March 14, 2009
JR Nyquist fails to account for a few:
If this should happen, foreign powers would intervene and the country would be split along geographical lines: California and the West would fall under Chinese control, Texas and the south would go to Mexico, and Russia would lay claim to Alaska...
Without the United States in the picture, Russia and China would be the dominant powers. They would dictate terms to the world. No country or group of countries could possibly stand against them. This is because Russia and China possess thousands of nuclear weapons...
Since I first read Joel Garreau's 1981 book, The Nine Nations of North America, I've been fascinated with its premise: North America may be three nations politically, but it is really at least nine economically and culturally. There's French-speaking Quebec in the north, Spanish-speaking MexAmerica al sur, tree-hugging Ecotopia on the West Coast. It does not take a genius to posit(1) that if America ever did break up, it would likely be along those lines.
That said, there seem to be a few things missing from the analyses of both Mr. Panarin and Mr. Nyquist. The easy ones are, well, easy: if China cannot control Taiwan, and if China cannot move millions of men quickly by ship, it has less chance of controlling California than does Costa Rica. In fact, the problems that would lead America to this manner of breakup flash double for China: they have dozens of ethnic groups and languages, none of whom would have anything constructive to do if their major customer disappeared. They share borders with nuclear Russia and India, and Japan is still in their way. Perhaps China can control North Korea. California is out of the question.
The same story in the south. Texas would hardly "go to Mexico." If Mexico lasts as a single nation for the next decade I'll be surprised. In fact, if Mexico was smart, they'd try to figure out a way to get Texas to conquer them. Any proposed North American Union is not Canada and Mexico taking over the US.
The analysis also fails to account for four smaller issues that I shan't expound upon: Russia's horrible demographics, its less-than-half-the-US population, Russia and China's underdeveloped economies, and whether Russia and China could get along if the US was not around. I'll just say I seem to remember there was a time when the USSR and the US were allies, and no one could stand against them...
But the idea that Russia could control Alaska - plausible on the surface because Russia could conceivably march troops across the Bering Strait - requires even more fanciful thinking. Russia and China, we are told, would dictate terms to the world because they possess thousands of nuclear weapons. I for one would opine that if Alaska ever broke from the US, it would immediately become the third nuclear power in North America. Texas might be the fourth. Even tiny Hawaii(2) might be able to offer some jet-fuel powered deterrent. Even after a breakup, some power called The United States - even if it was only made up of 20-some disunited ones - would be a nuclear power as well. If the United States ceased to exist, our nuclear arsenal would not, just like the USSR's did not when they became Russia and Ukraine and the Baltics and a whole handful of -istans. Russia quickly got control of the nukes, and foreign powers have wisely not tried to take over the parts spun off by the centrifugal collapse of communism(3) for that reason.
The devolution of the US(4) would leave a handful of angry, hungry nuclear powers on this continent. Perhaps we would nuke each other before anyone else tried to get involved, in which case, the Russians would be welcome to the smoldering ruins. But until that happens, any thoughts that the Russians and the Chinese might be able to expand their real estate markets in the wake of an American collapse have about 10,000 uranium-based arguments against them.
(1) Well, it does not take one to understand it, because I did.
(2) Though it's not really in North America.
(3) We have unwisely tried to do so after a fashion, an effort that probably died last year when Russian tanks rolled into Georgia. Territory is held by boots on the ground.
(4) Before anyone asks, I lay the odds at about 2% per decade going forward. Not very likely, but not out of the realm of imaginable possibility over the long term. Hey, things change.
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alm77 (anonymous) says...
You forgot the most important thing. Chuck Norris would be president of Texas: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/...
March 14, 2009 at 9:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
El_Borak (Bill Hoyt) says...
I don't forget things. There are just some things Chuck Norris won't allow me to remember.
Despite the existence of secessionist groups in places like Texas and Vermont, I think we're actually far less likely to have anyone secede* than at any time in our history. Most people don't realize that the nation was pretty close to coming apart over the War of 1812 (New England might have left then) before it did come apart just in time for the Civil War. Right or wrong**, Lincoln settled the issue, and I don't think there has been a serious secessionist movement since.
But that's the next thing, however long it takes. Ideology moves in long waves, and America expanded when it did in large part because of our ideology of Manifest Destiny. That is long gone now, and I suspect that, like markets when things cease to go up go down, empires, when they cease to grow, shrink. Since we will no longer add states the next thing that will happen is that we will lose them. But it may be a long, long time in coming.
Even if Chuck Norris says otherwise.
* or would that be "succeed"?
** And I think he was right in some ways and wrong in others. While it was evil, futile, and stupid that he South would secede over an issue that would cease to be an issue in a generation anyway, slavery, they had every right to do so. What was the Revolutionary War but a secession from the British Empire?
March 14, 2009 at 10:12 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
feeble (anonymous) says...
One might imagine that the sheer number of small arms in the hands of common citizens, much less munition stores under the control of local and state agencies, in this country would be enough to forestall any major invasion by a foreign power, in the event of this kind of break-up.
That, combined with the huge population centers and relatively vast geographic expanses that comprise the U.S. of A. make any kind of military take-over by foreign entities a long shot at best.
It is far more likely that China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and the G20 would do their damnedest to prop up whatever shell of a government was left after this break-up, and push strongly for national reconciliation. These countries might not like us, our debt, our foreign policy or our currency, but they like our markets, enough I think, to try and keep the marketplace open.
March 25, 2009 at 11:36 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )