Thinking the Unthinkable

Policing, civil war and 'urbicide'

The RUC in Northern Ireland, 1991; In Ulster, there were only two sides to police. Now, thanks to identity politics, there are dozens.

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I personally am convinced of the inevitability of outright, active, and wide-scale civil war in North America and Western Europe. The best that can be hoped for, I think, is to diminish the period of horror. Some readers may be more optimistic; none, though, can objectively deny that there are strong and well-understood indicators showing that our current societal arrangements are failing at an accelerating rate.

Professor David Betz, ‘The Future of War Is Civil War’.

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Don’t worry, I haven’t gone bonkers. Honestly. And yes, this stuff would be easier to stomach if David Betz wore a tinfoil hat and ran a YouTube channel about prepping.

Except he doesn’t.

Professor Betz is a credible, highly-respected academic at King’s College, London. The paper quoted above is refreshingly accessible for the non-academic reader; if you’re interested in managing the full-spectrum clusterfuck that is the 21st Century, I’d even say it was a must-read. As a former police officer with a background in counterterrorism and extremism, I found myself in broad agreement with much of Prof. Betz’s analysis.

As an exercise is thinking the unthinkable, I’m going to run with the ball and explore what Betz’s conclusions augur for UK police forces. Given the dearth of long-term planning forces undertake, why not? They can have this one for free. Or they can rely on a Home Office ‘rapid sprint report’ into extremism.

Ha ha ha.

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Since the beginning of 2025, the following events occurred. They all informed this piece;

• An unknown person threw a hand grenade into a bar in Grenoble, France, injuring twelve.

• A Swedish man armed with a rifle opened fire at an education centre for immigrants, murdering ten. It’s not a happy place; I subsequently discovered hand grenade attacks are so common in Sweden, they have their own Wikipedia page.

• A failed Afghan refugee ploughed a car into a trade union march in Munich, injuring at least thirty-six, less than three weeks after another Afghan refugee stabbed and killed two people (including a child) in the city.

Then;

• I watched the Vice President of the USA deliver possibly the most undiplomatic speech I’ve ever heard.

• In it, JD Vance accused EU governments of suppressing populist political parties, censorship and generally being a bit shit. The effect on the audience at the Munich Security Conference was akin to the aforementioned bar in Grenoble.

• The speech was received in near-silence by assorted EU politicians and mandarins, presumably shitting bricks at the thought of increasing their defence budgets. The German Bundeswehr might even have to scale back funding military creches and buying broomsticks.

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And so the page turns.

When I listened to Vance’s speech I’ll admit to being torn. A part of me thought, ‘well someone had to say it.’ The other part of me thought, ‘oh fuck, there goes the neighbourhood.’ I immediately thought of Professor Betz’s article. If only 25% of his thesis is correct? We’re still fucked.

Let’s get to it, then, shall we? A competent public security practitioner should have contingencies for multiple scenarios, including widescale unrest and disorder.

Professor Betz argues how;

1. The failure of multiculturalism and the acceleration of identity politics contributes to low-trust societies, ones where communal tensions boil over into violence. An example; who trusted the Government’s account of events after the Southport stabbings? Who believes the Government, nowadays, about anything? This is the poisoned well from which we now drink.

2. Betz also identifies ‘the acceptance of white populations that the precepts of identity politics… apply to them the same as they do other groups.’ Identifying as ‘white’ is no longer the preserve of the far right. I also notice edgier figures on the ‘New Right’ dressing up racism as ethnonationalism. Old wine, new bottles.

3. Escalating micro-conflicts will eventually constitute a bona fide civil war, like an ever-growing Venn diagram of grievances. These conflicts will be fought over issues of identity, culture, religion and race. As Betz comments, this ‘is obvious and yet generally unmentionable in polite company, probably because it is horrifying and there is nothing much that can be done about it.’

4. The major flashpoints will be cities. The term Betz uses is ‘Urbicide’, being,

A more frequently cited definition of ‘urbicide’ describes it as the destruction of the possibility of a particular condition of urban life, or ‘urbanity’ in the jargon, through the targeting of structures. As a result of such attacks, a condition of urban ‘agonistic heterogeneity’ is transformed into one of ‘antagonistic enclaves of homogeneity’ (Coward 2007). In layman’s terms, that means destroying the condition of intercommunal comity in ethnically or otherwise mixed urban environments, separating them into warring neighbourhoods.

Basically, creating a 1970s Belfast or Beirut in terminally-divided interfaith, interethnic communities. places where intractable conflict thrives. Basically, not the sort of postcode you’d want to move to. A society in a terminal state of anarcho-tyranny.

5. Money. As my old history teacher used to say, ‘the first thing you need to know about war? It’s dreadfully expensive.’ Government coffers are dry. There’s nothing left to pay off various interest groups. As resources, such as welfare, housing and energy deteriorate (thanks, Mr. Miliband), competition between the abovementioned groups for those resources increases. Or, as Betz puts it;

sharp economic decline which will curtail the ability of government to maintain domestic peace through subsidisation and wealth transfer via debt. Being unable to borrow, governments will have to negotiate the division of a diminished and insufficient-to-satisfy-everyone stock of public goods to increasingly fractious identity groups.

Which brings me back to JD Vance’s speech, and the dawning realisation the USA expects European nations to spend 5% of their GDP on tanks and warships and fighter jets. Something has to give, doesn’t it?

6. The tactics of this new war will be a mixture of the old and the new, with an emphasis on the old. Our critical infrastructure security is laughably lax;

The coming civil war will combine the knife and the gun, the bolt-cutter, the sledgehammer, the IED, and every other means available applied with the ‘utmost discretion’ not to limit casualties but in a manner aimed precisely at well-known and widespread points of vulnerability that will lead to mass effect.

I’ll make two points here;

First of all, haven’t we seen a larval version of this with the ULEZ camera-sabotaging ‘blade runners’, who I wrote about here? We’ve become so obsessed with the threat of cyberattacks (sexy) we seem to have forgotten about analogue sabotage (unsexy).

Secondly, talking of effect; note how easily the sandal-wearing, kale-nibbling pensioners of Extinction Rebellion block motorways and airports with ease, seriously impacting critical infrastructure. Imagine what a violent group could achieve? A Government advisor who pointed this out was recently sacked, by the way.

I’d also add something Professor Betz doesn’t mention; the proliferation of ‘mafia-anarchy’ and resultant corruption in many European cities. Organised crime compromises institutions, erodes trust and upends legitimacy. People-trafficking and the narcotics trade are other fronts in this chimeric civil war.

Peaceful demonstrators are capable of causing serious disruption to critical infrastructure. Imagine what actively hostile, violent actors could achieve?

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What, then, does this mean for senior police officers, once this tipping point has been reached?

Of course, if I were a staff officer and wandered into the boss’s office to ask what our contingencies were for the next civil war, her or she would probably send me to see the HQ Wellness Co-ordinator for a mindfulness session and a cup of herbal tea.

Which is part of the problem.

I get it. I really do. Nobody wants to think about this stuff. Until it happens, whereupon the powers-that-be will schedule reports trying to blame each other for not thinking about this stuff. Unless, of course, it’s too late for all that.

You want peace? You prepare for war. Something the cosplay armies of certain NATO countries are about to discover. The same goes for a few of our cosplay police forces, too.

Having worked in this arena, I suggest Professor Betz’s paper should inform contingency planning. Sure, many of the societal factors Betz discusses are political - they aren’t in the gift of police to dictate (and nor should they be). The question, though, remains: what does resilience look like in an increasingly fractured society? Who provides it, and how?

As Professor Betz writes;

I personally am convinced of the inevitability of outright, active, and wide-scale civil war in North America and Western Europe. The best that can be hoped for, I think, is to diminish the period of horror. Some readers may be more optimistic; none, though, can objectively deny that there are strong and well-understood indicators showing that our current societal arrangements are failing at an accelerating rate.

I highlighted the salient point for law enforcement. Diminishing the period of horror. Doing what we can, when we can.

Here’s what the other side - the would-be urban guerrilla - thinks about the police. It’s instructive. And, increasingly, the settled view of both the far left and right. They disagree on many things, but not always on tactics;

It’s well known that the streets teem with incivilities. Between what they are and what they should be stands the centripetal force of the police, doing their best to restore order to them; and on the other side there’s us, the opposite centrifugal movement. . . All the incivilities of the street should become methodical and systematic, converging in a diffuse, effective guerrilla war that restores us to our ungovernability, our primordial unruliness... (The Invisible Committee 2009, pp. 11–112)

There you have it, from the horse’s mouth. The police are the centripetal force. Centripetal, incidentally, means ‘moving or tending to move towards a centre.’ It’s like judo. Asymmetrical. The discontents of the future will seek to pinpoint societal pressure points to create a centrifugal movement to destabilise society. The discontents are our suspects, who we seek to disrupt at every opportunity. Their targets require identifying and target-hardening. It’s going to be hard work. It’s going to be like eating soup with a knife.

Public order FIT (forward intelligence team) officers monitor a demonstration. Some of the tactics deployed in this new ‘war’ will be old-school.

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Some thoughts for police leaders;

Be transparent, but be sneaky too

This is a version of carrot and stick; future counterextremism operations will require honesty and subterfuge. These are not mutually exclusive. Media strategies should be transparent about purpose (to restore trust), even if they upset interest groups / political narratives. This used to be called operational independence, remember?

On the other hand, covert tactics and methods should remain covert and audacious, when circumstances demand. If they are used sensibly and for the greater good (I’m happy to define ‘the greater good’, should any politician sitting at the back find themselves struggling), then the trust engendered by honesty will mitigate controversy. The person on the street has far more of an appetite for robust methods than your mates running pressure groups, Minister.

Be Agile

A reactive investigatory approach, focussed primarily on prosecutions is ill-suited to counterextremism and public order operations. Small, agile teams with a mix of skills should be created and plugged into local policing and intelligence structures. Their mission should be identifying and disrupting suspects via a variety of tactics, both conventional and otherwise (this is where legal reform is essential, see below). The counterterrorism behemoth, designed for the post 9/11 world (of a quarter of a century ago, incidentally - feeling old?) urgently requires a rethink.

Think the unthinkable

I’m talking about what we call MACA (Military Aid to the Civil Authority). What value, if any, should the military add in times of de facto civil unrest? Are we too squeamish? Could this support involve anything but use of force (logistics, transport, communications, intelligence) or do we accept military units might, by virtue of necessity, be part of the public order mix? Or protecting vulnerable key points such as power stations and communications infrastructure? I wrote a counterfactual referencing this subject here.

A ‘Third Force’?

The idea of a third force - i.e. a UK gendarmerie, has been knocking around for years. I discussed the Prime Minister’s plans for such a force, after the 2024 summer riots, here. This is primarily a question of resources and planning - how do we move ‘x’ amount of public order trained personnel to points ‘a’ and ‘b’ and who’s paying for it? The current structures, as we saw last summer, are suboptimal. I’d suggest an easy win would be to ensure every UK police officer is public order trained to ‘level two’, which means tightening up recruitment. The model already exists in the Police Service of Northern Ireland; simply copy it. Oh, and here’s a really big question - if we accept there’s a new hybrid war coming down the track, do we brigade police and defence budgets? Policing’s as cheap as chips compared to armies, navies and air forces.

Law

I’m on the realist wing of the libertarian-minded, freedom of speech lobby. As such, I absolutely loathe the idea of emergency powers and legislation. Then again, I hate the idea of chemotherapy, but accept I might need it one day. This requires frank discussion between police and government, one I suspect is impossible under the current administration (until their hand is forced). Alternatively? We could look at the laws that exist and change them - most notably the 1998 Human Rights Act and elements of the 2010 Equalities Act. Just don’t hold your breath, eh? Dare I suggest our human rights-obsessed legal-politico class is not only ill-suited to deal with these challenges… they’re one of the causes.

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I’m sure, in the unlikely event a chief constable reads this essay, he or she will scoff. This argument is overegged, they’ll say. It’s reactionary. Populist-adjacent. I don’t recognise any of these issues in the communities I police.

If you are right and I am wrong, then I’m utterly delighted. The problem is, I was a detective. Not much of a detective, I suppose, but I get the basics - I’m an evidence-based person. Hand grenades and stabbings and cars crashing into crowds… every week? That’s not a Europe I recognise. Something’s gone badly, badly wrong.

I also understand the mindset of the likely combatants in this theoretical conflict. I spent years studying them. Trust me, they’re drooling. Sharpening their knives. Waiting to unleash their dogs.

I’m not saying you need to go on a war footing. All I’m suggesting is you think about what’s going wrong. Not wait for the Home Office to tell you (because they won’t). Then, perhaps, review your force’s capabilities. This conflict, if it ever happens, will be local too. Painfully local.

Then again, you’ve got an important conference soon; business class to Interpol HQ. And there’s a meeting with the Home Secretary. You fancy applying for the Met commissioner’s job, too. So many other toys to play with. Pretty, pretty toys.

So, Chief Constable, let’s hope I’m wrong.

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