Remember the Alamo, the rematch.
Sure, but Texas would be an even more unique case. We’ve already got the bases there, and they’re already our bases, and Texas wouldn’t have the capability to do anything about it.
IIRC Cuba accidently cashed the check once and ever since then the US considers the lease as being accepted.
Hope you are correct.
One issue, in a non-violent dissolution (and I wouldn’t fight Texas!), is the national debt. In return for assuming a reasonable share (maybe 8 or 9 percent), Texas will insist on stuff that would prevent them from becoming isolated and impoverished, such as a currency union, and being in the visa waiver program. And, to deter succession, we need to insist they never would get those goodies. So while they might become a kleptocracy, it would have some economic pluses for Texas.
Another issue is dividing up the military. I have no problem with the U.S. military being a bit smaller. But I have a big problem with Texas having nuclear weapons. So 100 percent of the nuclear triad cost would have to assumed by 91 percent or so of the U.S. population.
It would IMHO be wise to repudiate U.S. debt held by Texans, but there are technical issues. As soon as it becomes clear that most Texans are truly serious about Texit, they might start selling treasuries for fear of this. Our credit rating would probably go down regardless.
Charles Schwab — assets under management US$7.4 trillion — Is headquartered in Texas. This is a reason why Texit won’t happen. But if it starts to look like it will, you might want to invest elsewhere.
The bases are ours but if Texas is a country then there is no agreement between the countries unlike all the other bases around the world.
Gitmo is enclosed. In Texas many of the soldiers and their families would be living in a different country that doesn’t want them there. Gitmo is a relatively small base. It can be supplied by sea. Do the bases generate their own power? Where do they get their water? Gitmo had some of the same issues post-revolution. Any fresh ground water on base was used up. The base was getting fresh water from Cuba. A desalination plant was built to give the base really horrible drinking water.
Some of the bases in Texas are huge and that makes the issues even more difficult
Our military bases are disproportionately located in Texas. And our military members disproportionately hail from Texas. A perfect match. So the necessary base closures, due to the U.S. having lost 9 percent or so of its tax base, should be all those in Texas. Fortunately, aircraft carriers are not stationed there. And AFAID we don’t have fixed nuclear missile silos there.
Of course the issues are difficult. Every weapons system probably has crucial Texas-made parts. But compared to losing California or Virginia, Texas would be a lot easier. Let 'em go.
As I see it, the big unknown is what would happen with the cities. It’s an uncontroversial fact that even Texas cities are blue country. What if they decide they don’t recognize the Texas secession and ask for help from the US government? Texas has neither the military power nor any credible legal argument to prevent that from happening.
So you’ve got an import-dependent “country” that lacks access to airports and seaports, has no cities as economic engines, and whose national guard will be stretched too thin to do much of anything. They’ll have to invent a new currency, get people to trust it, and their power grid is already rickety as it is. All this with heavily armed Mexican cartels operating freely in the hinterlands.
Texas will not secede. It would be screwed. The current chapter in politics is Greg Abbott trying to goad the US into using any small amount of force to enforce the law, and then he’ll do a soccer flop and start crying about about all the horrible military tyranny imposed by Biden. That will definitely happen, and conservative media will go insane for a few months, and then they’ll forget about it like they forgot about the CRT panic.
Unless something changed drastically, Oklahoma would become a bit of a backwater. A lot of rail lines go through the Texas Panhandle; new rights-of-way would be expensive, so most likely the BNSF main line through KS, Trinidad CO, Albuquerque NM and on through Flagstaff AZ into the LA area would pick up a lot of new freight. They could route freight south through Deming NM and onto the UP Sunset Route to relieve some pressure on the line west of the Rio Grande.
It might end up worth it for the Cimarron Valley Railroad to expand west out of Boise City OK into NM and down to pick up the UP somewhere near the Canadian River crossing - a small fix that should provide some serious ROI.
The point is, the main lines run in a way that would divert traffic through Kansas and away from OKC. There’s no line that runs E/W along the OK panhandle, thus no reason to route traffic through Oklahoma. There might be some traffic going to or from Louisiana that could use UP trackage through the NE part of the state and down the Arkansas River, then south to Monroe LA but OKC itself will be largely bypassed.
These questions are difficult to answer because they depend on the terms of the secession, and there is no realistic scenario in which this will happen.
But straining to imagine this happening, and in a non-war scenario, I think the kind of extreme separation that others in this thread are assuming would be unlikely. A territory as integrated as Texas would necessarily require deals to be struck where traffic and trade flows through seamlessly and government obligations and assets are also split out fairly.
And this is a thing…separation doesn’t have to (and in fact, rarely) means uprooting and ring-fencing everything.
OTOH if Texas really insisted on being a wholly separate country with a passport-based hard border…yeah it would be fucked. It would be the new East Germany.
The only way Texas can secede from the US is by mutual agreement. That agreement would certainly cover the topic of what happens to the military bases. Given the relative negotiating positions, it’d almost certainly be that we get to keep the bases, and that we get to access Texas roads to keep them supplied.
