Paul Fahrenheidt reluctantly comes to terms with the inevitability of the USA’s dissolution and theorizes about how it will proceed.
Depending on when/how this war pops off, I predict casualties just shy of (possibly breaking) 100 million. This is all casualties, including civilian deaths caused by war-related disease, malnutrition, and collateral damage.
The current urban population of the United States is just shy of 275 million. The supermajority of it is concentrated in a half-dozen cities and metropolitan areas on both coasts of this country, most in the projected territory of Team Blue. While I hold that the Civil War will not be “Urban v. Rural,” to say the divide will play no part is dishonest.
Team Red and Team Blue will face different problems, and in all likelihood, different casualty counts. While Team Blue will not have sufficient hinterlands for its massive population (provoking an inevitable starvation crisis that will lop off a significant number of people in said cities,) Team Red will not have enough people to work its own hinterlands, causing a similar (though much less pronounced) food crisis.
The fact of the matter is that the supermajority of food planted, harvested, and distributed by the United States is so automated that a food crisis will occur no matter which way the states go, until smaller man-powered farms can fill the deficit. Either way, we’re looking at tens of millions dead (at least) within the first few months. This is to say nothing of the interrupted power grid, scarcity of medical supplies, outbreaks of cholera, typhus, polio, etc., and any other number of monsters unleashed by kinetic warfare.
I haven’t even addressed the fighting yet.
In a purely military sense, the Second American Civil War will closer resemble the First World War than the First American Civil War. What I mean is that a number of new weapons have been developed by the U.S. Government in the last twenty years, and have only been deployed in limited quantities overseas. Like the advances of weapons prior to WWI, commanders will have very little idea how to properly use them at first, which will contribute to a massive amount of casualties on the front end of the war. Except the otherwise competent WWI Generals will be replaced by careerists, amateurs, and (more likely than not,) women.
I won’t speculate on the tactical particularities of the Second American Civil War. At the war’s beginning, I suspect America’s forces in being to split (unevenly) between Red and Blue. Depending on whether both sides claim to be the Government, or a Government (the difference is important,) you’ll see Active and National Guard units stack on either side of the fence. State Defense Forces, State & Local Police Departments, and Paramilitaries of both stripes will generally go the way their state or sensibility goes.
No matter which way you slice it, I suspect the war will turn into a variety of sieges of Blue cities by Red armies. This is exasperated by the fact that every state in Team Red is geographically contiguous, while every state in Team Blue is split into about three or four islands. The Republicans in the Spanish Civil War faced the same problem, and Franco’s plan to defeat in detail was made the path of least resistance by the drawing of the battle lines.
These sieges will be an absolute bitch. Not only will the massive concentration of urban buildings act as a natural fortress, the United States Interstate System was built to simultaneously serve as military infrastructure and urban fortifications. Ever notice how the Interstates loop around major cities like walls? Ever notice spaces dug for mortar pits, ammo dumps, staging areas for motor-pools (rest stops,) and that each major city has an international airport within that loop of Interstate wall? This is to say nothing about Air Defense assets, which combined with the International Airport will almost assure local air superiority for the defenders of blue cities. Also consider that the Urban battlefield has become 4d, as metro systems and other such tunnels will need to be fought through and won.
The war’s outcome will never be in doubt. But it will be long, and it will cost more lives than we’ve ever thought possible. I can assure the dear reader that America will never be the same afterwards.
Although this time, it’s much more likely that the centrifugal forces will triumph over their centripetal rivals.
I’m always a little puzzled when people asked me why I left the United States more than two decades ago. Yes, of course, I saw this coming. I didn’t know precisely when it would happen, but it didn’t require a great brain to discern that a) it could happen within my lifetime and b) it would almost certainly be something my children would witness.
Consider this: when “the movement of peoples” is synonymous with “war and genocide” in the eyes of regular historians, and when the greatest military historians literally regard “immigration” as being essentially equivalent to “war”, what else could possibly be the result of the greatest movement of peoples in human history to date.
As for what will set it off, while I had previously considered both economic and diversity factors, at this point, it appears more likely that it will be a consequence of WWIII. The partition wars of India and Pakistan may prove a timeline guide in this regard; if we’re correct to assume that WWIII began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that would put the onset of the Dissolution War in 2030, only three years prior to my original estimate of 2033 for the collapse of the political entity.