Can anything halt America's path toward civil conflict?

Trump has nationalised California's military and threatened to arrest its governor for objecting. As troops flood LA streets, the president is forcing a military parade on DC for his birthday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered an impassioned plea for a return to the rule of law last night, after President Trump commandeered the California National Guard that is supposed to be under Newsom’s control and deployed it onto the streets of Los Angeles. This was supposedly done to quell what had up to that point been a small number of non-violent protesters. It is a move unprecedented in modern American history and almost certain to be ruled unconstitutional by the courts - because the president used Title 10 of the US code rather than the insurrection act, the only legal vehicle for a president to take over state militaries.

“Democracy is under assault before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived,” Governor Newsom warned all Americans in an address last night. “Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there. Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next.”

Because of the phenomenon I’ve dubbed TSFE (Too Scary For Europeans), many if not most people on this continent will see this as hyperbole. But it is deadly serious. People may be confused by the name, but the national guard forces are actually not the national military but rather the 50 state militaries. They have a long tradition dating from before the federation of the country, and at times they have even been used by states in wars against each other after federation (such as the Toledo War between Michigan and Ohio from 1835 to 1836). These days they are usually used for national disaster relief and other regional issues, though they can be deployed abroad by the national military with a governor’s consent (and frequently are). The difference here is that not only did Newsom not give his consent, he has expressly opposed this deployment and is challenging it in court as unconstitutional. In response, Trump and his Border Czar Tom Homan have threatened to arrest the California governor. Asked what crime Newsom has committed to deserve arrest, Trump said “running for governor” - openly saying that he wishes to arrest him simply for being a political opponent. And in a further escalation, yesterday Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth (who has been busy purging the national military leadership of non-Trump-loyalists) deployed 700 US Marines into LA, which is also illegal to do on US soil unless the Insurrection Act has been invoked, which it hasn’t.

As Luke Johnson noted on his Substack yesterday, this is not a question of miscommunication. The Trump regime is purposefully escalating the situation in order to show their power and stifle dissent. It is also, perhaps, an effort to distract from the damaging news cycle of Trump’s blow-up with Elon Musk. This all started earlier this week when Trump’s senior political advisor Stephen Miller called in top ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials into the White House and berated them for not making enough arrests, reportedly specifically telling them to arrest everyone in the parking lot of a specific Home Depot. ICE then dutifully arrested the people in that parking lot, acting more like the president’s personal MAGA militia than a government agency. They then fanned out across Los Angeles disappearing mothers off the street, some who have been in the US for 20 years. Small-scale protests then popped up around the city. The LA Police Department said the protests were non-violent and manageable. But the Trump regime then commandeered the California National Guard, bypassing state and city authorities and ordering them to violently suppress the protests. Police officers have fired flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets, at one point even firing directly on an Australian reporter who was live on TV. The protests then escalated with some cars being burned. This in turn is giving the regime an excuse to escalate the military response. The regime’s false claims of large-scale rioting is quickly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as more and more people take to the streets because they are enraged with what the government is doing. Where does this end?

As all of this unfolds in Los Angeles, in Washington the regime is busy preparing an unprecedented military parade which will showcase America’s might on the occasion of Trump’s birthday. The regime is making the laughable claim that the date is only coincidentally the president’s birthday, and what they are actually celebrating is the obscure anniversary of the founding of one branch of the US military. It is just more gaslighting. Of course we’re meant to know that this parade is audaciously celebrating the leader’s birthday, something unheard of in American history. The message is clear: toss everything you’ve known about America out the window, and get used to a new authoritarian era.

We know what Europeans would say about any other country where the leader makes the military march on his birthday, brutally cracks down on peaceful protests and commandeers militaries that he does not legally have control over. Imagine if Ursula von der Leyen decided to commandeer the Hungarian army and order it to take over the streets of Budapest over the objection of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The situation is of course not perfectly analogous because the US president does indeed have the power to do this in certain circumstances whereas defence is not (yet) an EU competence. But what the two situations would have in common is that they are both illegal. The US president is illegally pursuing this power-grab, just as the EU president would be if she were to do it.

Alternatively, imagine a more analogous scenario. Imagine that President Obama had nationalised the Texas National Guard, over the objection of Republican Governor Rick Perry, and ordered it to deploy on the streets of Dallas. It is not hyperbole to say that that very likely could have led to civil war. So it is also not hyperbole to say that the current situation risks escalating into a civil war.

As long-time readers of this Substack know, I have long been arguing that the risk of a civil war in the United States is quite high - higher than in any EU country. In some ways, this risk was more likely in the event of a Harris victory in November, because Trump’s MAGA base is heavily armed and quite often talks about overthrowing the government (while the other side doesn’t do either of those things). Since Trump’s victory I’ve seen Europeans become more cognisant of the chance for civil war in the United States, but they usually say the same thing to me, “but who would challenge the government? Everyone is falling in line behind Trump.” In other words, the Trump regime’s authoritarianism is the thing that prevents civil war, not the thing that causes it.

But authoritarianism is only successful at keeping chaos at bay if it is at least somewhat coherent and controlled. That is not what we’re seeing in the US right now, and there is only so much that people are willing to take. The overarching theme right now isn’t just growing authoritarianism, it’s also chaos. Chaos often breeds civil war. I shudder to think how the Trump regime would respond to real domestic unrest on the streets of America right now. What if there was something on the scale of Kent State in the 60s? Or a terrorist attack as big as 9/11? The authoritarian crackdown would be immense. Would people accept it, particularly if said crackdown was clumsy and ineffective? Even just looking at the current situation, what happens if the people of Los Angeles do not cower in their homes in the fact of Trump’s provocation? Where is this all going?

Europeans need to wake up. This is not a question of “American disengagement”. Such a minimalist scenario is probably the best case we can hope for. We are looking at an American regime which may not only provoke a military conflict here on our continent, but also there on their own. And what happens to Europe if the superpower they are dependent on descends into civil war? Not only does the bedrock of this continent’s financial structure collapse, but Europeans are left defenceless in the face of a Russian invasion. These are the times we’re living in, and no amount of whistling past the graveyard is going to change that. Yet each time the situation in the United States becomes more alarming, European leaders seem to have just caught up to the the alarming development from two months earlier. President von der Leyen appears to have just now caught on that the Trump regime might not like European centrist governments very much (although in suggesting this she still dares not mention the US by name).

The United States is entering the darkest chapter in its modern history, something that could end up being even darker than the first American civil war. The difference is that what was a distant conflict for Europe in the 1860s would be an all-consuming one for this continent today. The American darkness will inevitably come here to Europe, a continent dependent on and wedded to the United States. If there is any hope to cushion that blow, European leaders need to immediately take steps to derisk Europe’s relationship with the United States. They are not doing that. They are instead reacting with incredulity to the mere suggestion. I hope that the United States does not descend into civil war or full authoritarianism (perhaps the latter resulting from the former). But each day that does by seem to bring this possibility closer and closer to reality, and right now its hard for me to imagine what could pull America back from the brink. Here in Europe we must hope for the best but prepare for the worst. History will remember these cowardly European leaders who could see the darkness approaching and yet did nothing to protect their citizens from it. It’s time to wake up, before it’s too late.