World civil war is a phrase used to describe simultaneous civil conflict happening at many locations, usually with little regard for national boundaries. Another comparable term is global insurgency. The concept has been applied to various events including the demise of the Roman Empire, Third World conflicts during the Cold War, and modern international relationships between anti-globalization and anti-Western movements.

The idea of a world civil war was originally developed by historians. For example, Oswald Spengler used the term to explain the fall of the Roman Empire, based on the role of Germanic peoples both within and outside Roman territory. In The Politics of Hope, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. associated world civil war with the promotion of numerous Marxist anti-colonialist groups by the Soviet Union, a phenomenon that the United States opposed based on the domino theory.

More recently, the phrase has been adopted to apply to the conflicts that have spread through the Middle East. The September 11, 2001 attacks were a pivotal moment in spreading this conflict to a truly global scale. Some writers have suggested that the anti-Western elements in this conflict could find common ground with the anti-globalization movement, possibly spreading the conflict even further.

Sources

After the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Financial Daily publication Business Line by Shetkari Sanghatana founder Sharad Joshi , released an editorial opinion titled Portends of a World Civil War. Joshi anticipated a possible world war unlike world-wide wars of the previous century in that the portended war would involve nations internally divided against each other. Joshi said Osama bin Laden was too wise to ignore arising anti-globalization movements, and cited the groundswell of anti-war protests in the lead-up to the US invasion of the student government in Afghanistan as evidence that bin Laden had intended to rally actions among diverse anti-globalization movements.

Joshi wrote:

It is difficult to say if the radical Seattle leaders contacted Osama bin Laden or whether it was the other way round. It does not matter, in any case. They appear to work in tandem. The third World War is unlikely to be a conflict between the US and Afghanistan on the issue of terrorism. It appears that it will develop into a much larger conflagration involving most countries.

A May, 2003, opinion released on the web-site Muslim-lawyers.net concluded a permanent state-of-emergency affected by Western governments comprises provocation of a world civil war. Like Joshi's, Giorgio Agamben opinion cited battles between police and anti-globalization rioters in Genoa, Switzerland as evidence of an expanding world civil war. Agamben cited evidence European government's only strategy for maintaining control in the early 21st Century is based on maintaining an atmosphere of disorder and conflict. Agamben is a professor of philosophy at University of Verona, Italy.

Buckminster Fuller discussed the concept of world civil war in Ideas & Integrities .

A civil war between revolution and counter revolution has raged since 1789. The civil war celebrated its bicentennial in 1989 and is still continuing. Already the year after the start of the war in Paris the first resistance emerged in England. But the war goes on.

In a 1997 press release Neal Chase , a member of a Bahá'í group in Montana, predicted that a world civil war would break out over "oil and religion". Based in part on an interpretation of Nostradamus, Chase predicted that the United States would use bunker-busting bombs to kill Saddam Hussein. This was to be followed by Iraq retaliating with nuclear weapons against New York City and the United Nations, after which the US would nuke "Baghdad and all Iraq" and further escalation would produce a nuclear apocalypse.

Salvatore Cannavò states in an article for International Viewpoint that nationalism might be a motivating factor in a "climate" of civil war against globalization, which he describes as a new form of imperialism.

Feral Tribune, published in Split, Croatia, stated that a world civil war started with the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

World Civil War is also the title of a single-play 7" vinyl recording released in 1986 by the band, Group of Individuals, as a commemorative recording for the Haymarket 1986 Anarchist Gathering in Chicago.