Europe: Civil Unrest and International War Converge | Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: You were projecting civil unrest here in 2026 in advance. My brother's store was completely looted and destroyed in France. Macron can make his resolute television appearance, but nobody listened to the people, and they certainly ignored your forecasts, which you have always said were not merely your personal opinion. This appears to be spreading everywhere: to Belgium, Italy, and Germany, as well as Albania. Will this escalate into November? Pierre

» Et pendant ce temps-là... la la la... on joue à la guerre! « 

Lucius Domitius Macronus, Fall 2026 AD.

ANSWER: I wish I had better news. You are correct; 2026 was the major target for widespread civil unrest in Europe. This will not be the end of it. There will be a reprieve, but as I have warned, the migrant issue will put Europe at tremendous risk, for the people they let in have no interest in assimilating. This will perhaps continue into November. This is part of the rising fuel costs, and they continue to support Zelensky, and our computer warns energy is still in a bull market.

 

Yearly Civil Unrest, 2022 to 2033.

Crude can soar to as high as $200 a barrel in 2028, thanks to war and Zelensky. I have warned that the Neocons only look at their objective and are ignorant of everything else around them. They are really screwing the world economy, and much of the protests are also about the cost of living. Protests will not bring down the cost of living until the leaders abandon Zelensky.

Yearly International War, 2022 to 2033.

 

I have tried to warn that this is the first time I saw the computer have both models, Civil Unrest and International War, aligning at the same time. We have a Panic Cycle in civil unrest in 2029. This raises serious concern that the EU may no longer exist and that the rise in this civil unrest will increase the pressure for separatist movements. The politicians have simply refused to listen to the people they are supposed to represent because they see the people as too stupid to visualize what they see for the future.

 » The former head of state is often publicly killed, and typically all their ministers. « 

These forecasts are NOT my personal opinion. This is the computer, all based on the historical record. We probably have the largest such database, separated between domestic and international events. This allows us to create two separate models and do not compare these forecasts as my opinion against someone else's. This is the data.

Reference:
Martin Armstrong (October 18, 2026) - Europe & Civil Unrest On Time.

 

Bismillah, c'est les ténèbres!

Two geniuses on death row. 

See also:

 Martin Armstrong (2024) - The Five Stages of the Revolutionary Cycle.

Richard Smith (2026) - Three Major War Cycles Converging 2027–2032. 

Alexander L. Chizhevsky (1922) - Mass Excitability during Solar Cycle 25 (2019–2030).

Michael Yon (October 19, 2026) - The Beginning of the End for Europe. (video)

The Counterfeit Empire: How the EU Occupies Europe | Speculum Orientis

Plain language about the European Union is forbidden. Its apologists chant "peace," "cooperation," "human rights," but behind the litany stands a labyrinth of rule designed so that ordinary men never grasp how their lives are governed. Tradition sees no partnership of fatherlands here. The EU is an Atlanticist occupation imposed after 1945, built to extinguish organic sovereignty, erase Europe's qualitative order, and chain the continent to a foreign hegemon. Its centralisation is not the fault; its spiritual void and managerial tyranny are.

Locking Europe into permanent subordination.

The Historical Roots: An Empire Prevented

The official story sells the European project as a noble escape from war. The truth is uglier. After the Second World War, the United States required a Europe shattered enough never to threaten its interests or drift toward independence. The answer was integration—not a free union of peoples, but an occupation logic made permanent.

The Marshall Plan was the economic bait. The institutional trap was the European Coal and Steel Community, shaped by Jean Monnet, a technocrat deep in Anglo-American financial and intelligence circuits. Monnet's blueprint skipped parliaments and national legitimacies. American money, including covert CIA funds for the European Movement, manufactured consent among a beaten elite. The Schuman Declaration of 1950 was drafted in Monnet's office and approved by the US Secretary of State before any European public heard a word. From the first breath, the project was an Atlanticist protectorate, foreclosing any authentic European Imperium in favour of a managerial pseudo-empire.

While official Europe preached reconciliation, the transatlantic deep state planted a paramilitary dagger under the continent: Operation Gladio, stay-behind armies coordinated by NATO and the CIA, buried across Western Europe. Its public mission was resistance to a Soviet invasion; its actual function was internal control—false-flag terror, a strategy of tension to discredit national and communist movements, keeping populations fearful and pliant. Gladio did not only target the Left; it shattered any truly European imperial project that might rise outside Atlanticist command. The dream of a Europe united not by paperwork but by spiritual authority and organic hierarchy was replaced by a bureaucratic anti-empire serving an overseas merchant power.

» Protecting our democracy and European values. «
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission,
Brussels, October 9, 2026.

 

The Institutional Labyrinth: A Deliberate Maze

The EU's structure is no accident. It is a deliberate maze—a tangle of competences and procedures where no voter can locate responsibility, so no popular will can strike. The "institutional triangle" of Commission, Council, and Parliament is a screen. The true architecture places the Commission at the centre: an unelected executive that monopolises the right to propose laws. Flanking it stand the European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank—three bodies united by a single principle, insulation from any electoral sanction. The Parliament cannot initiate legislation and is reduced to secret trilogue deals; the Council of ministers offers the illusion of national sovereignty, but qualified majority voting routinely overrules dissent, and the Council's agenda is steered by the very Commission no voter can remove.

Hail the Cocaine Dwarf: Von der Leyen to send Ukraine another €3 billion next week, on top of her regular €1.24 billion monthly tribute.

The Commission: The Inverted Hierarchy

The European Commission is the true executive. It alone possesses the near-monopoly of legislative initiative. It drafts regulations that penetrate every corner of national life, polices compliance, negotiates treaties, and can drag member states before the Court. Yet no voter in any election has ever cast a ballot for the College of Commissioners.

Even by democracy's own debased standards, the Commission is a fraud. But the deeper scandal—for those who still see—is not the missing mandate. It is that a purely administrative, economic-technocratic caste has usurped the station that belongs to spiritual and warrior authority. This is the revolt of the lower functions—the manager, the merchant, the rootless expert—against the higher orders of priest and king, an inversion that any traditional doctrine would recognise. The Commission is that inversion made flesh: an unelected college of economic functionaries, drawn from the lowest caste of market technocrats, deciding the identity and destiny of Europe's peoples. Their cabinet meetings are secret; their oath demands loyalty not to any nation but to the abstract deity of the acquis communautaire. They are the priesthood of a counterfeit religion, pushing "ever closer union" as secular salvation.

 

Woke liberal fascism—compulsory celebration of rootlessness, fluid identities, anti-traditional egalitarianism—

is the apparatus's state religion. It is the necessary value-system of a regime that has inverted all values. 

The Court: Qualities Erased

If the Commission is the engine, the Court is the silent sovereign. Through direct effect, supremacy, and implied powers, it has built a self-expanding federal legal order where EU law trumps all national law, including constitutional law. The supposed limits—conferral, subsidiarity, proportionality—have been hollowed into nothing. Conferral, which says the Union acts only within given competences, is bypassed by the Court's teleological reading: any national rule with a cross-border economic echo can be sucked into the centralising vortex. Subsidiarity, the promise that decisions stay close to the citizen, is dead; the Court always defers to the Commission's claim that Union action is more "effective." The ratchet turns one way. What is Europeanised never returns.

 

Sincere cooperation finishes the trap. Dressed as mutual loyalty, it becomes a command of obedience when the Commission or Court wield it. A member state whose constitutional court dares assert sovereignty, or whose government voices a different civilisational vision, is accused of violating this duty. Sincere cooperation is a muzzle, a juridical weapon to silence peoples who refuse the homogeneous mass. This is the reign of quantity: uniform legal norms erasing every qualitative distinction, reducing all that is noble and differentiated to an administrative formula.

 

BlackRock Merz assures the Cocaine Dwarf an extra €90 billion, October 4, 2026. 

 

The Charter: Deception as High Politics

The Charter of Fundamental Rights was proclaimed non-binding at Nice in 2000 because Britain and Poland flatly refused to let a supranational bill of rights override their traditions. That rejection should have killed it. Instead, the Lisbon Treaty smuggled it into binding law. Opt-out protocols were concocted, but the Court reads them as narrowly as possible.

Sold as a shield for the individual, the Charter is an engine of egalitarian ideology. The Commission's "rule of law" mechanism, invoked in the name of Charter values, coerces dissident nations that resist the Brussels social consensus. Traditional moral order, organic community, and faith are treated as obstacles to be dismantled. The same institutional class that ran Gladio's clandestine war against self-determination now lectures the continent on human rights. The velvet glove of "fundamental rights" hides the iron fist of homogenisation.

