"As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say that we're tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We also know that when the people understand, they cannot but follow us. In any case, we, the people, have no enemies when it comes to peoples. Our only enemies are the imperialist regimes and organizations." Thomas Sankara, 1985
International Anti-Capitalist podcast run by an American, a Slav and an Arab.
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I feel like every map I've seen is basically a variation of the second American Civil War in the Kaiserreich HOI4 mod.
What do you think a balkanized United States would actually look like?
(I'm new to this platform so sorry if this isn't the right place to post this.)
American warlord states isn't something I thought before. But that's kinda neat concept.
Obligatory (Canal in the name of the Stalin)
Well first it's not going to happen so long as the federal government retains its current military power projection & political legitimacy so the union at this point will either have to not exist at all or is effectively ceremonial and optional.
It also won't be neatly divided up along current state lines. If the U.S. balkanizes the existing social, cultural, and economic ties between areas are going to be directly clashing with military & political objectives so there will be a shift of borders at the start of balkanization. Current state boundaries were drawn up with the existing federal structure in mind; when the federation is gone so goes the reason to preserve those boundaries. Expect to see expansionism at the onset of balkanization. Some of it will come through secession, others through conquest, others through pact, others through cessation. Entirely new territories may end being created.
Once these issues are mostly settled is when things get really spicy and the power blocs start forming. The new polities will either fully assert themselves or gravitate toward political projects they fill will benefit them. One thing I can guarantee you is that there will be a lot less US successor states than is often assumed as many states are heavily dependent on others for their survival and without them things get dicey. The most developed states will very likely be the strongest players in the former USA; so mostly the East Coast & West Coast, and to a lesser extent the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes.
There will be a lot of instability and violence in the first couple of years/decades before the borders finally settle and the conflicts die down. Beyond that I can't really predict what the geopolitical situation will look like.
Red states will be given ownership of parts of blue states at the threat of military retaliation. This will be less a balkanization and more of a consolidation of assets. Red states cannot support themselves. They need welfare from blue states. States that bend the knee the hardest will be gifted the most from their neighbors. Red states that border red states will be super jealous of states like Indiana that will be given chucks of Illinois and Michigan. There won't be a true Balkanization because anyone that defies the federal government will just get nuked. Right wingers will actively cheer on commiting genocide against half the country because they all believe they will get to take the spoils for themselves.
well...in my limited knowledge
deep south, texas et al
they become something like the confederates again and try to create a society with oligopolic capitalism and a sprinkle of white supremacism and chattel slavery until a more developed coalition puts them in their place again
california
probably the most liberal part of the balkamericans and where the jobs and rich people stay because the tax-free swamp of trump-reagan-land is filled with uneducated nazis
california would immediately have to conquer the states to its east to secure the water
california cannot stand alone without an empire :)
there aren't enough people north of the us/mexico border to recreate this environment and there are enough people to the south of the border but they have mostly forgotten their cultural roots in favor of their spanish ones.
Anything other than this is chauvinism
God, I find this crushing to look at, thinking of the destruction of it by colonialism. The one consoling part is the line:
The vast majority of these nations still exist today and have never willingly ceded their homelands.
Inshallah
Balkanized America would look like an ethnic cleansing and lynching free for all
Whenever I ponder the balkanization of the US, I wonder who will gain control of the nuclear arsenal. We were lucky that when the USSR broke up, Russian managed to corral their nuclear weapons and the world wasn't left with a bunch of nuclear armed countries in middle Asia.
Whenever I ponder the balkanization of the US, I wonder who will gain control of the nuclear arsenal.
the mega-texas would gain control of it.
only melaninated-americans have sufficiently distinct cultures to create a balkanized landscape of culturally distinct countries, but they're only approximately 1/3 of the population and are almost entirely centered within metropolises; texas and california are the only exceptions to this with its evangelical leaning latines.
this means that balkanization would have to happen across political divisions and, when you look at a county-by-county red vs blue election maps, you'll see a entire sea of red with blue bubbles of varying sizes within it.
the current day texas is a miniature version of this and balkanization split by political affiliation like this would mirror texas' situation; thus creating a mega-texas that would reach from coast to coast if it weren't for the largest blue bubbles occupying the actual coasts.
the entirety of the american nuclear arsenal would be within the red area and all of the blue bubbles would be economically dependent on it except for the large blue bubbles on the coasts; meaning that mega-texas would be able to bully all of the smaller blue bubbles like the united states does to the global south today.
I'd assume it would be an odd situation where D.C. would still have the launch codes, but all the infrastructure is obviously stuck in the mid west. Frankly that's for the best because nuclear armed Montana sounds like a nightmare scenario.
It would be kinda funny tho if every state kept its nukes, a North Dakota-Missouri nuclear standoff would be crazy
Idk but I’d just hope to fall within the borders of the People’s Revolutionary Republic of Chattanooga.
The State of Washington couldn't survive as an independent country, let alone be part of BC, Canada.
Mexico will retake what is lost to Washington.
Minnesota will be Canada.