Civil wars turn neighbor against neighbor and can split siblings, parents, and children rather than separating violence cleanly between distant states. Some of the darkest episodes of the Second World War became worse because civil or quasi-civil conflicts operated inside the larger international war. One comparison treats genocide against a domestic minority as an extremely unequal internal conflict in which one side controls the full machinery of the state and the other has been disarmed. That comparison is an interpretive framing rather than a formal legal definition of genocide.
Notable Point · 3:04:32-3:05:42
Why civil wars become especially brutal
The Spanish naval discussion widens into an explanation of how civil war turns existing communities against themselves and intensifies political violence.