 

The ECB: The Monetary Absolute

The ECB is unaccountable power in its rawest form. The eurozone surrendered monetary sovereignty to an institution whose governing council deliberates in secret, cannot take instructions from any government, and has, in crisis, dictated austerity to elected parliaments in Greece, Italy, and elsewhere. A currency governed by bankers without mandate is the ultimate symbol of the modern inversion: the merchant's logic usurps the royal function, the quantitative rules the qualitative absolutely. The ECB holds the strings of national solvency; democratic choices that displease the Frankfurt technocracy are punished by market pressure and liquidity denial. The single currency was never a tool of prosperity—it was a cage.

The Ever-Growing Union: Aggression Without End

The treaties enshrine "ever closer union." Not a poetic wish—a constitutional engine that mandates limitless expansion. The aggression of the EU does not spring from a will to organic unity. A true Imperium would honour the hierarchical articulation of peoples, nations, and functions. The EU's totalitarian impulse is that of a purely economic-ideological machine that cannot tolerate any qualitative remainder, any sacred immunity.

Hence the invasion of every sphere: working time, agriculture, state aid, environment, data, immigration quotas, foreign policy. And most visibly, migration. Mass immigration, imposed against the consent of nations and dismantling the demographic continuity of Europe, is no accident of mismanagement. It is a deliberate instrument of qualitative dissolution. The full anatomy of this transformation is laid out in Notes from a Civilization in Winter.

The proposed "chat control" regulation mandates the scanning of all private digital communications, breaking encryption under the alibi of protecting children. This is the surveillance state creeping through the back door, pushed by an unelected bureaucracy that brands every opponent an apologist for abuse. Woke liberal fascism—compulsory celebration of rootlessness, fluid identities, anti-traditional egalitarianism—is the apparatus's state religion. It is the necessary value-system of a regime that has inverted all values: the low exalted, the rooted despised, the spiritual mocked, while the administrator occupies the place once held by kings, aristocracies, and priests.

The Counterfeit Empire and the Need to Stop It

Every attempt to tame the beast from within has failed. The Commission holds the pen; the Court twists every ambiguity toward Brussels' absolute claim; the Parliament is a lobby conveyor belt; the ECB grips the solvency whip. Conferral is a fiction. Subsidiarity is a lie. The institutions are irreversible because they serve not Europe but an Atlanticist order that must prevent any true European power from arising.

The path forward cannot be a return to the liberal nation-state—that atomising, anti-traditional form that itself prepared the ground for this occupation. To clear away Brussels is not to restore the Europe of 1939; it is to open the possibility of an order that is neither the nation-state nor the managerial pseudo-empire. An order rooted in spiritual authority and qualitative differentiation, whatever shape it takes, has nothing in common with the procedural, egalitarian machine sitting in Brussels, Frankfurt, and Luxembourg.

The "ever closer union" of the treaties is a demonic parody of true unity. It will not stop on its own. It must be stopped. And after its end, the ancient, sovereign, qualitatively ordered Europe may finally breathe again.

Quoted from:
Speculum Orientis (July 20, 2026) - The Counterfeit Empire: How the European Union Occupies Europe.

 See also:

Lorenzo Maria Pacini (2026) - Europe as a Multipolar Civilization and the Diplomacy of Logoi.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (2026) - CIA, MI6, and Mossad Own Europe's Political Class. 

Anthony Rubin (2026) - Replacing Europe: An Undercover Look at Mass Migration. 

René Guénon (1945) - The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.

Alexander L. Chizhevsky (1922) - Mass Excitability during Solar Cycle 25 (2019–2030).

CIA, MI6, and Mossad Own Europe's Political Class | Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

I take a grim satisfaction from knowing exactly what we did. I know how painstakingly the CIA, MI6 (SIS), and to a certain extent Mossad worked to shape today's Europe. Though Mossad was not initially a willing partner, they eventually joined in once they saw the money involved. To borrow a phrase from certain Asian scholars, we "taught the dogs to bark." 

 

» We bought entire countries' political apparatuses. «

 

We bought newspaper editors, labor union heads, and parliamentarians. We purchased two NATO Secretary-Generals—Jens Stoltenberg and Mark Rutte. We bought entire countries' political apparatuses, starting in earnest around 2002, when billions of CIA dollars began flowing. USAID was the instrument; we weaponized liberal democracy.
 

2022: Biden, with Reich Governor Scholz at his side, promised to

terminate Nord Stream 2. And the perfect lackey just kowtowed.

