Venezuela's coming civil war has been a long time coming, and it is still coming.  The rot set in early after President Chávez was elected in 1999, as shown by Venezuela's cattle statistics.

Chávez's agricultural reforms sent cattle production into a nosedive.  But no matter – there was plenty of oil revenue to make good the shortfall with imported beef.  Then the oil revenue fell away, too, so ordinary Venezuelans now subsist on starchy root vegetables.  Recently, individual troops have been siding with the protesters, a sign that the civil war is not far off.  Despite Venezuela's troubles, population growth has kept rock-steady at 1.5% per annum – which means there is no point in trying to save Venezuela, because the country's large and increasing population, with nothing to do, won't be able to feed itself at some further future point.

A civil war is in prospect in South Africa, in which the ruling African National Congress has promoted the idea of seizing land from the remaining whites, who number 4 million out of a population of 50 million.  This shouldn't be surprising, as Nelson Mandela used to sing about killing whites, as does the current South African president, Jacob Zuma.  The country's HIV problem, at 13.6% in blacks and 0.3% in whites, has been kept under control by government-provided anti-retroviral drugs.  A societal breakdown that stops that supply will provide a kick-along to the death rate.  South Africa will resemble the set of The Walking Dead – war-torn and diseased.

There are civil wars underway in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, but nobody really cares about what happens to people who are unpleasant most of the time.  Far more consequential is what is happening in Europe.  Richard Fernandez's latest piece attracted a comment that included the following interesting anecdote:

According to a Polish friend of mine, his cousin (in the Army, junior officer) notes that they are quietly and slowly introducing a new set of theoretical small to medium unit tabletop exercises: junior officers for the education of. The defensive ones have Russian orbat enemies and use maps of eastern Poland. The offensive ones all have irregular enemies based on vehicle-heavy Islamic State enemies. Oddly, the military vehicles and systems are all German.

And the mapping is all eastern Germany.

A friend of mine in the Washington intelligence community provided an interpretation.  The Polish Army in eastern Poland is to hold out against a Russian invasion for as long as possible until U.S. forces arrive.  The Polish Army in western Poland is to help out in Germany's civil war, which will be the civil war with the country's Muslim population.  He volunteered that the foremost French military school, at St. Cyr, is also preparing for civil war.  Of course, the E.U. is aware that civil war is possible, so it is trying to even up the odds by banning private possession of rifles, including in Switzerland.  And the public mood is shifting toward civil war, as evinced by this hilarious article by Kathy Shaidle.  It seems that the European public is coming to the conclusion that it doesn't want to put up with bombings forever.

What does this all mean?  Venezuela's civil war will prove, once again, that socialism doesn't work.  South Africa's civil war will suggest that primitive and post-primitive cultures will have a hard time peacefully coexisting in one country.  And the civil war in Europe will say the same thing about Muslims and non-Muslims.  On top of all that, China is likely to use the distraction provided by European civil wars to grind the faces of most of its neighbors in the dirt.  Border walls and Muslim bans are going to seen as such sensible policies.

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare.