After United States President Joe Biden took office on January 20 without any violent incidents, many in the US and worldwide breathed a sigh of relief.
The respite may be brief. The ingredients that led an incensed pro-Trump mob to break into the Capitol and plant pipe bombs at other federal buildings on January 6 remain.
Several United States security experts say they now consider domestic extremism a greater threat to the country than international terror. According to my research on political violence, the US has all the elements that, combined, can produce a low-intensity terrorist conflict: extreme polarisation and armed factions willing to break the law, in a wealthy democracy with a strong government.
Terror can thrive in affluent democracies too
Chronic domestic terror is not the same as a civil war.
In the modern era, civil wars usually take place in poor countries where the government is too weak and unstable to maintain control over a sprawling, often mountainous…