Civil Peace

The United States is looking at a dire time now. The bad decisions we have been making over the past 30 years are gathering up their storm clouds and forming into a cyclone of consequences. We are rapidly running out of options to forestall the inevitable.

During the American revolutionary war Ben Franklin spent much of his time schmoozing French aristocracy to convince them to supply blankets, uniforms, weapons, and ultimately an armed brigade led by Rochambeau from New England to Virginia to support Washington. France was basically there to poke England in the eye in yet another Anglo-Franco war.

During the US Civil War England supported the Confederacy. They wanted a monopoly on cotton from the agrarian south and to poke the north in the eye. The liberal Russian Emperor Alexander II provided a naval blockade to New York and San Francisco to prevent an English invasion and quite possibly guaranteeing the North’s victory.

In the Syrian civil war Russia only provided assistance to Assad when he demonstrated a significant victory in battle. And we saw what happened recently in Kazakhstan. Why would Russia want to fight another country’s battles if they were not able to show any initiative on their own? Powerful countries want strong partners not parasites.

There seems to be a trend here. Civil wars aren’t really about civilians. There is always some strong backer, foreign power, or a tribal leader with a militant following if nothing else. That doesn’t exist on any grass roots scale in the US today. Buffalo Man doesn’t cut it.

If the US is going to fall apart, as seems inevitable, it will be for the simple reason that it can no longer hold itself together when those nine meals till chaos hits us. It will be organic and chaotic and not at all planned by any Reagan-Gorbachev machinations. It will be horrific, too, but I expect that charismatic leaders will arise to enforce some local control. Crises have a habit of driving out the trash and revealing true leaders.

We are already seeing governors in conservative states simply ignoring mandates from Washington. When Washington realizes that they can’t do anything about it they will just ‘declare victory’ so they don’t have to face the humiliation of admitting being flipped off by the hinterlands.

Regional states like those in New England have had coalitions of governors who get together to coordinate their laws and practices on things like COVID, the environment, and economics for a long time. Some even work with Canada and I assume with Mexico, as well. It is in the interest of all those involved to coordinate with the state (or country) next door. These may become the basis for new geo-political entities in the future with the lip service of a loose federal umbrella.

It’s that or starve, right?