You might want to take a look at this conversation at FiveThirtyEight about breaking the United States up into different countries. Here’s a snippet:
I think it would depend on how elections go. If Trump wins reelection, it might be within 10 years. If Democrats win and Trumpism dies off and Republicans maybe try to build a bigger tent and try to win with more votes rather than with voter suppression, I think it could be staved off.
I’ve thought this since college and it’s not necessarily something that I want to see happen, but it’s kind of like the Old River Control system on the Mississippi River. It’s a control system — it keeps the Mississippi’s waters going down the Mississippi instead of going down the Atchafalaya River. But the river wants to go down the Atchafalaya, and the more they keep it from trying to do what it wants to do, the more pressure it puts on the Old River Control system. Eventually, it is going to go down the Atchafalaya. They can either slowly do it over the course of 20 to 30 years, and they can allow people to move their houses that are going to be underwater. Or they can just let it burst and watch the end of the Atchafalaya at Morgan City, Louisiana, be completely flooded and watch the Mississippi from about Baton Rouge on down completely dry up. So, the longer they put it off, the worse it’s going to be, and that’s how I feel about this. The longer we take the U.S. for granted and it’s too big to fail, the worse the failure.
This topic rears its head every so often. I think that what is really being asserted is the argument for federalism. As I’ve said before, I think that the House of Representatives should be greatly increased in size and there should be a systematic way of dividing states when they get too big.
It also reminds me of those who want to divorce Chicago from the rest of Illinois. They are presumably unaware of the fiscal realities of the state. Were such a thing to happen the rest of the state would immediately become insolvent. Chicago supports the rest of the state not the other way around. It isn’t just that Mississippi needs New York and California. California and New York need Mississippi in very much the same way that Germany needs Greece and Portugal.
I grew up within walking distance of a Civil War battlefield. You could still see bullet holes in walls and, if you dug down a little, could dig bullets out of the ground. I knew people whose great-great-grandfathers literally shot at each other during the War. Three, maybe four of my great-great-grandfathers fought in the war, all for the Union.
We really don’t want the states to go their own ways. It would be disastrous.
I’m distracted by the metaphor, partly because I think it’s probably factually wrong (the feds have been relocating the population out of the Atchafalaya flood plain for generations, the real issues are what happens to Baton Rouge, New Orleans and assorted shipping and industry without a river), but it suggests there is a natural current towards disunion that is being artificially impeded by some structure, the continued maintenance of which will make disunion more difficult in the future.
I’m not seeing this natural flow towards disunion because I see a lack of interest in state and local politics, aggravated by the WWW. And if there is, it’s not within the framework of states and potential state coalitions. The Illinois example is that a bunch of legislators from Southeast Illinois want to carve Cook County out of the state, basically dividing the metropolitan area in half. That’s just about reducing political influence from Chicago politicians.
And what is the infernal device that obstructs the natural flow? Interstate commerce? Federal government? Legal system? Transportation, electrical, and water networks? These seem to me to be more firmly rooted than the depiction of a rickety switch trying to control water, because water is difficult to control. The piece even seems to assume that these connections would remain, because of mutual self-interest that will be preserved by agreement of independent sovereigns.
Just to expand on PD’s comment, the Metropolitan Statistical Area that includes Chicago is the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin MSA. Any reasonable division of Chicago from the rest of the state would consist of Cook County, DuPage County, Will County, McHenry County, Kane County, and Lake County. That’s about 9 million of Illinois’s 12 million people. Its GMP is about $704 billion. Illinois’s total GDP is about $792 billion. See the problem?
Dividing the MSA is nuts but leaving it intact but separating it from the rest of the state leaves an Illinois roughly equivalent to Mississippi.
I didn’t even bother to point out the biggest problems with dividing the U. S. The biggest two are water and access to shipping. If California were divided from the rest of the country, within 24 hours the water and electricity that sustain the state would have been cut off.
I think that warfare would be inevitable. Some of the inland states would band together and seek to carve a path to the sea for themselves.
