will rely on whatever fragments of the armed forces and security apparatus they can pay or persuade. Their role will be reduced to defending a handful of fortified ‘Green Zones’, while the wider polity unravels.

    The strategic lesson is clear. What is emerging in Western societies is not ‘civil unrest’, still less the sporadic convulsions of ‘contentious politics’. It is the creeping advance of civil war—dirty, protracted, and shaped by revolt, ethno-religious division, and infrastructural vulnerability. ...

 While these are already long excerpts, the authors consider each of these points in greater detail before offering some suggestions to right the ship, so to speak. While the suggestions offered are laudable goals, they do not actually address the underlying problems. For instance, the authors suggest rebuilding "social capital" by increased policing making the country safer. But as Robert Putnam's research has shown, the primary issue driving reduced social capital is racial diversity. Social capital exists when people are around people mostly like themselves. Better policing is good, but it is not a solution. In fact, many of the solutions they suggest seem to be methods of kicking the can just a bit farther down the road. 

     The authors conclude (footnotes omitted):

... [T]he academic consensus on civil war causation is not obscure; it is, in truth, little more than the plain sense of political theory that Europe’s ruling elites ignore or pretend not to understand. Thomas Hobbes himself spelled it out in Leviathan: ‘The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them’. When rulers cannot protect, they cannot command obedience. It is that simple—and that deadly. 

    In that regard, today’s elites, convinced of their own permanence, behave as though exempt from the oldest rule in politics: lose legitimacy, lose everything. Academics can rehearse the point in 10,000 words or 100,000; reality requires far fewer: legitimacy is perishable, anger is rational, consequences are unavoidable.

But they elites have told us that it is avoidable by simple dint of arms and force: arrests of dissenters, bragging that civil war is impossible because they have jet fighters and nuclear weapons. So they stick their fingers in their ears while shouting about how wonderful they are.