What's the relationship between inner war and external war?

Inner war is an emotional disturbance between competing desires.

External war is a disagreement between two groups, each with an access to violence, over resources.

The 2 intersect I suppose when the inner war is about participation in or opposition to the external war.

I think homophobia is an example where the two intersect as well. It has to do with a fear of a characteristic one sees in oneself that is undesirable. Then, when they see someone with that characteristic, they want it destroyed and can act out that destruction, just like they want it destroyed in themselves.

It’s not just homophobia, that’s just a current-event example. It can be any perceived latency an individual finds unacceptable in themselves and wish it destroyed. A violence toward racism, for example.

I know a very good woman, very intelligent, who goes ballistic at any hint of discrimination against any minority. Unreasonably and self-destructively ballistic. It’s hurt her professionally. But it’s not her anti-discrimination that has hurt her, it is the violent reaction she has to discrimination that scares people. She was raised in a very privileged Asian environment where privilege, culture, money and education were stressed. I suspect that it is the latent discrimination that she senses in herself that is scaring her.

One is conceptually specific, the other is a metaphor