What would happen if the US balkanized?

Are you saying TV and movies gives off a false impression about a particular region's culture and people?

A powerful president would reunite them by force. People would realize that a distant democratically elected president is preferable to local theocrats and strongmen wielding unlimited power and profiting off of the chaos and violence. Regional differences aren't distinct enough to warrant different countries, and the terrain simply isn't varied enough to give regional powers the breathing room they need to grow in isolation from the central bureaucracy.

The alternative is letting China, Russia, and Europe carve up the former United States into competing internationalist blocs. Any nativist uprising would be put down by a combined effort ala ISIS. Like the rest of the Middle East countries, we'd all become bit players for a much larger struggle for geopolitical hegemony

It wouldn't but if it did basically Everywhere would die except Texas because every state is so dependent on all the others with a few exceptions. The most believable scenario of US balkinization is just a dissolution of the federal government and a new US confederacy that allows all states to handle their own foreign policy while still functioning as a single national entity for the sake of cohesion and quality of life, much like the EU.

>tvtropes.org

Damn, now I want to read a timeline where an american Justinian rises from humble origins and unites the rebellious independent states.

>allows all states to handle their own foreign policy while still functioning as a single national entity for the sake of cohesion and quality of life, much like the EU.
That's a shitty idea and all it would accomplish is dividing states according to which overseas sugar daddy they sold themselves too.

What would most likely happen is that the richest states would gradually take over the poorer ones until two or three autonomous alliances remain, until one state alliance is the clear victor and forms the basis for the next regime. It would almost certainly be a state based in America's industrial heartland, so New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, that area. Due to cultural similarities with New England this area would probably quickly join them, and from there the only states that could put up a real fight would be Texas and the West Coast.

>Communist California having a state named Reagan

Well we would hope that he doesn't end up like Justinian: fucked out of his dreams and perhaps a legacy rivaling Julius Caesar's because a pestilence crippled his empire right as he was on the verge of total victory.

> Texas losing part of the Permian Basin
> Texas not taking south Louisiana for that sweet gulf oil

I shiggy motherfucking diggy.

To their credit, Reagan was a leftist until the late 1960s.

Its alternate history. No need to be rude to the OP

You saw the Yugoslav wars? We're gonna make that shit look like fucking amateur hour. It would be a forever war that ground up men like match sticks. Wherever the battle lines ended after the stalemate happened would be the new borders.

>black Africa state
>allied with the new confederates

Your map is retarded. Do you really think the southerners in the southeastern coastal states would just give up their state for nogs to ruin it or would they fight to join the confederacy??

...

Retard map.

It already has, user.

The world would collapse

>hurp gelp
>smacks thighs
>USA USA USA
>etc

The only correct way to Balkanize USA

>lakotah nation but no navajo nation
Navajo is like the only injuns with a large enough population to be able to create a nation state if ja collapse

>ja
*US
I have to disable shitty autocorrect

he's right you know

A Justinian or Lenin-like figure might be able to unify regions (ex. New England, Great Lakes states) or even several, but likely not the entire country, especially if he has competing powers to deal with. Even the Soviet Union, which is probably the best example of a large country that was successfully reunified by force had to contend with losing control of a number of former Imperial Russian territories such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Finland until the Second World War.

I always imagined it would be a combination of Somalia, the Yugoslav Wars, and the Old West depending on the locale.

Populous states without a cohesive identity such as the West Coast would degenerate in Somalia-type anarchy. Rural areas that are underpopulated would be gripped by widespread lawlessness and the bulk of the population would be living in fortified towns and compounds trading and fighting intermittently (ex. the hippie compound and the neo-Nazi compound up the road have a shooting war over farming land).

The East Coast which is both heavily populated and has a cohesive identity (North vs South, black vs white) would degenerate into a repeat of Yugoslavia on a much larger scale. I could absolutely see the Mason-Dixon Line being wracked with perpetual trench warfare between the North and the revived (and vengeful) Confederacy.

>United States
>still existing in any shape or form after a Second American Civil War

There is no I can see an American rump state surviving for very long. It would be mere shadow of its former power, it would have to deal with an ever constant threat of rebellion and no longer possesses the military means to easily crush it, and its enemies (mainly the revived Confederate States) would be utterly hellbent on destroying it.

