The Chances of Civil War

Assessing the Betz analysis

Yesterday a friend shared a discussion about the possibility of Civil War in the UK. There could hardly be a more serious topic for those of us living in the UK, but like talk during the Biden term of the US moving towards Civil War it tends to be a discussion that many people still consider absurd.

People who accept that deep political divisions are now very apparent in western societies are still extremely reluctant to accept where these divisions end up if they aren’t better resolved and dealt with than they presently are by our political and media class. Even many of those deeply pessimistic about the trajectory of western nations often tend to think there is a lot of road left before the kind of catastrophic crash that a Civil War represents.

Thus for mainstream voices in media and government, as well as for many average voters, such discussions are the stuff of feverish conspiracy theory, of alternative media hyperbole, and of what they label as ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ by reckless, unprincipled and unprofessional voices actually seeking to create and exploit tensions for their own profit.

There are of course lots of ways in which that reaction, both the dismissals of those in power who refuse to accept criticism of their approach as legitimate and seek to pretend that they represent normalcy and a widely supported consensus, and a more general cultural assumption that ‘it couldn’t happen here’, are forms of self-deceit and hubris. Perhaps one of the things that makes that most evident is that discussion of Civil War in western nations is NOT coming exclusively from an Alex Jones style of frantic online commentary.

It’s also coming from what the mainstream would otherwise designate as respectable sources, from people embedded in the credentialed expert class that the mainstream tells us should always be listened to. A perfect example of that is David Betz. Professor David J. Betz is the epitome of credentialed, professional expertise on the topic of Civil Wars. He is a ‘Professor of War in the Modern World’ at King’s College, London.

Here’s how King’s College describe his credentials:

“His main research interests are insurgency and counterinsurgency, information warfare and cyberwar, propaganda, also civil-military relations and strategy and especially fortifications both historic and contemporary. He was the academic director of the War Studies Online MA for its first five years…His writing is on a diverse range of subjects including information warfare, the future of land forces, the virtual dimension of insurgency, propaganda of the deed, cyberspace and insurgency, and British counterinsurgency in such journals as the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of Contemporary Security Studies, and Orbis. His book written with Dr Tim Stevens, Cyberspace and the State, was published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2012…

He headed a 2-year US Defense Department Minerva-funded project on ‘Strategy and the Network Society. Beyond the department he is also a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

He has advised or worked with the UK MOD and GCHQ on strategic issues, counterinsurgency and stabilisation doctrine, cyberspace and cyber strategy and advised British commanders in Afghanistan. He lectures abroad (United States, Israel and Italy) as well as at the UK at the Defence Academy to the Advanced and Intermediate Command and Staff.”

In other words this is not an outsider voice, an alternative media personality, or the kind of person it is easy for the mainstream media and the government to dismiss as a conspiracy theorist. Betz has been consulted on foreign insurgencies and civil wars by the UK and (by implication given shared military missions) by other western governments. His writing has informed teaching on the topic of Civil Wars and he is familiar with the scholarly understandings of the features of such wars and the conditions that create them.

At the end of this piece I will share the link to the full Betz discussion on a podcast called Maiden Mother Matriarch, which is available on YouTube. But for those who don’t have the time to watch it all, I’ll summarise and analyse the key points here.

Betz predicts that a Civil War in the UK will come within the next 5 years.

That’s a pretty chilling and significant declaration, that will be dismissed vey rapidly by some, but will confirm the pessimism of others. The assessment Betz gives though is delivered in a very sober, thoughtful and calm manner, based on what Betz describes as completely standard, very accepted definitions of Civil War and understandings of its causes in the existing research and literature on the topic.

So what does Betz describes as the conditions for Civil War that the UK matches? Summarising his points we can narrow them down to these things:

1. A government and a political system that has low legitimacy. Low legitimacy means that the government and the authorities generally are considered to have broken the social contract with the citizenry. They are unpopular and distrusted and their actions are thought to be malign.

2. A level of factionalism that is much higher than it once was, but not so high that government can effectively play these groups off against each other in a divide and rule strategy. The factions are usually competing and opposed to each other, and usually divided along ethnic or religious lines.

3. A government and authorities (like the police and courts) that take increasingly stupid and authoritarian actions to compensate for their perceived lack of legitimacy and to suppress dissent and protest in reaction to unpopular policies.

4. Economic decline and failing infrastructure, with reduced economic security and opportunities and the failure of the basic services expected from government along with a decline of living standards and a rise of anxiety, hopelessness and disgust with the authorities failing to deliver expected levels of economic and societal security.