In that respect, I supported what Trump and Rubio did to the extent that they purged the lower-level operatives who executed these policies—though I did not support their removal of top bureaucrats. But we created the Europe that exists today, on purpose. And now we are paying the piper. It will take another six to eighteen months to root out many of these figures, and God knows how long to cleanse the parliaments. We painstakingly crafted Europe in our own image.

From Anti‑War to Neo‑Con

I recall the anti-war fervor of 2003, when the US invasion of Iraq was seen as outrageous, aggressive, and counterproductive across Europe. The hawks—figures like Colin Powell and Dick Cheney—were despised and ridiculed. Those days are gone. Today's European leaders are indistinguishable from the US neoconservatives of that era. The reaction to George W. Bush back then was a call to battle for that administration, and they set all this in motion.

1965: Humberto Delgado, Portuguese Air Force General, prominent opposition leader against the Estado

Novo dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar; assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6 stay-behind operatives.

 

 

1978: Aldo Moro, leader of the Christian Democracy party, Prime Minister of Italy, and chief architect

of the "Historic Compromise", a coalition government that would bring the  Communist Party (PCI)

into the ruling cabinet; assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6 stay-behind operatives.

 

1986: Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister, leader of the Social Democratic Party, staunch promoter

of the welfare state and Third World liberation movements, condemned the US war in Vietnam and

the apartheid regime in South Africa; assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6/Mossad stay-behind operatives.

1989: Alfred Herrhausen, Chairman of Deutsche Bank, visionary leader, active promoter of

German-Russian economic relations, and highly influential advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl; 

assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6/Mossad stay-behind operatives. 

  

1991: Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, president of the Treuhandanstalt, the German government agency

tasked with privatizing East German state-owned enterprises, was considered insufficiently flexible

toward certain foreign demands; assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6/Mossad stay-behind operatives.

 

2003: Jürgen Möllemann, prominent German politician from the Free Democratic Party,

 president of the German-Arab Society, outspoken critic of Israel and promoter of the

Palestinian cause; assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6/Mossad stay-behind operatives. 

 

2008: Jörg Haider, Austrian right-wing populist politician, governor of Carinthia and

harsh anti-Zionist; assassinated by NATO/CIA/MI6/Mossad stay-behind operatives.

 

Et cetera et cetera et cetera:

 murder, slaughter, genocide: children, women, heads of state; terrorism; intimidation; weapon, drug, organ, 

child trafficking; well poisoning; pedophilia; hijacking; torturing; counterfeiting; looting; piracy; bribery...

 

Forging the CIA

The CIA had never before operated on such a scale. Harry Truman greatly objected to the agency's formation, initially, but he was eventually sold out by William "Wild Bill" Donovan and J. Edgar Hoover—despite Hoover's hatred for Donovan. It is a strange history, but the agency bought this new mission lock, stock, and barrel because it knew billions would pour its way. And indeed they did. They set about changing the European attitude. When the largest anti-war rally in British—and possibly European—history erupted in London in 2003, we did not like that at all. We set out to reverse it.

» NATO's purpose is: Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. «
Lord General Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General, 1952.

1952: Stalin proposed reunifying Germany as a demilitarized, neutral state. Chancellor Adenauer rejected it as "Soviet ruse," prioritizing West Germany's US/British/French occupation regime
over national sovereignty and unity; remained in power and lived to 91. 

Cultivating Stoltenberg

How close was I to this? I was up close and personal in getting Jens Stoltenberg to his position. We saw what he did within his own government, recognized how malleable and susceptible he was to our messaging, and used him as a center pole from which to extend our influence into other governments. He was willing because he knew we had promised him the NATO Secretary-General post. I did not see the infection of the EU up close, but I am sure it followed chapter and verse alongside our manipulation of NATO leadership.

 

» We purchased two NATO Secretary-Generals. « 

 

NATO's Top‑Heavy Bloat

That effort was not difficult. You must understand the history of NATO's top-heavy flag structure. Every time we built a headquarters and placed a three- or four-star general there, the Europeans felt compelled to match us. We built this incredible overhead of flag officers—Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps—across Europe, and they were so influenceable that all you had to do was whisper in their ear. Suddenly, you had this pliant NATO military leadership doing your bidding. The CIA merely had to whisper about Russia, building up the threat as needed.

» We taught the dogs to bark. « 

Russophobia as Propaganda

This Russophobia began early—with Boris Yeltsin's disappearance and Vladimir Putin's arrival on the scene. That is when we started using fear of Russia as a propaganda instrument. In the Dutch media, it was exposed that Mark Rutte, while Prime Minister, would excuse Israeli actions and adopt extra-hawkish positions on Russia and Yemen, all to look good on his job application for NATO. They knew exactly what the Americans would reward.

