Writing a Divided States Scenario

Okay so, I'm interested in writing a "Divided States of America" scenario, but I don't know anything about politics, is there a way to keep it simple?

I'm also probably setting it after WW3/a second American Civil War but I want to (mostly) avoid other countries taking advantage of the fractured country, if possible.

If you want to avoid other countries swooping in, you might perhaps have it that the rest of the world was so heavily pummelled by World War III that their people are simply scrambling to recover themselves, with no resources or energy for making war on their neighbours.

Yeah, a world-war three scenario would make it more difficult to launch an outside invasion. Also, the major countries that would likely come out of such a collapse would either be so economically and militarily powerful that they wouldn't be much of a good target (California and whatever else it ends up grabbing would be a new superpower, having two of the five major ports in the US, a huge population (for army-doing and rebuilding), excellent agricultural climate, and the capacity to easily swoop in and pick up Nevada's military test-range bases at essentially will and get all kinds of tech that other places simply wouldn't have access to.) or would be so utterly worthless that no one would even bother invading. (The desert states, like arizona, nevada, utah, new mexico, and some parts of colorado have pretty much nothing going on other than a few military bases and some ranches, which fall apart without the farm supply chain.)

The thing to remember is that the rural states have essentially no economy or government that isn't largely kept remotely functional by money from California and the Northeast Megalopolis. If those places split off, the rural areas will quickly become essentially economic vassals of those two coasts. (Kind of like the relation of the central asian countries to Russia and China)

The northeast megalopolis doesn't have much in the way of agriculture though, so it will probably attempt to make a grab for a bunch of the midwest as soon as it's able.

Though the sheer fact that the united states was a thing in the past will give these new smaller countries legitimate claim to try to regularly reestablish the united states, whether through violence by the economic powerhouses or by just deciding to try being the states again.

So it depends what you're trying to do. If you're going for political, there's left vs right (which you can mostly get from political/presidential vote averages), or the south rising again, basically redo the civil war. If you're going for more a disorganized chaotic mess for characters to wander around in, then you can just go with states divided (after all, states sort of have their own militaries, if the federal government collapsed, you might see some pulling back to those structures).

Otherwise, it might flow from the intent of the parties? So for example, if your story were, I dunno, aliens manipulate the US into collapsing so they can access a lost ship in location X, then they'd want the battle lines a long way from location X, to distract everyone.

Be careful about belittling the so called rural states, many of the built up states and cities are terminally dependent upon the resources those rural areas provide.

For example Colorado is the headwaters of no less than FOUR major river systems (Arkansas, Platte, Rio Grande, Colorado). If the dams shut off all flow out of the state, there are no less than EIGHT states that will quickly find themselves learning how to drink sand or clay or otherwise go thirsty at least in part.

Many of these rural states, the Flyover Country also hold the majority of domestic food supplies and staples. Quite a few of them also control substantial mineral resources including oil and precious metals.

Then there’s the whole trade route thing. There’s only seven major highways that cross the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains and the desert Southwest. Even fewer railroads. And of the seven highways only four of them reach the West Coast.

So be mindful of what’s there in a hypothetical because in a real divided states of America scenario the urban parts of America quickly find themselves at the mercy of the rural if they want to eat, drink, travel/trade and do anything civilization related.

Edited by MajorTom on Jun 8th 2022 at 8:04:28 AM

I'm hardly underestimating the rural states. Historically, a rural area rarely makes a power grab, and rarely succeeds when they do. The best they can manage is a sustained insurgency, and even then, mostly they just end up redominated (though usually a little begrudgingly) by the cities.

The megalopolis is the one where it could go either way, but in practice, rural states are in the modern economy tiny both economically and population-wise. Meanwhile, being a breadbasket isn't the "I win" button in international or intranational relations that people often think. Sure, Iowa is entirely corn, but what good does that do them when they have nothing to do with the extra corn besides try to sell it to the megalopolis? Certainly, food supply gives them some leverage, but being a major food producer doesn't historically have nearly as much leverage as would be thought. Otherwise Egypt, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and other places like that wouldn't have spent most of their time as not just being part of other countries, but not even holding a particularly privileged position within those countries.

Meanwhile, the military bases and most of the military equipment are kept in the already economically powerful and extremely populated states. The heavy industry is also in those states. The best case betrayal scenario for the rural states is that they end up in a long-running guerilla campaign against the armies of the megalopolis and Virginia, and especially against whatever California ends up doing, because California (and whatever friends they bring) has the Central Valley AND the tech industry AND two major ports AND a major fishing industry AND oil AND more population than all the neighboring states combined as well as the sheer clout they have in being the fifth largest economy of anywhere. The second major problem the dedicated breadbasket states will run into is that their farms are all owned by major companies which usually cross state lines. These companies will be far more interested in selling their crops to the still-wealthy coasts than trying to domestically sell them to the increasingly poor population with few jobs not already working for these companies. The third problem they'll face is that as much as the megalopolis specifically is not autarkic food-wise, modern farms are not remotely autarkic either.