Most of the states don’t have the resources to maintain anything resembling independent nationhood. Among those that do New York, Illinois, and Missouri leap to mind. Maybe Washington. If California had half its present population, California but if California had half its present population a lot of present political problems would vanish.
I was surprised 538 published such a nihilistic piece.
The interviewee mentions off-handedly breaking the Union requires minority populations of the various states to “self-sort”. That’s an interesting term for the genocidal violence that would occur. He should read on the partition of British India into India and Pakistan.
A “Velvet Divorce” is only possible if the folks on every side do not lust for power/domination. Does that describe American culture / politics today?
One way to salvage the Union would be to return to a pre-Civil War State’s rights situation. Devolve the regulatory apparatus down to the State’s, and let them do what they will. One way to force this would be to repeal the 16th Amendment and the Federal income tax. The power of the US courts would also have to be radically reduced.
If the States had real power within their territories, we could expect some radical divergences in local legislation. California, Illinois, and Massachusetts could effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment (which originally referred only to Congress), and some States could impose voter requirements that effectively disenfranchised some people.
The current situation can only end in a brutal dictatorship. That is the fate of all multi-cultural, multi-ethnic empires, which we are.
I would like to see it happen, but there are a few problems they overlook.
Most of the wealth of the cities and states that would form one union is financial wealth, and that financial wealth is dependent upon the Federal Bank. That bank is a product of the Federal government of the US, and that country has 50 individual states.
Furthermore, international finance depends upon eurodollars, and they are dependent upon the illusion of being backed by the same US government and/or domestic financial and monetary systems.
Overnight, at least half of the wealth would vanish., and their trading advantages would disappear. In addition to the US financial industry and US government, entertainment and software are the other dominant industries. Both of these are reliant upon this same US government to enforce their intellectual property claims, but without the US government, worldwide piracy would diminish their potential wealth.
In addition with a weak or nonexistent southern border, a strong military would be required to keep out the Mexican drug cartels. While the appeal of Mexicans and newly legalized drugs is intoxicating, those Mexican drug cartels can quickly harsh one’s mellow no matter how stoned one is.
As mentioned, natural resources are an issue, and most of those would be located in Deplorable Country. The open land for wind and solar farms would be in Deplorable Country. Much of the military bases and hardware would be under Deplorable control, including those much hated nuclear armed ICBMs.
The people who want to split up the US are those who see a personal benefit from it. They don’t give a rat’s ass about anybody else. Period.
And if the US were split up, would the more ‘progressive’ new nations be content to live and let live with their regressive neighbors? Nada. Zippo. Those regressive neighbors would be in possession of resources badly needed by more deserving peoples (i.e. the leaders of the progressive nations). There would be war. Many wars.
That situation is why the Articles of Confederation were discarded in favor of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That situation is the reason why the Union fought a bloody war to prevent secession. Because if any state, or combination thereof, were allowed to leave the Union ‘cuz they wanted to, the exits would be quickly be crammed and the small states would soon become playthings of the larger ones or of foreign powers. A good SF book to read about a plausible alternate future history of such a situation is ‘Bring the Jubilee’ by Ward Moore. A bit dated, especially the SF part, but the time machine is simply a plot device.
Agree with PD that I don’t see a lot of interest in local politics, so I don see this as real likely or it goes poorly if tried. I suspect the border states would form their own militaries so don’t see the cartels being such an issue, except that it will be easier to bribe smaller governments.
The assumption that this would work on a state by state basis seems an odd assumption since a lot of the conflict is between big cities and the rest of the state, like with Chicago and Illinois. Maybe we get city-states?
Of note, I initially missed where they guy was from and I kept thinking he was exactly describing the rural areas where I work. Martin Luther King Day really is N-Day. Then I realized he was from rural PA.
Steve
I don’t think there can be a clean division. States aren’t divided in the USA, the people are. If it comes to war it will be like the Spanish Civil War, not our previous one.
I think it will be the collapse of the dollar that will start the breakup. From a historical perspective this seems inevitable. Depending on where you are located things could be really bad or just bad..