5. A once dominant group feeling dispossessed, reduced in circumstances, and under attack by the social, economic and demographic changes the authorities are either creating or failing to halt.

So the conditions of Civil War are both quite obvious to understand, and quite easy to perceive in multiple western nations, indeed perhaps in all western nations. These are the conditions thar have created Civil War elsewhere. Betz discusses how they are well understood and how government and policy formers understand these factors and recognise them in relation to conflicts abroad. But he also says, and this is a point that partly confuses him, that the standard reaction in government and media in the West is to pretend that these conditions can never apply here, even when they are more and more evident around us.

Both Betz and his interviewer agree that there is a ‘normalcy bias’ in reactions to the possibility of Civil War, especially in the UK. Societies that have had generally homogeneous populations, societies that have experienced long periods of internal peace, and societies that have been relatively affluent with reasonably high standards of living and relatively low levels of crime, factionalism and violent internal conflict, generate a social capital which acts as a sort of credit in the bank of behaviour. People inheriting or experiencing societies with internal cohesion, peace and plenty are more likely to obey the rules, trust the government and adhere to both written and unwritten social norms that limit violence and rebellion.

Betz points out that the UK possesses recent history that is totally corrosive to the legitimacy of the UK government and the UK authorities, namely the industrial scale rape of white working class children. One of the most basic expectations of the social contract is that the State should seek to protect the citizen from external threats. Welcoming those threats into your society, then allowing them to treat your existing populace as the sex slaves of an Iron Age conquest, clearly fails the duty of protection that the average citizen expects in return for his obedience of the law and deference to the authorities. What is so corrosive to legitimacy is that the UK political system not only failed in this basic duty, but even at police, judicial and political levels attempted to ignore the problem and then criminalise those who did not ignore the problem.

This was a clear case of betrayal, and is seen as such by millions of British citizens. Betz doesn’t tend to dwell on specifics and personalities, being more concerned with the kind of structural failures that create Civil War rather than with criticising or praising individuals, but even this respectable figure now notes that police treatment of Tommy Robinson for example has been heavy handed and obviously unjust in ways that exacerbate the initial failures on ‘grooming gangs’ and increase, rather than decrease, a white British sense that the authorities have move from being their protectors to being the accomplices and enablers of the most hideous crimes against them.

Betz further points out that 10 or 15 years ago centrist figures like David Cameron in the UK and Angela Merkel in Germany, both leading their countries at a time of increased migration that they essentially encouraged and both Globalist leaders from the mainstream of current western orthodoxy, were prepared to say that multiculturalism had failed, rather like 15 or 20 years ago it was also possible to find in the US strong statements on border security from the likes of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As with US Democrats, Globalist politicians in the UK moved away from the basic duty of protection from external threats that the wider public still saw as an essential requirement of good governance. Instead these threats were welcomed into respective western nations, and then protesting against that or against the very worst effects of that policy were increasingly treated as the threat to a peaceful and ordered society, rather than as the RESPONSE to the actual threat and the RESPONSE to mainstream complicity with that actual threat.

While still unprepared to express it in bluntly populist terms, it’s clear that Betz knows just how devastating to the legitimacy and reputation of the authorities and political system the exposure of mass rape and official cowardice and dishonesty about it has been. Multiculturalism created an increase in dangerous factionalism based on novel ethnic and religious differences not previously present in western societies, cemented those differences by downplaying the need to integrate and culturally adapt, deprived the West of clear, recognised and prioritised values, standards and cultural expectations that others could join, and finally ended up prioritising arrivals to the extent of ignoring the most hideous crimes inflicted on native British citizens.

The Southport Riots, of course, were an indication both of the level of alienation and disgust felt by the white working class communities who have been the primary victims of these developments, AND a secondary betrayal confirming the first, since the obviously two tier treatment of treating all white working class protest as Far Right violence with Prime Ministerial and judicial determination to rush through the harshest possible punishments contrasting strongly with the treatment of armed Muslim gangs during the same event, BLM protestors a few years earlier, or multiple and repeated pro Hamas and pro terrorist demonstrations by both leftwing activists and immigrant Muslims.

As a mainstream academic Betz discusses all this in terms of the breaking of the social contract, referencing the Enlightenment idea that good governance is essentially a contract between the State and the citizen. The State provides some expected protections (such as an armed force to resist foreign invasion) and seeks to create a generally beneficial environment by minimal but wise policy. The citizen accepts the authority of the State and the legitimacy of laws that serve to protect him as well as others from crime or conquest by in turn obeying the law, being a good citizen, and paying taxes.

