As Delhi digests the significance of the recent popular revolts in Nepal and elsewhere in the Subcontinent, it is easy to miss the significance of the conflicts now brewing within the West. Civil wars have long been seen as the tragic luxury of the Global South — the result of incomplete nation-building, riven by religious, ethnic, linguistic and regional divisions over representation, minority rights, and the distribution of power and wealth.
Yet the West has had its own history of strife, from the English Civil War to the American Civil War and the continent-wide carnage of the two World Wars. In the eight decades since 1945, economic prosperity, strong democratic institutions, wider political representation and robust welfare states that co-opted forces on the left and the right helped keep internal peace. But is that happy era now ending?
In recent years, a growing chorus across the US, the UK and Europe has begun to use the term “civil war” not as a historical reference but as a dire warning about their own societies. What was once a fringe discussion has entered the mainstream, fuelled by polarisation, anti-immigrant sentiment and a sharp clash of values between entrenched liberal elites and insurgent populist movements.
The gravity of this debate is evident in recent events. The murder of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university rally in Utah last week sent shockwaves through US politics. The Trump Administration and its right-wing supporters immediately framed the killing as an act of war by the radical American Left.
In London, a massive “Patriot” rally last weekend, organised by the fiery nationalist Tommy Robinson, channelled rising anti-immigrant anger and resentment at government policies on hate speech. Charlie Kirk’s name echoed through the speeches. A transatlantic convergence is visible between the MAGA movement in America and the rise of British nationalism that wants to “take back” the United Kingdom.
The new phenomenon is not limited to the Anglo-Saxon world. Across Europe, the rise of anti-immigrant and populist parties — Germany’s AfD and France’s National
Rally — shows that these sentiments are gaining ground across the West. Together, these trends raise the question of whether post-war Western polities can still contain their internal conflicts.
A full-scale armed clash between social groups in the West may not be imminent. But the rhetoric amid intensifying polarisation increasingly resembles war talk. Steve Bannon, guru of the MAGA movement, casts US politics as warfare and urges a “call to arms” against “liberal elites” and “globalists” — language that intensified after Kirk’s assassination.
Stephen Miller, another senior Trump aide, warns of a “terrorist movement” within the United States, not from foreign actors but from political opponents, accusing Democrats of fomenting terror against the Right. Beyond the incendiary rhetoric, today’s civil wars in the West revolve around clashing ideologies on three fronts: Values, immigration and foreign policy.
The liberal establishment champions individual rights, multiculturalism and global cooperation. Populists, in contrast, mobilise the losers in the West in a global order run by liberal elites. They celebrate nationalism, distinct cultural traditions and state sovereignty. To populists, liberal diversity policies betray their heritage. For the liberals, populist nationalism is a dangerous form of xenophobia. A central populist theme is restoring “Judeo-Christian values” and the traditional dominance of white majorities.
Immigration is at the frontline of the civil wars. Liberals favour relatively open borders, which also serve capitalist interests in cheap labour. Populists argue that mass — particularly illegal — migration strains public services, depresses wages and erodes social cohesion. The “Great Replacement” theory, once fringe, now sits in the mainstream, alleging that elites deliberately replace native populations with foreigners to entrench their power. This grievance against immigration is also tied to the resentment against the liberal policies of outsourcing manufacturing jobs abroad while insourcing labour at home. Reversing these policies lies at the heart of the populist agenda.
The third front is foreign policy. Liberals back globalism, multilateralism, international law and the promotion of democracy and human rights, believing institutions like the EU and NATO are essential bulwarks against instability. Populists reject this liberal internationalism. Through slogans like “America First” or “Unite the Kingdom”, they oppose foreign entanglements and alliances, claiming they serve international elites rather than citizens.
The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle institutions such as USAID, NPR and Voice of America rests on the charge that these taxpayer-funded bodies spread liberal values abroad. MAGA leaders are even more vehement than non-Western governments in denouncing what they call the Soros-driven “NGO-industrial complex”.
Whether these tensions escalate into more widespread violence or not, the traditional liberal-democratic consensus built on shared values and institutions is fracturing under populist discontent. The stability of Western societies is no longer assured. Can the Western liberal democracies bridge the widening chasm within?
India, with its large diasporas in the West, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, needs to pay close attention to the new dynamic. Indian elites have benefited immensely from the West’s open-border policies since the 1960s, which enabled large numbers of Indian professional and skilled workers to make a living abroad. Already some of the populist ire has turned against India and its diaspora — and it is likely to intensify.
Populist anti-globalisation policies and liberal accommodation of them, will also hurt India. As a late globaliser, India (and South Asia) missed the export-led growth opportunities that other Asian countries, including China, exploited in the 20th century. Today, as the West retreats from globalisation, India faces harder choices.
During the Biden years, Indian elites fretted over contradictions with Western liberals on democracy and human rights — one reason for the Indian establishment’s enthusiasm for Trump. But Delhi is now waking up to the reality that its contradictions with Western populists on immigration and economic globalisation are even more serious. The liberal bark on human rights rarely matched its bite, but populists can inflict real damage in short order.
The West today is divided both across nations and within them. India’s political class and the national security establishment must, therefore, engage more closely, and at a micro-level, with the different political formations within the West. Our think tanks and academia too need to devote more resources to studying Western polities and societies.
The West’s deepening internal churn also means the Indian elite must shed its simplistic assumptions about a monolithic “collective West”. Understanding the deepening internal cleavages within the West will hold the key to India’s longer-term engagement with the US, the Anglo-Saxon world, and Europe.
The writer is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express. He is also a Distinguished Professor at the Motwani-Jadeja Institute of American Studies, OP Jindal Global University, and holds the Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Geopolitics at the Council on Strategic and Defence Research, Delhi
