This is the second of two articles on the dawning of an uncomfortable new strategic reality for the West, which is that the primary threat to its security and well-being today is not external but internal—specifically, civil war.[i] In the first essay, I explained the reasons that this situation has arisen: a combination of culturally fractured societies, economic stagnation, elite overreach and a collapse of public confidence in the ability of normal politics to solve problems, and ultimately the realisation by anti-status quo groups of plausible strategies of attack based on systems disruption of vulnerable critical infrastructure. In this article I expound on the likely shape that civil war will take and the strategies that might be employed to minimise and mitigate the damage that will entail.