What the idea of the social contract doesn’t fully express is the fact that the Nation State and the loyalty owed to it is not a purely rational contract. It is also an emotional commitment, as much akin to the choice of a religion or the choice of a partner in marriage as it is a sort of business deal with both parties agreeing to provide certain things. People may be born into it (hence suggesting it is not a choice) but for it to be more than a legal formula or more than mere words on paper it has to be felt. It has to have associated emotions, and these are based on the kind of things that built national identity BEFORE Enlightenment thinkers tried to rationalise it all.

The legitimacy of a State is about more than someone saying it exists or has power over you. It’s about you feeling that it is a real thing, and feeling emotionally tied to it. It is a reciprocal loyalty with an expected emotional bond that is far more than just a business deal or just a legal contract. It is the kind of bond that people expect between parent and child or between siblings or between husband and wife, referring back to the ancient origins of nation in shared blood, kinship ties, tribe and people.

This is why it is absolutely fatal to the legitimacy of a political system for the majority of the people within it to no longer trust the authorities, no longer feel that the authorities are on their side, and to instead believe that the authorities and the government represent other people, foreign interests, alien groups, or malign purposes. This is why the words we use for very, very personal relationships-love, hate, betrayal, even respect and contempt-are the emotional words we also apply to strong political reactions. Breaking the social contract is also betraying an emotional bond. Ironically, that will be felt most, will be most damaging, amongst those who previously held this bond as particularly significant.

The people bad governance disgusts and alienates the most are the people you could previously rely on the most, the people who do actually care about your country, making the act of betrayal by a government which is prioritising others above existing citizens and letting existing citizens be harmed a thing reminiscent of parental abuse or sexual betrayal in a monogamous marriage. Social contract doesn’t fully express this emotional component of the agreement between the State and the citizen. But it’s this emotional component (again the sense of betrayal) that really expresses how toxic to government legitimacy policies like suppressing and criminalising comment on Muslim rape gangs or comment on the murder of innocent children really is. These are always double betrayals-you let it happen when you are supposed to protect us, and then you attacked us for complaining.

According to another expert Betz cites, the statistical chance of a Civil War in a society that possesses the causative factors of Civil War, in any given year, is 4%. Obviously if conditions worsen, that chance increases. I think it’s the expectation that conditions will worsen that explains why Betz sees Civil War as now inevitable and within a relatively short space of time. Betz says that if a government wanted to create a Civil War it would do exactly what the British government is doing. Upcoming measures like the sentencing guidelines which will mean white criminals officially receiving longer sentences because they are white formalise the two tier treatment that has already been happening but at least wasn’t so obviously expressed in the legal code before now. Similarly proposed Islamophobia laws will formalise the kind of favoured status for Islam that is already causing massive social alienation from non Muslim communities.

And the economic outlook is as bad as the social one. Rachel Reeves and the rest of the Labour Party tell everyone that they intend economic growth, but are wedded to policies that deliver the opposite. High tax, high spend, and ruinously damaging energy policies such as Net Zero make it impossible for this government to fulfil its other intentions AND achieve a successful economy. As the economy falters and revenue declines, efforts to increase revenue following a Labour economic understanding will only make matters worse-they will attempt to bridge spending gaps by more taxation and more anti growth wealth seizures, rather than by tackling the huge economic drain of mass migration to a welfare state and things like the burdensome desire to save Ukraine or save the planet (both of which won’t work and will simply lose hundreds of billions of British money).

So there’s much to support the Betz analysis, horrifying as its conclusions may be.

Perhaps the greatest irony in all this, of course, is that the mainstream responsible for creating the conditions of Civil War is also determined to oppose the measures that might prevent it. For me the bleakness of the Betz outlook downplays the very real difference populism would make if enacted in the UK. The successful election of Trump may well have prevented a US Civil War, confining the most insane elements of the US to performative displays of hysteria and ineffectual criminal chaos like burning Tesla cars. For me, though, if a UK government followed a Trump model and a Trump policy platform, it would act as a safety valve on majority disillusionment, gradually return a sense that the government and system was on the side of the existing citizen, and effectively act against the most dangerous imported elements too.

The tragedy for the UK is that its political class regard the policies that are sane and sensible and that will avert Civil War, as the policies that are extreme and irrational and should be suppressed. That suppression will only make total societal collapse more likely, whilst the end of that suppression, pivoting the forces of policing and governance back to doing what the majority want and protecting the populace from external threats now residing at home rather than oppressing the non criminal majority, would be the quickest way possible to make Civil War less likely.

The things that populism wants are neither radical nor impossible, but continuing current mainstream policies to their logical end result will put us in exactly the horrific situation Betz describes.