Why dod balkanized shit always have the confederacy. Only nut jobs in the south want the confederacy and other than that one instance, the rest of the south share much with each other except a dislike for Texas and Florida.

Why do California always get baja california in these types of maps?

Just because the country uses the name "Confederate States of America" and uses the same/similar flag doesn't mean it's gonna be a copycat of the of the first one.

The way I see it, it'll go down like this:

>United States fragments
>dozens of different armed groups (ranging on the spectrum from the KKK and like-minded groups to relatively moderate "heritage not hate" types) take up the mantle of the Confederacy, claiming to be its legitimate successor
>prolonged period of bloodletting between these groups ensues
>at the same time, they're fighting black nationalists who likewise fight each other over ideological differences
>eventually either some of the more like-minded Neo-Confederates start forming a provisional government or one faction grows powerful enough absorb or violently suppress the others
>moderates are the most likely to succeed at this because their rhetoric appeals to a much larger audience, extremists will alienate their base as their brutality becomes more apparent, and the simple fact that moderates are more likely win to diplomatic recognition abroad
>KKK/extremists are purged, exiled or otherwise forced to underground (this doesn't mean they go away, but are neutered to the point where they are no longer pose a significant threat)
>the new Confederate government offers peace with black nationalists either in the form of autonomy/independence or promises that they will not be subjected to legal discrimination in exchange for loyalty

Remember, the Russian Federation considers itself the rightful successor to the Russian Empire and even uses the same flag and institutions, but it does not suffer the same problems because it has learned and improved on the Empire's failings.

>Populous states without a cohesive identity such as the West Coast would degenerate in Somalia-type anarchy.
You alt-history fags are so fucking dumb it hurts. Somalia has literally never had any kind of functioning infrastructure in the WHOLE nation EVER, and California has a bigger GDP than like half the nations on earth. There's no way California would become like Somalia. I think you guys are just sexually aroused by imagining the US being destroyed

easily the best

That looks pretty good to me, The Midwest gets the auto makers, some defense industry, the great lakes, and farmland

KKK and other groups aren't as strong as you think. Not too mention even if the federal government dissolves, YOU LITERALLY HAVE still working state governments and state National Guards/Militias WHO WERE TRAINED BY THE FEDS (Who have members that mostly been deployed around the world) still active with former federal weapons and materials.

Your post was stupid as shit when the state governments can still function properly and would form a new union right after the failure of the US so they don't get buttfucked or kill each other with each other's national guards now turned into state armies.

>Somalia has literally never had any kind of functioning infrastructure in the WHOLE nation EVER

They had significant structural improvement in the 60s and 70s but Siad Barre's autism ruined it by the 80s.

>California has a bigger GDP than like half the nations on earth

A GDP mainly built on Hollywood and Silicon Valley, both of which would pull up stakes and leave if a genocidal shooting war started.

Oh and California does have a problem that Somalia definitely has. Drought. A drought that's only kept in check by infrastructure that would cease to function in a civil war. Combine the threat of starvation with significant black, white, and hispanic populations who have trouble getting along a good day, and a sudden inflow of weapons from Mexico and it makes for a deadly combination.

>if a genocidal shooting war started.
That's a pretty fucking big "if," and is my point of contention with this whole scenario, because that will never happen.

>Somalia has literally never had any kind of functioning infrastructure
Neither does California. Ever used their highways? It's a fucking third world state.

>KKK and other groups aren't as strong as you think.

Not right now, no. But they would in a time of crisis where people are more willing to listen to their message because of the previous system's apparent failure.

> YOU LITERALLY HAVE still working state governments and state National Guards/Militias WHO WERE TRAINED BY THE FEDS (Who have members that mostly been deployed around the world) still active with former federal weapons and materials.

Except the grand total combined strength of all state national guards is less than 350,000 (assuming none of them defect to other groups). The population of the Southern US is 87 million. 350,000 is nowhere near an adequate force to control a population of 87 million in a time of social breakdown.

>Europe
TOP LALOLE

KKK is not only not strong, it doesn't really exist anymore. Those inbred faggots they wheel in to every protest are literally federal operatives instructed to stir shit.

>Social breakdown
>State and local governments are still active and alive
>National Guard is called in and martial law is declared to calm down the chimped out cities.
KKK would never rise to power user.
Are you retarded?

That's because we live in a time of relative peace where their ideas are seemingly discredited.

Remember what the KKK was born out of. A time of massive social upheaval and lawlessness that gripped the South after the Civil War. If such a crisis were to return, they would flourish again.

Think of it as the Byzantine Empire of North America.

>Obamaville
Of fucking course a black ethnic state in America would have everything named after a mulato.

>New Afrika doesn't have Alabama, Lousiana and Mississippi
BOO
bad!

No it wouldn't you autist

Left coast best coast

Disgusting.

It wouldn't happen, tho

Why?

Why tf would it have Alaska?

It's already balkanized. Each of the 50 states has its own laws, and doesn't cooperate with its neighbors unless it absolutely has to.

>and doesn't cooperate with its neighbors unless it absolutely has to
That's not how a federation works.

KKK started out as a social club for former richfags and confederates before becoming ant-government militia made from butthurt racists and hardcore confedcucks.

General Lee even looked at them like they were retarded and not too mention their beliefs are not seemingly discredited if they are false and start fights among people intentionally.

The US is a confederation, though.

It hasn't been a Confederation since 1787

>putting New England in with Jew York
>these nations would magically ignore their traditional state borders because?

Virginia would create the Atlantic Federation consisting of itself, parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, DC, Delaware, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Then it would go on to wage a war of conquest against its Southern neighbors before turning against the North.

No we aren't. Last time states tried to secede a civil told them they couldn't.

>giving nigs the best beaches in the South East

lol fuck that, they get mississippi.

>California has a bigger GDP than like half the nations on earth.
It's actually the 6th largest economy in the world. And thanks to the Brexit, it'll eventually become the 5th

Why would L.A.San Diego/Inland Empire ever not be a part of California, especial when its borders extend all the way to Utah?
Why wold California let Cascadia take its north coast and why would Cascadia let California take that chunk of Oregon?

For most people its probably "lol they both have California in the name". Though they do share some cultural attributes with coastal Sounthern Alta California. Also supposedly they get shit from Mexicans in the same way Alta California does with people treating them/us as "not real Mexicans/Americans" and other assorted shitines so there is somewhat of a similar sentiment of "you guys are assholes, well go our own way if Mexicans/Americans want to keep acting like cunts." Take that with a grain of salt since I heard it from only one Baja Californian.

>A GDP mainly built on Hollywood and Silicon Valley, both of which would pull up stakes and leave if a genocidal shooting war starte
Why do people assume all industry/commerce would leave California if it weren't in the Union but never assume that about anywhere else despite everyone's dependence?

Stupidest map in the world. Half of these borders are doing weird ass shit. What the hell even is "El Norte" You also can't draw nations out of partisan differences (left coast).

Casino tokens

Probably try to still have a military like the proposed EU military and trade negotiations, perhaps even schengen. Would definitely lose influence across the globe though.

It bugs the shit out of me when people show Missouri joining any sort of neo-Confederacy. The bulk of our population runs in a strip from St. Louis, through Columbia, and to Kansas City, all of which are fairly liberal areas. Northern Missouri is all stereotypical Midwestern corn farmers. It's only in the south of the state that anyone gives a shit about southern pride and barely anyone lives there anyone. It's nothing but national parks, camping grounds, and the occasional walmart.

> implying the Navajo wouldn't all be dead a year after the government stops giving them welfare gibs.

>likely not the entire country, especially if he has competing powers to deal with.

