Several European nations—including the UK, France, and Sweden—are already in a “pre-civil war state” and may have crossed the point of no return, according to one of the world’s leading experts on modern conflict.

David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London, says his research indicates a statistically significant chance that a major European nation will experience civil war within the next five years—potentially triggering a regional cascade of violence across borders.

In a recent interview with documentarian Andrew Gold, Betz cautioned that the window for prevention may have already closed, suggesting that governments should now focus on limiting the bloodletting and chaos ahead rather than avoiding it.

“I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,” Betz advised.

He added, “there isn’t anything they can do, it’s baked in. We’re already past the tipping point, is my estimation… we are past the point at which there is a political off ramp. We are past the point at which normal politics is able to solve the problem.”

Betz emphasized that “almost every plausible way forward from here involves some kind of violence in my view.”

“Anything the government tries to do at this point… you can solve one kind of problem, but it will aggravate another kind of problem in doing so, and you get back to violence,” the professor continued.

“The question really is about mitigating the costs, to my mind, not about preventing the outcome, I’m sorry to say… I have not heard a credible political way forward and I don’t see a single political figure who is credible in the role of national savior, or even inclined to do so,” he added.

“The bottom line is I don’t think there is now a political solution to this which takes the form of everything just working out OK after some period of difficulty,” Betz grimly concludes, noting “Things are bad now, but they are going to get very much worse.”

“Hopefully after they will get better, but you will have to go through the period of very much worse before you get there,” he predicted.

It’s a downward spiral, essentially.

“I understand what I say is extremely unpleasant”, Betz said, further remarking: “I just want to say dear elites, the consequences of your actions have arrived.”

Modernity report: Betz notes that the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden all already have “dire social instability”, “economic decline”, and “elite pusillanimity”, all historically precursors to conflict.

The academic estimates that a civil war in the UK, which now has a population of 70 million, could mean tens of thousands of deaths.

“The most unstable are moderately homogeneous societies”, Betz has previously observed, noting that legacy majority groups feel their status being threatened or about to be completely replaced and they are more likely to fight to retain dominance.

While research has indicated that the UK is on course to become a minority white country within decades, Betz predicts that it won’t actually happen because enough native Britons may move to reverse the trend.

“You could make such an argument, but that’s, I think, making a lot of assumptions about people’s likely response to things. I don’t think that society is so inert”, Betz said, adding “I just don’t think the British people want to be displaced from their own country… I think people are going to reject that. And they are already, people are already perceiving an urgency to act to prevent the loss of something they feel very strongly about still.”

Betz further asserted that “the existence of this idea [of England]… is very seriously in peril… how [people] react against that is the question. There’s a grave potential for them to react in ways that take us right off the scale. I hope that doesn’t occur, but we are at a very perilous moment.”