The Americas How likley is Balkanization in The united States?

Cost of living is spiking thanks to California and New York flight, the Standard of living is plummeting as prices all around go up, the economy is frozen and governors refuse to open it back up. People aren't going to spend a ton of money on theme parks or other luxuries like entertainment when they don't even know if society is going to exist in a year or if it's going to fracture and balkanize.

my question is how likely is it for sociatal collapse and Balkanization to occur in the US?
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Cost of living is spiking thanks to California and New York flight, the Standard of living is plummeting as prices all around go up, the economy is frozen and governors refuse to open it back up. People aren't going to spend a ton of money on theme parks or other luxuries like entertainment when they don't even know if society is going to exist in a year or if it's going to fracture and balkanize.

my question is how likely is it for sociatal collapse and Balkanization to occur in the US?


146578-004-6F005838.jpg


This is a map of the united states.

The missippi river is the largest bit of navigable river way in the world, It goes north and south, it goes east and west. The price of shipping goods over land is roughly 10 times that as floating it on a boat. This is the heart of the united states as a political entity and the missippi river system by its nature makes a unified America very likely.

From this central position of extreme strenght any successor state will be able to push east and west and easily create a unified country. Hawaii and Alaska are the only places with a reasonable chance of breaking away.

So balkanization isnt very likely Societal collapse however is very possible, but a successor state will rise and retake land.
 

Yinko

Well-known member
146578-004-6F005838.jpg


This is a map of the united states.

The missippi river is the largest bit of navigable river way in the world, It goes north and south, it goes east and west. The price of shipping goods over land is roughly 10 times that as floating it on a boat. This is the heart of the united states as a political entity and the missippi river system by its nature makes a unified America very likely.

From this central position of extreme strenght any successor state will be able to push east and west and easily create a unified country. Hawaii and Alaska are the only places with a reasonable chance of breaking away.

So balkanization isnt very likely Societal collapse however is very possible, but a successor state will rise and retake land.
Your map is a bit misleading.
map-mississippi-river.png

This is the Mississippi. It narrows sharply towards the South, and dead-ends into the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. I'd guess that less than 50% of the mainland US is covered by it.

Plains cultures also tend towards having issues with being stable powers, they are too easy to effect by disasters and invasions as they have no natural barriers. I find it unlikely that a great power would arise in that area to begin with, and powers that start in any of the other three cardinal directions would have a hard time taking full advantage of a river system that is partially controlled by rival factions as well.
This all depends upon the notion of the US breaking apart to begin with, but if such a stressor took place I doubt that the existence of an economically important river system would be enough to unify matters despite the vast social and geographic disparities.
 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
The US has three internal natural borders.

The Appalachians, the Mississippi, and the Rockies.

None are impassable, but they do divide the lower forty eight into three great chunks of land.

Any Balkanization will likely be on complex cultural, ethnic, political, and regionalist grounds. If it did happen, I expect the west coast to be very hard to reconquer, as well as the northeast.

Alaska and Hawaii would be on their own.
 

Yinko

Well-known member
The US has three internal natural borders.

The Appalachians, the Mississippi, and the Rockies.

None are impassable, but they do divide the lower forty eight into three great chunks of land.

Any Balkanization will likely be on complex cultural, ethnic, political, and regionalist grounds. If it did happen, I expect the west coast to be very hard to reconquer, as well as the northeast.

Alaska and Hawaii would be on their own.
More, there's the North/South divide in all of those regions. For instance, North Dakoda is very different from Texas, Idaho from Nevada, Maine from Alabama. So a minimum of six major regions, probably more.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
This is before you get into the utility and linking factors of the St. Lawrence Seaway. From the tip of Lake Superior, all the way to the ocean, and a huge portion of the Atlantic seaboard is reasonably sheltered, allowing easy boat traffic along its length.

The thing is, 'political balkanization' would truly hit in parts of the urban/rural divide. Even in overwhelmingly left-controlled states, the mainstay of that political and cultural bent is centered in cities, particularly megacities.

And simply put, none of those cities could remotely survive trying to go it alone.
 

Yinko

Well-known member
Some of them. I haven't seen indication that this is an overall trend on the scale urbanization was in the 19th and 20th centuries though. We might be heading in that direction, but it's not definitive, at least from the data I've seen.
LA county hasn't expanded for the first time in living memory, New York is the fastest shrinking city in the US.
 

gral

Well-known member
Some of them. I haven't seen indication that this is an overall trend on the scale urbanization was in the 19th and 20th centuries though. We might be heading in that direction, but it's not definitive, at least from the data I've seen.

It's not definitive at all, and it's happening only in places where the infrastructure is good enough that you don't need to go to town to get some products and/or services.