Of course that depends on the circumstances of how it balkanized

But if we're assuming a total, long term collapse of the federal government, once a ruling party monopolizes power in the American industrial heartland no other section of the country would be able to resist them forever. War in an industrial age is a competition between economies, and that section more than any other would have the infrastructure to power a modern mechanized war machine and efficiently replace battlefield losses. And despite popular misconception the Northeast still has a huge number of small farms and the "rust belt" refers more to the fact that factories which once gave thousands decent middle class jobs now only need a few hundred technicians thanks to automation. Most of these places are more productive than they've ever been, and there's only a single steel mill in the United States outside of that region (located in Alabama)

heavy-industry + surprisingly decent agricultural output + most densely populated region of the United States + among the wealthiest = a region that's probably going to have the most well rounded economy and be in the best position to expand

Other places may adopt a strong martial tradition and even cause grievous casualties and win battle after battle. But the moment they lose a single battle they'll fall behind and stay behind. A place like Texas has the manpower, economy, and martial tradition to potentially be a humongously difficult nut to crack. But at the end of the day they're still primarily a resource extraction based economy, and lack the manufacturing capacity to go the distance

The West Coast would have two things going for it: shitload of money and a a giant mountain range to hide behind

Everywhere else would get eaten. Southernfats are lying to themselves if they think that a confederacy could survive long as anything but Texas' cocksleeve

> the South as a cock sleeve for Texas

We wouldn't want The South. There's nothing there but timber and shithole cities full of career welfare recipients.

Our economy is based on petrochemicals. We have plenty but if the US really goes tits up, we'll want more. We also have a huge military presence and most of those people would rather side with an ultra-conservative, nationalist, isolationist Texas than a liberal, fucked-up former America. We'll keep the bases and the people and we'll be taking chunks of the Gulf Coast as well. We already have three ports, so we won't want New Orleans or Mobile. We'll instead take most of southern Louisiana. At least to Port Fouchon. We don't have naval assets, but we have attack helicopters that can fly out far enough to secured any oil rigs we want to place. Anything fucking with them gets missile-spammed by Apaches flying ten inches above the waves.

We won't want Mexico, either. Fuck that. We might ship oil overland to oil terminals on their west coast if the Gulf gets blockaded, but otherwise we'll ignore them. Ditto for New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and most of Louisiana. They're too thin in useable resources and too thick with human dead weight.

New England can also quickly retake their woods and use them for agriculture if need be. Western Massachusetts, Vermont and Southern New Hampshire are the breadbaskets of New England but have been mostly allowed to go wild over time due to farmers moving out west. Combine that with the high population of educated individuals involved in pharmaceutical and biological/chemical sciences and the Northeast can once again feed itself fully. Additionally New England's current manufacturing can be retooled once again for arms if need be. We'd be a major trading partner with the industrial great lakes area due to our association with high tech electronics and robotics. The south doesn't have shit aside from firearms plants.

The South has cheap labor. Even cheaper if they're cut off from welfare. It also has nonexistent labor organization.

New England irrelevant economically and politically compared to the rest of the US. They would have zero power projection.

>isolationist
But that would be the dagger that kills you

I'm not doubting for one second that it'd be a bitter, prolonged struggle, but ultimately the successor state which conquers the industrial heartland would not, in fact, be isolationist but driven by a profound sense of manifest destiny. You may not want the southern states, but what you also wouldn't want is a 49 state beat-down.

I'm fairly confident that we New Englanders would just open our legs for the above mentioned successor state without putting up much of a struggle. Most of them would be more interested in reunifying the country than they would be in maintaining their own independent identity.

That's assuming the industrial heartland of the U.S. remains intact and is not subjected to a brain drain of skilled workers fleeing abroad, farmland becoming overtaxed or rendered useless by herbicidal warfare, or simply wholesale devastated with conventional weaponry or WMDs (the United States military spent three quarters of a century refining the practice of laying waste to entire regions to that of an art).

Which brings us to another issue, nuclear weapons. Unless Russia or China launches a pre-emptive strike to knock out American nuclear capabilities or the US military destroys its own stockpile as a contingency, it's only matter of time before a few warheads fall into the hands of a newly emerged belligerent power. And they don't need to be working warheads either. Even a non-functional one can be salvaged and turned into a dirty bomb.

>One state (Massachusetts because the rest are pretty much empty) is practically 1/18th of US GDP
I'd say its fairly relevant if you need multiple relevant states to outcompete it.

lol, Mass doesn't even break the top ten.

