If a National Divorce Happened, What Would It Look Like?

posted by Ward Clark at RedState 

We are coming to the end of a very contentious election cycle (he wrote, belaboring the obvious). It seems as though the nation is more divided, elections and campaigns more contentious, than they have ever been. That's not strictly true - 1860 would like a word - but things are, shall we say, less than comfortable. We are facing the possible victory of a vapid incompetent for the presidency; things aren't looking too good, granted, for Kamala Harris's White House ambitions, but we can't rule out the possibility. Not yet.

Given her history, given her running mate's history, given the current policy statements taken by what passes for mainstream in the Democratic party today, that may well prove intolerable to large portions of the republic. There are a couple of possible outcomes to such a situation.

I've written before on the possibility of a second Civil War in the United States; what it might look like, where the battle lines would be drawn, who would fight, and how things are likely to turn out.

Fortunately, it looks like the momentum is with Donald Trump and JD Vance right now, and while that's liable to lead to unrest and, yes, violence in our major cities, a Trump/Vance victory may yet stave off a national breakup. For a while. But there are deep divisions in the country right now, and even if we come through the next four years, 2024-2028, intact, what might happen after that? My friend and colleague Jeff Charles and I have both commented on this in the past.

No nation lasts forever. The United States will not be an exception. And serious political divisions rarely self-resolve. A quick look at history tells us that - the Roman Republic, Ancient Greece, and the various empires of China; examples abound. So, in, say, 20 or 30 years from now, what might a peaceful national divorce of the red and blue United States look like? Note that I pick those dates more or less at random.

A quick look at a recent electoral map by county (2020) tells an interesting story. Were we to draw the territorial lines by political leaning, with some exceptions, this could lead to the resurrection of the city-state. Even California, Oregon, and Washington are defined by largely red, rural areas, surrounding blue urban enclaves. There are two reasons that this would not work. 

First: The city-states would be reliant on the outlying areas for almost everything: Food, water, power, waste disposal, everything. A hostile surrounding countryside could starve even the largest city into submission in a matter of weeks.

Second: A national divorce, even if achieved peacefully, would leave deep, lasting acrimony. The blue areas would be well aware of their vulnerability and would be seeking to expand to meet more of their own needs, which would lead inevitably to conflict.

Any balkanization of the United States would have to be on a larger scale, and the level of the existing states would seem a better model. New England, perhaps some of the Rust Belt, and the West Coast would be the likely new blue states, and the rest of the country, the red. 

But, again, there's a problem. Look at that map again; the blue enclaves would be at least three separate nations, with three separate governments, while the red states make up one contiguous nation; and, still, control a large portion of North America's energy and food production.

Finally, any peaceful divorce won't last. It's near-certain that a balkanization would end in a Balkans-style war, and if you were paying attention to the late '90s fracas in that part of the world, you'll remember that as being an ugly conflict. I was on the staff of the Command Surgeon, US Army Europe, during that mess, having been recalled to active duty for it. Up in Heidelberg, Germany, we saw a lot of information, including photos and videos, that never reached the general public. And, yes, a lot of it was nasty. In some cases, Oct. 7th-level nasty.

On a selfish note, I don't like the prospects of Alaska in any such scenario. Alaska, in all candor, can't go it alone. Oh, we could develop an extraction economy on the scale, probably, of Saudi Arabia, if let off the federal leash, and our tourism trade would continue. But it is as General Billy Mitchell said, Alaska is some of the most important strategic real estate on the planet. Who holds Alaska holds the Pacific. Were the United States to break up, other powers would start looking at Alaska with desire and envy.

Add to that the fact that Alaska has no industrial base. We are heavily dependent on imports from the lower 48, which come mostly out of the ports of San Francisco and Seattle - which are unlikely to be friendly to the red-state Great Land.

If this happens - hopefully not in our lifetimes - it would be the end of our republic as we know it, the end of the post-WW2 Pax Americana, and the end of the existing global order. This would very likely usher in an age of chaos. I hope I don't live to see this happen; I hope my grandchildren don't have to see it happen, either.