LA county hasn't expanded for the first time in living memory, New York is the fastest shrinking city in the US.

This usually is not indicative of urban flight, but a flight from the largest cities to medium-sized ones.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Um, flyover is a phrase for a reason: the middle is in no way the political heartland of the United States: that has always been New England, pushing down to Washington DC.

The central US is poltically and culturally more or less irrelevant. Possibly more so than even the Southern US was, since it didn't even really have as much of a distinct culture to give it some sense of independence from the North East.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Um, flyover is a phrase for a reason: the middle is in no way the political heartland of the United States: that has always been New England, pushing down to Washington DC.

The central US is poltically and culturally more or less irrelevant. Possibly more so than even the Southern US was, since it didn't even really have as much of a distinct culture to give it some sense of independence from the North East.

Strange thing to say, given states like Michigan flipping were key in 2016.
 

Yinko

Well-known member
Strange thing to say, given states like Michigan flipping were key in 2016.
There's a difference between social influence and election influence. For instance, the way that the electoral college works allows for any marginal constituency to be significant and certain counties are so culturally mild that they have historically stood as political barometers.

Another way to look at it is the relative size of a cohesive region. The more populous and affluent a region the smaller it becomes, because it is harder to maintain. So, if anything, the Mid-West (excluding the Great-Lakes which should really be a different region) are one of the weakest as indicated by being one of the largest and least populous.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
There's a difference between social influence and election influence. For instance, the way that the electoral college works allows for any marginal constituency to be significant and certain counties are so culturally mild that they have historically stood as political barometers.

Another way to look at it is the relative size of a cohesive region. The more populous and affluent a region the smaller it becomes, because it is harder to maintain. So, if anything, the Mid-West (excluding the Great-Lakes which should really be a different region) are one of the weakest as indicated by being one of the largest and least populous.

I've lived in the Great Lakes for half of my life, and it's been referred to as 'The Midwest' as well for the entirety of my life.

If we're clarifying 'Midwest' to mean something like 'States South of the Great Lakes, but West of the Mississipi,' then that would change the scale, impact, and influence of what that 'region' has on national politics, yes.
 

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
This is before you get into the utility and linking factors of the St. Lawrence Seaway. From the tip of Lake Superior, all the way to the ocean, and a huge portion of the Atlantic seaboard is reasonably sheltered, allowing easy boat traffic along its length.

The thing is, 'political balkanization' would truly hit in parts of the urban/rural divide. Even in overwhelmingly left-controlled states, the mainstay of that political and cultural bent is centered in cities, particularly megacities.

And simply put, none of those cities could remotely survive trying to go it alone.
Coastal cities collapsing won't do a whole lot to Denver, Cheyenne, Boise, or Helena.

Frankly the Mountain West could form a massive power house if balkanization occurs, simply because we a lot of water supplies, resource deposits, some manufacturing/refining, lots of farm/ranch land, and a lot of the US nuke arsenal/sensors hubs/NORAD.
 

Yinko

Well-known member
and it's been referred to as 'The Midwest' as well for the entirety of my life. American history.
fixed that for you

I know, that's why I clarified it. The thing is though, that the Great Lakes have little in common with most other 'Mid-Western states'. They are dominated by something that all those other states absolutely lack and have a history that they lack as well.

I actually think of the Mid-West as being equivalent to the Great Plains, if that helps.

Frankly the Mountain West could form a massive power house if balkanization occurs, simply because we a lot of water supplies, resource deposits, some manufacturing/refining, lots of farm/ranch land, and a lot of the US nuke arsenal/sensors hubs/NORAD.
I agree, the Mountain West is kind of like Iran, so well protected and provisioned that it becomes a massive pain to try to attack. The biggest issue would be trying to smooth wrinkles caused by religious demographics, what with the massive quantities of Mormons, Protestants, Catholics and, to a lesser degree, agnostics.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Strange thing to say, given states like Michigan flipping were key in 2016.

Well, to work through an analogy, I'm sure there's some Roman Emperor who won the throne because Dacia in the Balkans threw its support behind him, giving him the legions to win his particular war of succession, but I don't think anyone would believe that marked Dacia as the heart of the Roman Empire. Pretty much everyone would agree that would be Rome. Likewise, New York-Washington DC are, especially historically, the heart of America. Some other random state might tip the scale of who gets to rule that corridor, just as the legions of Dacia or Gaul might swing which claimant gets to be emperor or Rome.

But, the Heart of the Empire remained Rome, and likewise the Heart of the US was New England. Hell, new England probably represented a larger share of the US population than Rome generally did in the Empire!