We still supply a lot of military hardware technology alongside advancements in drugs. Fuck your financial services bloat, Disneyworld/Land Hollywood and bread.

>The south doesn't have shit aside from firearms plants.

Actually the South has one thing that the North doesn't. Nuclear arms production.

Almost all nuclear arms production takes place outside of the Northeast and much of it in the South itself. Not to mention six US Navy submarines (all already equipped with nuclear weapons) are located at Norfolk Naval Shipyards.

Brahmin steak

>That's assuming the industrial heartland of the U.S. remains intact and is not subjected to a brain drain of skilled workers fleeing abroad, farmland becoming overtaxed or rendered useless by herbicidal warfare, or simply wholesale devastated with conventional weaponry or WMDs (the United States military spent three quarters of a century refining the practice of laying waste to entire regions to that of an art).

Of course. It's all hypotheses which are extremely context-sensitive. If the United States balkanized because the Yellowstone Supervolcano defied expectations and erupted in the near future, Texas and the entire midwest would be completely fucked.

I'm just assuming the United States as it is right now, but with its federal government gone, and every power-base rising to fill the power vacuum.

>Which brings us to another issue, nuclear weapons.
I'm assuming that everybody adopts a hands-off approach. In fact the entire reconquest may be done surreptitiously, the way Russia annexes territory through mostly information warfare. One would think that monopolizing the nuclear facilities would be the highest priority for the successor state.

I would get a boner.

>a hands-off approach
>implying the Underground Provisional National Security Council of the Federal Government wouldn't nuke an uprising of yokels hiding in the Rockies

>One would think that monopolizing the nuclear facilities would be the highest priority for the successor state.

Except the domestic US nuclear arsenal is geographically spread out over a wide area. Nevermind the bombs kept overseas. The bombs wouldn't be in the hands of one successor state, they would be in the hands of several.

They'd have second thoughts if said yokels has managed to seize the Cheyenne Mountain Complex or any of the attached bases long enough to cart the warheads away.

> I think you guys are just sexually aroused by imagining the US being destroyed

I know I am

So would Lakotah

>Aztlan
WE
>New Afrika
WEW

This one is made with actual data. From Yaneer Bar-Yam, see explanation on medium.

NC outer banks going to Virginia. Everyone knows that in ten years they'll be underwater due to global warming. Let the cavaliers have them.

>Quebec and Louisiana part of new france
Nigga I will fight you.

>Chicago becomes its own state
No, fuck off. Living just north of Cook County is already scary enough.

Don't forget the vast majority of military bases (Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines), are primarily located in the Southeast and Mid-West or West Coast. Most important naval bases and docking/shippyards are at Norfolk and Hampton Roads in Virginia, almost all of our intelligence agencies are headquartered in VA or other Southern states and most of the military is made up of farm boys from the South or Mid-West.

>(((Yaneer Bar-Yam)))
No thanks

I don't get it

>Increasing polarization, even fragmentation, of society is becoming apparent in US politics. There is a sense that society is separating into parts, each of which is listening only to other members of that group. The separation between groups can enable them to deviate even further in values and perspectives. Here we investigate social fragmentation by analysis of where people travel—and the boundaries they choose not to cross—using travel information about individuals obtained from Twitter data.
>As individuals travel for personal or business reasons, they show us which areas are connected socially. Studying the network of connections is a powerful way to determine separation into groups and the natural breakpoints between them [1]. Figure 1 shows A) the density of Twitter activity that is centered in cities, B) areas that are the domains of individual cities extended into the suburban and rural areas that are linked to them and C) larger areas of the US that are separated by boundaries that have less travel across them. While these urban areas have been identified previously [2], the larger domains between the urban and national scale may be the important domains of social fragmentation.
>There are 20 such areas (Figure 1 C). Similar patterns have been detected by analyzing mobile phone calls [3].
>Our analysis suggests that the US fragmentation should not be viewed as just forming two groups, often called red/blue aligning with right and Republican versus left and Democratic [4]. Instead there appear to be approximately 20 groups reflecting the selectiveness of social interactions.
mystudentvoices.com/us-social-fragmentation-a0e7586c9180