Ideas for a desunited world.

In science fiction is very often show a future with One World Government when all nations of Earth joint one single planetary union that rules the entire planet, and sometimes its colonies, even if federally. This is what we see in Star Trek, Babylon 5 and the like.

But I’m thinking that everything shows, at least at our current time, that the opposite might very well happen. Than modern nation-states may split due to separatist movements and that international organizations like UN, EU and the like might be weakened more and more. I see every time more of a resurgent ethnic nationalism and supremacism, of people of specific ethnicities or cultures wanting to reinforce their individuality over the rest. White nationalist in the US, Russian-speakers in the different post-Soviet states, the different separatist movements in all Europe, religious nationalisms etc. I’m planning to write a future were Russia, China, the US, Europe, etc. are now split into smaller ethnic states.

So I would like to see opinions on how this split may happen. How do you think that if Russia, China, the US or any other countries splits how will it be split. And please do not spare any country that you like. I’m interested in all. Japan, Armenia, any Middle Eastern, Asian, African and Latin American country, not just the big famous world powers.

Russia and China: Among ethnic lines, but that would require a significantly weaker central government.

The US: Among political lines.

Spain, the UK, etc: Catalonia and Scotland declare independence.

UK, France, the Netherlands, the US: Their remaining colonies (e.g. Aruba, Puerto Rico) declare independence

I don't think the US could split along political lines. In practice, the political lines aren't at the state borders, but at the city limits. (except in florida, but florida would be more likely to remain loyal to whatever remains of the original US government in this scenario.)

It would split along economic lines, if it split at all. The more urbanized and much wealthier states would probably secure their position as the new superpowers of the continent (especially California, if just because of how diverse its agricultural sector is compared to every other state and it effectively controlling all west coast trade) (it's not like mexico or canada could do much, especially with canada's quebec separatists having their resurgence in this scenario. Oh yeah quebec is broken off now too.)

Texas would break away, collapse immediately, and if not reclaimed, maybe manage to build itself into a semi-functional country after a long internal civil war.

The transuralic parts of modern Russia would probably break into a bunch of historically-named pseudo-republics. Africa would probably have the greatest reorganization, with most of the dubiously drawn borders shifting to more historic ones, totally different from where the modern ones stand. North Nigeria would probably break away from South Nigeria. Kashmir would leave India, Wales would leave the UK, Ireland would probably take back Northern Ireland. (Cornwall might get an independence movement too, but they don't have much of a national identity left so it's unlikely to have much support.)

The basque regions of spain break away, of course. They tried to for years. Greenland finally becomes independent for real.

The anarctic stations that are occupied year round, with enough climate change... they might suddenly find themselves in a position to try something, if they managed to get three hundred or so people down there and a way to get enough food. They could create a science empire on the more habitable parts of the continent. (They might have to shut down a bunch of the experiments though, and end up eating lots of fermented penguin and seal to get their vitamins. They'd also probably struggle with resources, and rely a lot on trade with the other countries. This is a pretty out-there idea.)

Indonesia explodes into literal dozens of countries. There's so many languages and cultures there that if they ever stopped working together (as they have for centuries, so it would take something big to make them stop) it would be easily fifty countries there, most only a few islands in size.

Vietnam splits back up like it was before the vietnam war. Karakalpakstan splits off of Uzbekistan.

There's probably some other things that would happen if everything started falling apart, but those are the major seams that are out there.

I think that the event of the US getting Balkanized would happen in practice, but not theory.

As in, it would be a civil war scenario where the starts are still considered a single nation officially, but would unofficially be considered as separate nations. A comparison would be the China/Taiwan thing.

That said I agree that an urban/rural divide is more likely than that scenario. In which case the most "divided" the US could get would be some vaguely connected enclaves. An economic divide would be close though.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 27th 2022 at 7:28:43 AM

Unless people start moving toward where they feel most welcome. That's how we got dividend into red and blue voting districts to begin with. Don't assume demographics never change.

Sorry but I am really only knowledgeable about the West coast of USA. A good point was made however; USA balkanization could be a lot like Taiwan and China. I’d imagine nations would constantly be trying to conquer each other to “Reunite the States”.

My favorite fictional state that never happened is Deseret. It’d be a combination of Utah and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona. It’d be a theocratic state with a high emphasis on religion. The State of Deseret has plenty of metals, and is somewhat self sufficient food-wise. However it would not have an ocean port, which would lead to conflict with their neighbors.

One such neighbor would be the Republic of California. California is one of the most economically strongest states already, I could totally see it becoming an independent nation with an emphasis on pacific trade.