I speak somewhat in the past tense because, like the Roman Empire, the elite political and economic heart of the US is being divided into an east and west capital, LA vs New York. Or more broadly, the North east (64 million) vs the West (78 million). About the North east represents about 20% of the population and 20% of GDP, while the west represents 24% of the population and 28% of the GDP. Now, obviously some 60% and 50% of the GDP is outside those regions, but its much more dispersed and fractured, making it less effective at directing national trends: for example, you might have several colleges who collectively produce as many supreme court nominees as Yale, but Yale (and the other big Ivy, Harvard) are able to so dominate supreme court picks that Yale and Harvard's philosophy on law are going to be larger than the next 100 after that.

And when every supreme court member right now has a Harvard or Yale degree, that speaks pretty definitively to where the political heart is: the fact that Michigan helped determine whether the Supreme court pick was Merrick Garland (Harvard) or Neil Gorsuch (also Harvard) does not change where the political heart is.

Hopefully that's clear, it went on a bit of a tangent there.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Well, to work through an analogy, I'm sure there's some Roman Emperor who won the throne because Dacia in the Balkans threw its support behind him, giving him the legions to win his particular war of succession, but I don't think anyone would believe that marked Dacia as the heart of the Roman Empire. Pretty much everyone would agree that would be Rome. Likewise, New York-Washington DC are, especially historically, the heart of America. Some other random state might tip the scale of who gets to rule that corridor, just as the legions of Dacia or Gaul might swing which claimant gets to be emperor or Rome.

But, the Heart of the Empire remained Rome, and likewise the Heart of the US was New England. Hell, new England probably represented a larger share of the US population than Rome generally did in the Empire!

I speak somewhat in the past tense because, like the Roman Empire, the elite political and economic heart of the US is being divided into an east and west capital, LA vs New York. Or more broadly, the North east (64 million) vs the West (78 million). About the North east represents about 20% of the population and 20% of GDP, while the west represents 24% of the population and 28% of the GDP. Now, obviously some 60% and 50% of the GDP is outside those regions, but its much more dispersed and fractured, making it less effective at directing national trends: for example, you might have several colleges who collectively produce as many supreme court nominees as Yale, but Yale (and the other big Ivy, Harvard) are able to so dominate supreme court picks that Yale and Harvard's philosophy on law are going to be larger than the next 100 after that.

And when every supreme court member right now has a Harvard or Yale degree, that speaks pretty definitively to where the political heart is: the fact that Michigan helped determine whether the Supreme court pick was Merrick Garland (Harvard) or Neil Gorsuch (also Harvard) does not change where the political heart is.

Hopefully that's clear, it went on a bit of a tangent there.

There's certainly some substance to that. But I wasn't trying to argue the Great Lakes region or the Midwest were pre-eminent, just that they are relevant.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Fair enough, I was mostly reacting to @Cherico claim that the midwest represented the Political Heart of America, which speaks more to pre-eminent ness rather than relevantness. Though relevant is a fairly slipperly term in this kind of discussion. They exist, but I'm not sure how relevant they are as their own entity: I get more of a sense of the midwest being a collection of signifigant cultures, rather than a power block in and of themselves.

The midwest doesn't really seem to be a political entity in the same way New England, the West Coast, or the Old South were who are all mostly coherent enough with each other to march to the beat of the same drum. Ohio and Chicago do not strike me as blood brothers of especially close political of social bonds.

In some sort of Balkanization set up, I would expect the Midwest to, well, be the equivalent to the balkans, a sort of middle ground fought over by the more culturally and politically unfied New England to the East and West Coast to the, well, West. Maybe with some Southern group, depending on if Texas does its own thing or groups up with the rest of the deeper south.

As to the Rural/urban divide, Its probably not as significant in Blue states as many imagine: for example, look at New York in 2016:

440px-New_York_Presidential_Election_Results_2016.svg.png


So, as you can see most of the state outside the big cities did go Red. However, only one county, Wyoming County with 40k people voted heavily conservative in the 70%+ range. 12 counties were in the 60-70% range. That means, out of 62 counties, democrats represent at least 40% of the voting public in 49, or 79% of counties.

40% is a respectable margin to maintain a ruling power base from, and if the majority tried to move against the Democratic loyalist county government, the massive numerical edge of the democratic overall population (almost 2-1 overall) gives them plenty of resources to surge to troublespots in the countryside as they flair up.

California's in a similar boat where the countryside is less overwhelmingly blue, but not particularly red:

300px-California_Presidential_Election_Results_2016.svg.png


Only 2 counties are 70%+ Republican, another 3 in the 60-70% range. Thus, out of 58 counties in California democrats represent at least 40% of the voting population in 90% of the counties.

In the deep blue strongholds, Urban/rural is probably going to be a fairly minor issue.
 

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