Former Montana governor Steve Bullock role-plays a US president in ‘War Game’. Photo: BBC/Boat Rocker Studios Once, the prospect of the United States of America being plunged into a second full-scale civil war seemed remote. The country has always been riven by social, political and racial conflict of some stripe yet somehow, against the odds, the centre has always held.
Just about. Then along came Donald Trump and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and suddenly all bets were off. Democracy — or the cockeyed version of it that’s unique to America, with its electoral college system — was suddenly under threat from internal forces.
Now, imagine January 6 multiplied by 100, which is most likely what we’ll get if Kamala Harris defeats Trump in November. The latter is already in election result denial mode, even before a single vote has been cast. The nail-biting docu-thriller War Game (BBC4, Tuesday, October 1) imagines how a sitting administration might respond to another insurrection far more serious than the previous one.
The veterans advocacy group Vet Voice Foundation, which has expressed concern and frustration at how little has been done to tackle the problem of radicalisation in the ranks of the US military (one in five of the January 6 insurrectionists were former military personnel), organised a live training exercise last year, on the second anniversary of the Capitol attack, designed to stress-test the national security system in the face of ano.