There could also be a resurgence of Native American nations. I’d imagine the Navajo Reservations could feasibly become their own nation.

Thank you very much, you're helping me a lot, specially on matters that I'm not that knowledgeable. I agree with most of the mentioned, specially regarding Africa and Europe. I'll add that Belgium would probably split among linguistic lines, China will loose Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and Eastern Turkmenistan with Mongolia retaking Inner Mongolia but all with large Han minorities living there, while Canton and Manchuria would found harder to succeed from Han-dominated areas. India will be similar to Indonesia.

I was thinking that with Arabs may be the exact opposite, a lot of separate states would become one like the one intended after WWI. Not that Arabs are homogeneous of course, is a linguistic term in reality (applies to everyone who speak Arabic, some Arabs are Black Africans, Berbers etc.) but still there's a strong pan-Arabism specially in the Gulf. Non-Arab minorities in the Arab world like Berbers, Kurds, etc probably also made their own territories. And I have no idea what can happen to Israel. Iran will loose Khuzestan which may become part of the larger Arab superstate.

I'm still curious about the US tho, I'm not American. I was under the impression -but might be wrong- that is also pretty divided among racial lines. That White, Black and Hispanics have certain tensions among themselves. I was imagining White supremacists trying to take the Pacific Northwest, whist some Black militias wanting to control of Black majority areas as the "Republic of New Africa" proposed. But maybe I'm missreading the issue and the divide is more political than ethnic.

I agree that political lines are harder to drawn. New York is one of the bluest states but it has a county that is staunchly Republican so, how would that split will be? There will be an exchange of population among liberals and conservatives like Hindus and Muslims after the Partition of India?

What would be interesting is the political system. I think that any liberal-dominated area of the post-US would be kind of similar to Europe, with a Welfare State and a parliamentary system having a Prime Minister instead of a President as a Head of Government whilst the conservative areas would be the opposite, some may go to almost anarcho-capitalism and other near theocracy, the more moderates would just be like Russia (a strong presidential state with a right-wing dominant party and very socially conservative politics alongside a powerful economic oligarchy).

One question I have, if this is a sci-fi setting, is whether "nation-state" will remain the sole model of government, or whether you'll see more legitimacy given to states, city-states, confederations and micronations, as well as citizenships without land.

minseok42, I thought China only had one ethnicity, please enlighten me

Florien, I must disagree, I find is way more likely that the US would break off based on politics

TV Guy, the US is more divided by political party rather than race, no matter what democrats want you to think

Edited by Foreman on Jun 30th 2022 at 9:51:47 AM

There are 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities in China. Some of them have independence movements, such as the Uyghurs and the Tibetians, who are being repressed by the CCP

Edited by minseok42 on Jun 30th 2022 at 10:56:20 PM

I think the system will go from more diverse forms of government including those examples you made, however I also think this will be gradual and will be a period of overlapping.

I do believe that the United States are divided by political and religious lines than racial lines. For all of the talk of systemic racism in some cities, most cities in the USA are very diverse, and it would be very hard to imagine single-race nations forming… and as I type this I’m realizing that the Midwest is mostly very predominantly white. There could totally be completely white nations forming in the Midwest.

There could be some interesting governments formed. Back to the Midwest, I can imagine confederations of farms and freeholds forming in what used to be the states of Iowa, Oklahoma and the other flyover states. Washington and Oregon could form very technological, liberal governments. Texas could form a military Junta or dictatorship. Utah could turn into a Theocratic state. I can imagine Montana and Wyoming to turn into semi-independent groupings of ranches.

New York might turn into a city state built solely on trade, where anything and everything is bought and sold. Maybe it would have a plutocracy governing it.

If you want a weird form of government you can totally just put it in Florida. They are already weird enough there.

You are wrong. I study politics. Partisanship is not how places break apart unless parties are explicitly separatist parties. It can't be a quiet part, it has to be a loud one. Further, there's a very strong national identity shared between the states, so most of them would claim to be the valid successor of the US. Few (aside from Texas, what with their unearned arrogance) would claim to be doing entirely their own thing.

Further, in practice, the parties don't end at the state lines, they end at the city limits, as I said before. The democrats dominate the much wealthier, more diverse cities, (except in florida, where the shift that turned cities into democrat strongholds is going much slower) and the exurbs outwards are more republican. This means that the real political lines aren't the state lines, but the county lines. Not that it would matter, because urban warfare is one of the most difficult battlefields. In practice, most of the rural states (already being owned by agribusiness) would in their best "along-political-lines" case, split off and become vassal states of the far more powerful everyone else. That's what happens when economically weak states with one export try to leave. Even then, they're much more likely to end up corporate states firmly under control of the agribusiness operating out of the cities, who run them like banana republics. (corn republics, if you will)

Texas would be the most interesting case, if just because it would immediately collapse. That's what's happened every time it tried to break away from another country (both times to preserve slavery). If they stick it out after they disintegrate and don't come begging to reintegrate after the government tries to kill all the minorities, it'll quickly become a very weird place. Most likely the rural areas of texas will outright disintegrate into a group of vaguely-connected clan-structured governments, and the cities will become independent city-states led by their mayors.