And this is all assuming a non-amicable dissolution of the US. In an amicable dissolution, the rural states wouldn't even have the power to try to nationalize their farms (they'd fail either way, because the coastal states start out with almost all the money and have a lot of interest in the new rural countries never nationalizing, and could, if worst came to worst, simply buy a mercenary army and turn them into banana [or corn] republics, but the rural countries wouldn't even be able to try that in the amicable dissolution.) An amicable dissolution would mean that there would be even less chance for the big farm corporations to be broken up during the fighting, meaning they'd be even more influential and likely end up running the rural territories as company towns.

This is of course discounting the US's nuclear weapons, because if there were nuclear weapons involved than nearly everyone would be dead... except that the nuclear submarines would eventually run out of food and either defect to another country or need to return to a coastal state to resupply.

Being a food-rich place is less important to logistics and strategy today than it has ever been historically, and historically, it wasn't remotely an "I win" button. Meanwhile, history shows that even when a major farming place is independent, it ends up an economic vassal of any nearby powers whether those powers are dependent on them or not.

I want to ask if the hypothetical drying up of the Southwestern states combined with the existence of the Great Lakes Charter agreement might result in a Divided US as the Southwest's prosperity and quality of life wanes form not having access to the water needed for their population and crops and the resulting fallout breeds resentment between the east and west coasts?

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jul 24th 2022 at 2:50:45 AM

I agree with Ars above.

I can’t really imagine a realistic scenario where an America undergoing a Second Civil War would not be taken advantage of in some way by Russia, especially given….current world events and that Alaska is so far removed from the rest of the mainland U.S. it would probably have to completely abstain from siding with any of the factions that are fighting just to defend itself, and would likely have to hope that Canada would immediately go to their aid in the event that they are invaded and/or the military personnel serving in Alaska isn’t enough.

So, I presume then if you want to keep outside countries from interfering, then either WW3 just completely crippled every major superpower thus forcing them to basically focus on their own problems for the next decade or so (in the U.S.’ case said problems are the Second Civil War and everything that entails), or something else is happening with America’s enemies and rival superpowers that they can’t/won’t take advantage of America being fractured?

Edited by Angelspawndragon on Jul 25th 2022 at 3:55:01 AM

Keep in mind that Russia may not be capable of exploiting the situation...

Foreign nations can interfere in many ways. It doesn't have to be through boots on the ground. It can also be through trade, money, propaganda.

^ This

^^ I use Russia simply as the most obvious example of a foreign government likely to take advantage of an America divided by civil war if they were able to do so, and especially since outside of Russia, China, and North Korea I can’t think of any other country that the U.S. government has, at best, a rocky relationship with.

I would also be surprised if the rest of NATO sat on the sidelines doing nothing if the civil war was dragged out considerably longer than anyone could hope.

So hence why I’m wondering that if foreign nations aren’t going to take advantage of this Second American Civil War, or aid one of the factions, then what exactly is happening/happened on such a global scale that ended up preventing outside interference.

Iran, most of the Middle East, Afghanistan if they ever decide to do anything international instead of focusing on the domestic side, Pakistan, a good chunk of south and central america are at least vaguely annoyed with the US at any given time, some of the post-soviet republics, a good chunk of Central Africa, and most of North Africa have rocky enough relationships with the US to try something given the chance. And of course, most other countries would be interested in helping one side or another in the civil war, especially the US's allies, who would almost certainly step in to protect whichever they thought was the legitimate government, and considering that which is the "legitimate" government is pretty much always the same in any conflict (it's whichever has a clearer line of continuity from the last) most likely the "legitimate" side will be much better equipped.

One of the problems with invading Alaska though is that it's like invading Russia in the winter. It's large and at similar latitude, and similarly sparse. Maybe an invader would be able to take out some of the coasts, but the problem is, a good chunk of the cities aren't even connected to a road network, being cut off by mountains and fjords. (Juneau, the capital, for example, can only be reached by boat or plane, and their airport is pretty small.) The invader would quickly run into the problem where they simply don't have access to much of Alaska.

But yes, a civil war without massive foreign interference bringing it almost immediately to a quick end would be surprising, and considering that the US is a nuclear power, what happened to the nukes that they aren't being used?

I don't think it's just a matter of continuity but also one of pragmatism. Nations have lots of existing agreements with the USA. US allies have huge benefits with their alliance. Any opponent of the existing government is very unlikely to be beneficial along the same lines.

So there's considerable incentive for allies to assist the continuity government while opposing rebels, and considerable incentive for enemies to support the rebels.

But it also depends on where all the military might goes in this war. Whoever holds the nukes can hold the entire world's armadas at bay, after all. Europe's not gonna send backup if the rebels can nuke a fleet out of existence.

The most likely form of intervention is supplying one of the factions, esp. one or more state's National Guard units.