“Opposing secession” is what’s germane to the question of whether there would be enough support for secession to begin with.
But if the question is about the practical difficulties of having a nation where large minorities are strongly opposed to the ideology which was the very impetus for the formation of the nation, then the issues today are much more difficult than what the CSA/USA dealt with back then. At that time, once the secession was accomplished, the populations of the respective nations were largely on the same page (as to overall ideology, if not necessarily about every issue including the war itself). Today, if you were to split the nation by Red/Blue state, there would still be large minorities within each nation which strongly identified with the prevailing ideology of the other nation. Big problem.
I expect that they’d offer some kind of quid-pro-quo on taking the debt vs. getting the federal assets. The US could run bases in a semi-hostile foreign country, no doubt, but I’m not sure they’d want to. I could see them making a deal that they get the land the bases are on and at least some of the second-tier equipment to use on them, in exchange for taking their fair share of the debt.
This probably wouldn’t include any nukes, of course. Splitting up the Air Force and Navy might be a challenge, but I’m sure they could get a few destroyers or the like for coastal patrols.
I don’t see how the departing states have anything to offer as part of a quid pro quo. About the only ‘asset’ they have any real claim on are the blue cities within their borders, and if the red states try to hold the blue cities hostage or threaten them during the negotiation process the US will grind them into dust.
If the red states want to have any chance to get out of this as in intact separate country, they’re going to have to be on their best behavior. Remember, in asking to be allowed to leave unhindered, they’re asking the US for a big, big favor. The US holds all the cards. (Except the aforementioned cities, which the red states can’t possibly use against them.)
Which is why there would have to be at least some period of free travel between the countries. I suspect they’d even set up some kind of program to subsidize such movements, or to facilitate “swaps” on a person-by-person basis. Have a site where people could register to swap their Redstate Home for a Bluestate home, and the reverse. Have some kind of formula in place to ensure that the swaps allow each party a lifestyle post-move that is reasonably comparable to what they had before. Have some kind of binding contract that creates a clear transfer of title for both parties, so you can’t come back a decade later and claim you were cheated.
Well, remember, this is all in the context of the rest of the US finally being sick of their shit. The quid pro quo includes the rest of the US finally being able to do things like Universal Healthcare and a living wage without these dipshits doing everything they can to block them.
Tell me that wouldn’t convince quite a few people to be generous to them in leaving.
I don’t think the blue states would have a lot of choice. They couldn’t afford the current military as well as the increased spending on social programs while also losing 20+% of their tax base. While the Red states may be net takers a lot of that taking is for military spending. Leaving those bases in hostile territory will increase their cost. In the end I’d be shocked if at least 20-30% of equipment wasn’t transferred and all of the bases in hostile territory.
Do you have any cite or support other than your own statement? (I know, wasting my time here)
This wouldn’t go like Syria. The US military is much more professional than that. There wouldn’t be any major Civil War-style defections, not on any consequential scale at least (source is my own personal military experience).
Even if they did, units aren’t going to defect wholesale with high-value weapons systems, so defectors aren’t contributing anything to the war effort but cannon fodder.
I think you underestimate their chances. The poorest parts of the US are still pretty damn rich by world standards.
Even if it were the 10 states with the lowest GDP forming this nation, their GDP would still be on the order of 600 billion a year, which is about a third of Canada’s GDP, and about half of Mexico’s. And that’s the lowest 10, which includes Vermont, so they’d be better off than that. Add in Georgia and they double the GDP, and match Mexico. Texas all by itself is almost the same as Canada, so adding Texas to the mix as well gets them well into not-third-world conditions. Come up with a more realistic list of which states would be involved, and things just get better.
The military could be made a lot more affordable without abandoning military equipment to “hostile territory”. They’d have to slow down additional procurement, but hey, they suddenly have a lot less territory to defend with what they already have on hand.
Now, I can see a concerted effort being made to decommission and relocate the military equipment to the areas of the country who we actually want to defend. But that would be a somewhat slow process, and they wouldn’t start doing it until the detachment of the red states was a done deal. Which means the US will require, at a minimum, a grace period during which they can take their nukes and go home.
Or they could keep them there as a sort of quiet occupying force, which may seem justified given how problematic the red states are apparently behaving. Whatever floats their boat.
It depends of which states go but there would be plenty of gulf states that would probably want to. Depending on how the voting was held you may get Florida and Georgia too. So they may have an atlantic port as well as gulf ports.
According to wiki there is 1 deep water port in North Carolina (not sure which way they would go), 2 in Georgia, and 4 in Florida on the atlantic side. In the gulf of mexico, there would be 4 in texas including #10 in the world, 1 in Louisiana, 1 in Alabama, and 1 in Florida. So they wouldn’t be hurting for trade locations.
This whole thing is based on it being a negotiated separation. The whole point would be to avoid just that war, so it’s unlikely that the newly formed country would immediately take to the battlefield with whatever tanks they were allowed to keep.
No, this doesn’t make sense either. Your talking about increasing the total boarder of the country by 2-3X and that boarder would be with a country so hostile you’re not willing to give them weapons.
Please include the slaves in this count; they didn’t vote, but it’s safe to say they’d have been anti-Confederacy. We can assume the same of their descendants (who now can vote and bear arms, which changes things).
Right, but they’re a hostile country without weapons, because you took them all. (Aside from private guns, which would not work super-great against the US military.) Sure the neoconfederates would immediately start trying the build their own military, but that will take time - presuming the US doesn’t block them from doing so as part of the exit treaty.
And I’m not really convinced that the blue states can’t afford a military. I’m actually quite certain that the military as it stands in the current US could take a pretty big budget cut and still chug along just fine. (Though that’s really a debate for another thread, which is why I don’t base my conclusions here on it.)
I think this is the big piece. In order for this to work we’d need 38 states to amend the constitution so the majority of the population will be on board with picking out a plan that makes sense for everyone. This isn’t going to be a handful of states taking their ball and going home.
Where I think it will get the most interesting, and that hasn’t been touched on yet is federal mineral resources. A lot of the gulf of mexico is federal land but if every state on the gulf leaves the US the claim to that land would be tenuous at best. If all of that land was given to the new country they would be in the top 30 petro states without any onshore assets.
Still wrong. Even if the US remnant took all of their weapons the RSA (red states of america) could easily buy weapons from Russia and China on the open market. They could have a middle eastern style army within 6 months of the end of negotiations. Keep in mind the OUSA (original USA) will lose a ton of their diplomatic influence I would assume they will be closer to the UK then the entire EU in political power.
While I think its easy to say that the US could vastly cut it military spending today, once they have a hostile power in the middle of their country, their number of active soldiers has been cut in half, and they are facing an army with tanks, fighter planes and an equal number of soldiers along 3,000+ miles of new boarder there is no way spending would go down.