As for the cities and states with large urban populations, it's plausible they might end up with a parliamentary system, but I think it more likely they remain presidential, to tie themselves to the old US. It might not even officially be acknowledged that the United States isn't really united anymore, and if it is, it's almost certainly in the context of "we are the successor state to the old US, we have the real presidential line of succession here." Sort of like the Avignon Popes.

In reality the US is very unlikely to break apart along territorial lines of any kind, because we are too mixed up. But in the interest of helping a fictional world building exercise, the line of least resistance is probably a large scale migratory movement from Red State cities to Blue States as the local governments crack down on civil rights, and a corresponding movement away from Blue rural areas to Red ones. That could lead to a territorial split (again, probably not in RL, but it could be made to look plausible in fiction), with Texas probably emerging as the Red State leader. One thing that might make this look more plausible is a movement of billionaire owned companies to the new "United States" centered in Texas (because low taxes, no regulation). It ends up as a kind of "Corporate Feudalism" in which people of an authoritarian bent could be happy living.

Here's an interesting twist: Elon Musk (or an expy) gets elected as the President of the United States (Texas).

Edited by DeMarquis on Jul 1st 2022 at 11:24:36 AM

What's your opinion on the 11 nations theory? That the US is made-up of 11 nations (not counting Natives).

I do think it would be extremely difficult to separate Democrats and Republicans. The two parties are very interconnected, and if you look at a map of which counties are Red or Blue, there is a scattering of both parties all over geographically. Members of the two parties are very interconnected, and it’s often very hard to tell who is a Republican and Democrat unless they are wearing party affiliated clothing or tell you which party they are a member of. However, a mass exodus of people trying to travel to party controlled areas makes good thought food for a apocalyptic setting. (And it would be apocalyptic. The Partition in India was extremely bloody)

What smaller countries could China disunite into? I believe that Tibet could become its own country; and I’m sure China could disunite even further. What would a disunited China look like?

It happened a lot in history. "China is whole again. Then it broke again."

Older Than Steam: The first line of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is "It is said that the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been."

Hong Kong would probably break apart from the mainland entirely and become a truly independent city-state, for one. Possibly Macau as well, but that's less likely, as my understanding was that their history with mainland China has been overall less adversarial.

As for Africa, here's a list of active African separatist movements, any one of which might see success in claiming independence from their host states.

The Canary Islands would for sure return to home rule; and on that note, Spain would probably take back Gibraltar from the UK, while the Falkland Islands would either be reclaimed by Argentina or - less likely - declare independence (basically nobody living there wants the islands to revert to Argentine control - according to a 2013 referendum, 99.8% of votes cast were in favour of remaining a British territory, and the majority of Islanders are of British descent - but the population is less than 4000 people, so if Argentina really wanted to take it back by force and Britain had its hands full with Wales and Scotland, they're shit out of luck).

Oh yeah, and don't forget about Kurdistan - they'd form out of bits of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. They already have a de facto autonomous region in Syria, Rojava (which has apparently done pretty well for itself, especially compared to the rest of Syria).

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Jul 2nd 2022 at 9:54:06 AM

From what I've seen of it, it's fetishism for the midwest first and foremost, and also tends to veer into assigning nonexistent nations to places and ignore immigration.

a nation does not exist if the people in it do not believe it exists. Almost no one in "tidewater" would call themselves "tidewaternian" or "part of the tidewater culture". There is no national identity there, so there isn't a nation. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how nation-states work, and a gross simplification of cultures.

That list is pretty useful thanks.

I wonder about Israel. Would it disappear without the US help? Would it expand instead? Would it split as I've heard they do have internal separatist movements like Judea. Palestine also might split even if given full statehood Gaza and Cisjordan really have few in common apart from the loose "Palestinian" identity.

I heard of a very bold peace proposal that was to takes every Arab-majority municipality and every Jewish-majority municipality and turn them into their respective new states which would make the map pretty different (is basically like a map of the US with the red and blue counties marked) but according to some could be even more functional that a one-state or two-state solutions.