Since 1871, the US/Anglo prime geopolitical doctrine for Europe:
"Keep Germany and Russia separate and in conflict."
[Or, as Victoria Nuland put it in 2014: "Fuck the EU!"]

 

2026: Pete Blaber, former US Delta Force Commander, on the truth

about the NATO/CIA/MI6/Mossad war against Russia in Ukraine.

  

Weaponizing Historical Guilt

We were also acutely aware—particularly in Germany, but elsewhere too—of how deeply the Holocaust lingered over European consciousness. With Mossad's assistance, we exploited that guilt to the maximum. This is why Germany has the laws and regulations it does regarding anti-Semitism today; we helped build them.

 

Reference: 

Lawrence Wilkerson (August 19, 2026) - Buying Europe's Political Class. (video)

 

» They lose their jobs if there is peace. «  

Lawrence B. Wilkerson (b. 1945) is a retired US Army colonel and former senior government official. A 31-year Army and Vietnam veteran, he became closely associated with Colin Powell in 1989, serving as his assistant as Powell completed his tenure as President Reagan’s National Security Advisor. Wilkerson remained with Powell through his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, into civilian life, and, when Powell became Secretary of State under George W. Bush, as his Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005. He later became a prominent critic of the Iraq War, expressing particular regret over his role in preparing Powell's infamous 2003 UN Security Council presentation on Iraq's alleged weaponized anthrax. Since retiring in 2005, Wilkerson has held academic posts at the US Naval War College and College of William and Mary. He is a fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and regularly comments on US foreign policy, the Middle East, and national security.

Russia Warns UK of Nuclear Poseidon Tsunami

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a naval meeting yesterday (July 26) that Russia is finalizing the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater vehicle for service entry, indicating the system is nearing operational deployment. Poseidon is an unmanned underwater vehicle of about 100 tons, equipped with a nuclear propulsion system providing virtually unlimited range. 

A single nuclear-armed Poseidon torpedo can devastate a coastal city.

It can operate at depths exceeding 1,000 meters and reach speeds of up to 70 knots (around 130 km/h). The system carries a nuclear payload of up to two megatons and is designed to strike coastal targets such as naval bases and port infrastructure, either through direct detonation or by generating a large-scale radioactive tsunami. Owing to its depth, speed, and maneuverability, Poseidon is considered extremely difficult to detect or intercept, with Russian leadership asserting it has no global equivalent.

On June 14, 2026, UK Royal Marines seized the Smyrtos, a sanctioned 
Russian "shadow fleet" oil tanker, in the English Channel. Full circle.

Perfidious Albion returned to its original trade: piracy.

  

Within this context, Putin referenced the potential use of Poseidon against the UK, framing it as a decisive strategic capability. He emphasized that while the underlying technologies exist, further refinement and adaptation to specific operational environments are ongoing. These statements suggest that, once fully deployed, Poseidon could be integrated into contingency planning involving high-value maritime or coastal targets.

Russian President at naval meeting, July 26, 2026.

In parallel, a Russian naval presence near the UK has drawn attention. On July 21, a Russian frigate conducted live-fire artillery exercises in international waters approximately 74 kilometers south of Plymouth, as reported by the UK Ministry of Defence and cited by the BBC. Initial warning shots were observed, and the Royal Navy, alongside a French military aircraft, closely monitored the activity. The French aircraft reportedly requested clarification of the vessel’s intentions via radio communication. Russia stated that the drills, which lasted around 30 minutes, were conducted in accordance with international maritime law and that nearby vessels had been notified in advance to maintain distance.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russia retains all options to confront Britain, including the Poseidon nuclear-powered drone submarine, part of Russia’s naval nuclear system and described as a "Doomsday" weapon. The remarks followed Burnham's first meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 27, 2026. 

The frigate, identified as the Neustrashimy, was also reported to be escorting Russian tankers through the English Channel, where Russian naval transits are not uncommon. No injuries or direct engagements with other vessels occurred. However, the timing and location of the exercise have led to interpretations that it may have served as a strategic signal, particularly in light of recent political developments in the UK.

Ukraine targeted Iranian cargo ship and Russian oil rig in Caspian Sea, July 25, 2026.

Levante, Ukraine, Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf, Red Sea. Regional wars merging. 