I suppose rich Texas-born people in Texan cities would migrate out while they could. (I’m assuming that if you were born in a country that used to be U.S. territory, you lose your citizenship. Obviously, this would keep SCOTUS busy.)
Suppose that a Texit referendum passed. That’s a big suppose; no polling shows it would even be close. But if it did pass, Texas progressives would start moving out. And then, in a couple years, there would be a second referendum. If that passed, there would be a strong feeling, in Congress, that it was undemocratic to hold them against their will.
The whole process would take so long that American political issues will have changed. So it’s all guesswork. But, I say, never say never.
Comparable dynamics were seen with Brexit. There would be a deadline, and, if no agreement, a no-deal Texit.
So it’s impossible to say whether or not mutual agreement talks would succeed. But compared to Brexit, there is more danger that another state, probably in our case Louisiana, will be close behind if the secessionists get a good deal.
So we have to insist any mutual agreement is one Texans hate. States greatly dislike military base closures, so close 'em all. Only question is whether to dynamite them on the way out. This may sound crazy, but if the alternatives are civil war and letting Texas get away with it, dynamiting federal facilities is a compromise.
Unless birthright citizenship via the 14th Amendment gets overturned, everyone born in Texas prior to the split would retain their U.S. citizenship by default.
From the 14th amendment:
My interpretation is that that they were born in what is now the Republic of Texas. So no.
By your interpretation, Texans all get the privileges of American and Texan citizenship. They never have to choose their loyalty. You can bet they never would give we Americans that deal, because the whole idea of Texit is to limit immigration.
If dual-citizens, Texans would be required, by our laws, to file U.S. income tax returns:
Of course, Texans wouldn’t file, and, unless we went to war over it, they would get away with it. SCOTUS wouldn’t dare ruin their reputation by making such as disasterous ruling celebrated in Austin and hated in the U.S.
pshaw
None of that commie liberal stuff about the state owning anything. Railroads in Texas will be privately owned or nothing!
To me this is one of the biggest obstacles of the so-called Texit, same as Confederate secession. A few white guys in the governor’s office decide they want to get cute and secede. OK, well, now you have a state full of natural-born American citizens, still entitled to all the rights thereof, most of whom want nothing to do with your puppet government project.
Unlike in 1860, most of us now agree that nobody is born into a weird lifelong caste in which darker-colored people’s labor and lives are owned by whiter people. And we also have the internet, which ensures that people will get heard (albeit imperfectly and through some energetic censorship attempts that risk incredible costs to Texas.
So that’s what I think would happen. Abbot’s pirate ship says “we seceded”, most of the rest of the state says “we didn’t secede, we didn’t get to vote on it, we don’t want it.” At that point the US must intervene.
The only wildcard at that point is how many other states join Texas, and what resources they have. It turns out that many/most National Guard units don’t have resources on hand to project any kind of real force, an effective mechanized force, without the blessing and permission of the DoD allowing them to use federal equipment and facilities. Certainly they could make a viral spectacle of themselves getting gunned down. In the days of the intent, that’s not nothing, but how many would be willing to die for Greg Abbott’s ego project?
If you read all the sentences you wrote above, you will realize why the US military won’t mutiny against the government. It doesn’t matter what a handful of salty redneck captains feel. They don’t drive trucks, they don’t load crates, and if they go to war against the US, they can’t pay anybody.
I stand (er, sit) corrected. I could swear I once read something to that effect, but googling it did not support that.
There might be some logistical issues anyway due to banking concerns.
Ooh - interesting side question: how would their voting rights be maintained? I assume that an American living in another country is able to vote (absentee) as if they still live in whatever their legal residence was before moving overseas (maybe some Dopers who have done / are doing just that could chime in).
So let’s say I’m living in Texas, and can in theory vote for, say, the President, but my state of residence no longer has a dog in that fight. No electoral votes. No Senate or House seats.
Could there be some sort of “shadow” representation?
When I lived overseas, I had to send my absentee ballot to my US state of residency. So if my US state of residency stops being a state, then I have nowhere to send my vote, and hence no voting rights.
Of course everything here depends on what the US considers to be a state or not. It’s straightforward if they let Texas go entirely. It’s no longer a state, so those citizens have no more voting rights than DC or PR.
If there’s an actual civil war, I expect the US would have no problem holding enough terriitory in Texas to allow the founding of a loyalist government to handle civic matters during hostilities. Then people in occupied territories (if that’s even a thing) would have a place to send absentee ballots if they’re able to effect delivery.
But what would be the point of that? As mentioned above, if attitudes were hostile between the US and Texas, the bases would be socially and economically isolated, and ground traffic into and out of the bases would be near-impossible. You’d be maintaining bases whose functionality as bases would be severely reduced (you’re not bombing West Elbonia from a base in a hostile Texas that’s scrambling just to keep the lights on). The only point would be to use them against Texas itself, and if you were doing that, you’d already be in a war.
Even if you keep them “just in case” you end up in a war with Texas, every year will likely degrade their utility just a little bit more, so by the time you use them, they’ll be even more limited. Better to use those resources to build new bases just outside Texas, if you’re planning for long-term (but not immediate) conflicts.