Nothing much would likely change. Nuclear weapons are fundamentally really useful at preventing a place from being invaded too hard, and Israel is a weapons exporter and a nuclear power.

The problem is, if nuclear weapons are still a thing in this future, then a bunch of places likely got nuked when the US, Russia, India, Pakistan, and China disintegrated, which would make this world a very weird place with most of the former powers having smaller major cities (what with most of them missing about a third of their population from bombings.)

If Israel didn't have nuclear weapons, its role as a power in the ongoing cold war in the middle east would mean that the war would be much more likely to heat up. The question is, is Israel's status as a weapons exporter enough to make its notably impressive-for-population-size army capable of winning against other countries in the area?

Now, it seems likely that it would at the very least attempt to be expansionist. They've been expansionist in the past and remain so. The problem is, in this world, so many world powers have disintegrated, so this implies something drastically weakened every national army and that nuclear weapons either don't exist, are largely irrelevant, or every dissolution was largely amicable, likely leading to a ton of nuclear powers suddenly popping up.

Without larger powers, Israel has no incentive to stop running the apartheid pseudo-theocratic state that it runs, or opt for any solution to the ongoing issues there that isn't "keep going with the not-quite-a-democracy." After all, it can't be sanctioned for expansionism and apartheid tendencies if everyone else is dealing with their own issues. But if it doesn't have enough of an army to hold itself together, most likely it collapses in a bloody civil war and a series of theocratic governments of the various Abrahamic religions pop up in the area.

Actually this just raises the question, what's the scenario that's making the world balkanize? Why is this happening? Because why it's happening is very important in determining what happens afterwards.

My idea came from several phenomenons, most notably the massive protests and riots we’re seeing all over the world, from the many protests in all Latin America, to the riots in the US and European phenomenons like the Yellow Vests, the growth of identity politics and cultural, ethnic and racial separatists movements and the appearance of the populist anti-politics anti-mainstream political figures like Trump and all his clones both left-wing and right-wing all over the world.

All of these make me thinking in a symptomatic distrust for the political establishment and a exhaustion of the political system, it remembered me of that time when feudalism enter a representation crisis that ended up on the English, Dutch, American, French and Hispanic American revolutions to name the most notable ones, the passing from monarchy and feudalism to the republican political system and economic capitalism. It does feels like similar times of change when the old system is falling and people lost trust on representative democracy as we know it, and are searching for something new.

Now my idea is also more grounded, is not my intention to made a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like society after this, in fact is possible that some of the changes are actually positive. I also think that some fringe political systems like anarchism may have a chance to implement in some areas. But obviously the change is not going to be bloodless nor nice in some parts.

Now, regarding an Israeli Civil Wars, that is an interesting idea. Israel can, indeed, kept together by sheer nuclear deterrence (although without world powers other Mid East countries might achieve nuclear capacities) but they can also split in their own internal fighting. Russian-speakers are to this date not fully integrate and represent their own subnational culture, whilst a fight between the religious far right and the secular Israelis may easily explode. Maybe after the civil war the country indeed splits; the ultra-Orthodox creates a theocracy after an ethnic cleanse, the more secular progressives gather around Tel Aviv and claim to be the true successor state, the Russian-speakers turn their neighborhoods into their own and the Arab-Israelis basically split their owns and merge them with the larger Arab State. Colonists, Sephardis and Misrahis could also have some protagonism and certain areas will still had to be multi-cultural.

For what I've read about Israel history Israel was dominated by European Ashkenasi Jews through the dominant Labour Party with ideas from European socialism and were kind of racist against Eastern (Sephardi and Misrahi) Jews even locating them in the borders more easily targeted by Arabs, which is why Herut, Likud and other right-wing parties were dominated by Sephardis. This could be interesting too.

Oh, then this is a highly unrealistic scenario. Social unrest does not balkanization make. Only weak governments without control of their armies or dealing with distant exclaves lose territory to balkanization.

Same principle with revolution. The french and russian revolutions succeeded because the army refused to protect the nobility, the various revolutions in north and south america succeeded because they were geographically isolated and thus difficult to keep shipping troops to.

That's also partially why the colonial empires collapsed. World wars one and two stopped there being enough troops to ship out to keep the areas under control of a relatively distant state, and killed public will to continue to send troops anywhere, much less some distant place.

This scenario would require drastic weakening of militaries the world over, and the total collapse of the monopoly of violence that a state has, rather than the mere redirection of the monopoly that allows most revolutions to happen. (In usually feudal or aristocratic societies).

You should probably come up with an explanation of why the armies of these countries aren't working hard to make sure no one tries too hard to leave, because they're not going to allow anyone to leave for fear of setting a precedent that leaving is fine.