 

The new UK leadership is pursuing a more assertive stance toward Russia and Iran, including closer alignment with the US, a posture perceived by Moscow as escalatory. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated that Russian military activities were conducted within the bounds of international law and denied any intent to issue a direct threat. Nevertheless, he stressed that repeated expressions of unconditional UK support for Ukraine have significantly reduced prospects for improved bilateral relations.

Civil War Comes to the West | David Betz

Recognition of the possibility of civil war in the West exists in politics and related punditry and in a range of scholarship. Many people still deny or are reluctant to talk of it. Perhaps they fear a kind of ‘security dilemma’ that might occur; if people become convinced that civil war is coming because important people say so they might behave in ways that cause or hasten it. Equally, one might surmise, some know the truth but are factionally invested in the conflict and are simply positioning over who will be judged by history to have fired the first shot in it.

Henry Nowak, 18, was fatally stabbed in Southampton in April 2026 by Vickrum Digwa

and controversially handcuffed by police as he lay dying, ignited nationwide riots.

 

Neither, in my view, are credible positions to hold when confronted with the unfortunate reality. Theory is generally clear and convincing about the conditions under which civil war is likely to occur. Walton concluded that in any year just under four per cent of the countries in which the conditions of civil war were present would experience it. Accepting this, even as something of a pessimistic baseline, would suggest over the coming decade the collective West is in deep trouble. Moreover, there is little reason to hope that should one kick off in one major country its consequences would not spread more widely to others.

Civil War in Britain: The Why, The How, The When.
Colin Brazier, July 2, 2026.

 

Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. 

 

Organized and directed polarization: liberal 'Left', radical 'Islamism', and 

patriotic 'far-right', all infested with Zionist agents, fanning the flames.

 

In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly. The result, society-wise, is a reinforcing spiral calling to mind the opening lines of Yeats’ famous ‘The Second Coming’.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…

The fact of the matter is that the tools of revolt in the form of various appurtenances of modern life are just lying around, knowledge of how to employ them is widespread, targets are obvious and undefended, and more and more formerly regular citizens seem minded to take the shot.

Assume—based on recent statements by credible national political and academic figures—that at least ten European countries face the risk of violent civil conflict. The table above lists fifteen; discard any five you consider least plausible. Even then, the probability of such conflict occurring in at least one of the remaining countries within five years is 87%—rising to 95% if all fifteen are included.

‘Normalcy bias’ is a concept originating in disaster management that refers to the way in which people sometimes fail to react in a timely manner to warnings of imminent danger. The defense establishments of the West ought to guard against a tendency to disbelieve or to minimize the threat of internal conflict. The matter is that conditions which are generally agreed to be indicative of the potential for civil war are vividly present across a range of states which have for a long time been thought beyond such sort of conflict.

      » Configured for civil war. « 

In June 2026, an attempted decapitation of an Irish Belfast man by a Sudanese 'asylum seeker' sparked viral outrage
that rapidly escalated into anti-immigrant riots, arson, and widespread disorder across Northern Ireland. 

Strategic studies may be quite caught off guard, moreover, for two other reasons. First, civil wars are little studied in the same manner as interstate wars. The literature on civil wars is extensive, including important works on its causation, resolution, social origins, outcomes, post-war rebuilding and so on; but it is rarely studied, as is ‘normal war’, from the perspective of military strategy—in other words, how it is or should be fought. The work of Stathis Kalyvas, the most astute contemporary observer of the ‘logic’ of civil wars, is a rare exception.

 

All ingredients in play.

 

However, second, even Kalyvas just over a decade ago concluded that in the long view, civil wars were in decline. His further point, though, was that civil war had undergone three major transformations over the last 200 years to, in the last instance, a form which he struggled to describe—one far less ordered and conventional. That form is becoming evident. To suggest that civil war is imminent and ascendant and precisely in parts of the world thought, heretofore, to be the wealthiest and least restive—is contrary to expectation—but that is where we are.

Quoted from:

David Betz (2023) - Civil War Comes to the West. Part 1 and Part 2.

Military Strategy Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 1, summer 2023, pages 20-26. 
Military Strategy Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 2, spring 2025, pages 6-16.  

 

See also:

David Betz (2025) - United Kingdom Configured for Civil War Within the Next 5 Years. 

Anthony Rubin (2026) - Replacing Europe: An Undercover Look at Mass Migration.

David J. Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World in the Department of War Studies, King's College London where he heads the MA War Studies program. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.