Russian analyst predicts breakup of US

[Hosakawa Tito]

Sounds like old school soviet wishful thinking. Realize that this "Information Intelligence Warrior Talking Head" is proselytizing to a less than worldly and delusional audience of Russian citizens. As Americans we certainly have had plenty of recent experience with those in our own society. Since when have the Russians ever had a clue as to how the rest of the world operates and thinks? However, he's not alone. Here's a link to :The Nine Nations of North America is a book written in 1981 by Joel Garreau.

• New England (also called New Britain or Atlantica) — an expanded version including not only Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut (although omitting the Connecticut suburbs of New York City), but also the Canadian Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. Capital: Boston.
• The Foundry — the by-then-declining industrial areas of the northeastern United States and Great Lakes region stretching from New York City to Milwaukee, and including Chicago and Philadelphia as well as industrial Southern Ontario centering on Toronto. Capital: Detroit.
• Dixie — the former Confederate States of America (today the southeastern United States) centered on Atlanta, and including most of eastern Texas to Austin. Garreau's "Dixie" also includes Kentucky (which had both Federal and Confederate governments); southern portions of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana; and the "Little Dixie" region of southeastern Oklahoma. Finally, the region also includes most of Florida, as far south as the cities of Fort Myers and Naples. Capital: Atlanta.
• The Breadbasket — most of the Great Plains states and part of the Prairie provinces: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, most of western Missouri, western Wisconsin, eastern Colorado, parts of Illinois and Indiana, and North Texas. Also included are some of Northern Ontario and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Capital: Kansas City.
• The Islands — The South Florida metropolitan area, the Florida Keys, the Caribbean, and parts of Venezuela. Capital: Miami.
• Mexamerica — the southern and Central Valley portions of California as well as southern Arizona, the portion of Texas bordering on the Rio Grande, most of New Mexico and all of Mexico, centered on either Los Angeles or Mexico City (depending on whom you ask), which are significantly Spanish-speaking. Garreau's original book did not place all of Mexico within Mexamerica, but only Northern Mexico and the Baja California peninsula. Capital: Los Angeles.
• Ecotopia — the Pacific Northwest coast west of the Cascade Range, stretching from Alaska down through coastal British Columbia, Washington state, Oregon and into California just north of Santa Barbara. Capital: San Francisco.
• The Empty Quarter — most of Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Colorado from Denver west, as well as the eastern portions of Oregon, California, Washington, all of Alberta and Northern Canada (including Nunavut, although not yet created at that time), northern Arizona, parts of New Mexico, and British Columbia east of the Coast Ranges. Capital: Denver.
• Quebec — the primarily French-speaking province of Canada, whose legislature is called the National Assembly of Quebec, and which has held referendums on secession in 1980 and 1995, the latter of which the "separatists" lost narrowly. Capital: Quebec City.

Garreau also discussed several areas that he termed "aberrations":

• Washington, D.C. and its surrounding area, specifically referring to the area "inside the Beltway".
• Manhattan south of Harlem (he placed Harlem, and by extension the Manhattan neighborhoods to its north, clearly within The Foundry).
• Hawaii, which he considered an Asian aberration as much as a North American aberration.
• Northern Alaska, despite its categorization on the front cover as part of the Empty Quarter, was listed in the aberrations section of book.
• Although not included in the "Aberrations" chapter of his book, Southern West Virginia was named by Garreau as a region which had significant aspects of both Dixie (Appalachian geography and historical ties to Virginia) and The Foundry (coal-based and unionized economy closely tied to the fortunes of the Rust Belt), and could be placed in either nation. Garreau's conclusion about the region was "In good times, southeastern West Virginia can be considered an isolated part of the Foundry. In bad times, it is an isolated part of Dixie." Garreau placed the northern half of the state in The Foundry.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

The Nine Nations of North America is a book written in 1981 by Joel Garreau.

Newfoundland in the same province as Boston?

[lars573]

Newfoundland in the same province as Boston?

No more rediculous than Texas and Maine being in the same country. Or Alberta and Quebec.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

No more rediculous than Texas and Maine being in the same country. Or Alberta and Quebec.

Yes, but his division implies that Newfoundland and Massachusetts have very similar cultural features.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Sounds like old school soviet wishful thinking. Realize that this "Information Intelligence Warrior Talking Head" is proselytizing to a less than worldly and delusional audience of Russian citizens. As Americans we certainly have had plenty of recent experience with those in our own society. Since when have the Russians ever had a clue as to how the rest of the world operates and thinks? However, he's not alone. Here's a link to :The Nine Nations of North America is a book written in 1981 by Joel Garreau.

I've never read that book. But Garreau's division of North America looks decent enough to me. It is pretty much how I'd do it if I had to divide it up in eight parts.

-~+-~+-~+<<((0))>>+~-+~-+~-

I think our Russian has just discovered that the US is not a monolith. But a breaking up? Anytime soon?

What I can't work out, is that this is no random internet blogger, but a well respected and educated political scientist. Maybe he really believes it. Maybe he is more accustomed to Eastern European history, where maps tend to change drastically every few decades or so. Most of the causes for that are absent in north America.

Is he preaching to the choir? Does one make money in Russia with this sort of stuff? After all, there's money to be made in America too with spouting the most ridiculous nonsense about Russia, or the Arab world, or Europe.
I can't work it out.

[Reverend Joe]

Well, of course the US isn't a monolith; neither is any Western country. But we're not going to break up (at least, not anytime soon) because, aside from Texas, no part of the US has any concept of a national tradition aside from the national vision. Many people may be pissed off individualists, but the US mentality is highly dependent on the Federal government because we simply can't imagine anything else.

When Americans get really angry, they protest, riot and assassinate. They don't secede; they try to change the current government to suit their own desires.

[rasoforos]

I wonder what d happen to Texas if it secedes. I mean, they are not exactly popular with the rest of the planet. They better make a deal where they get to keep the nukes

[Sarmatian]

I've never read that book. But Garreau's division of North America looks decent enough to me. It is pretty much how I'd do it if I had to divide it up in eight parts.

-~+-~+-~+<<((0))>>+~-+~-+~-

I think our Russian has just discovered that the US is not a monolith. But a breaking up? Anytime soon?

What I can't work out, is that this is no random internet blogger, but a well respected and educated political scientist. Maybe he really believes it. Maybe he is more accustomed to Eastern European history, where maps tend to change drastically every few decades or so. Most of the causes for that are absent in north America.

Is he preaching to the choir? Does one make money in Russia with this sort of stuff? After all, there's money to be made in America too with spouting the most ridiculous nonsense about Russia, or the Arab world, or Europe.
I can't work it out.

He didn't say "when" it's going to happen. The point is that it could happen and if it happens, it will be divided like that, in his "expert" opinion.

Where most of you guys from the west (western Europe and North America) are wrong is in your notion of eastern Europe. In this case eastern Europe in political sense, not geographical, ie everything east of Germany. You're presuming that eastern Europe is unstable because people there are nationalists. I have a totally opposite view - people there are in general more nationalistic than in the west because of that unstable situation.

Let's take Yugoslavia for example. If you ask people from the west why did Yugoslavia disintegrate the most common answer would be nationalism and it would be the wrong answer. Well maybe not wrong, but incomplete. Main reasons for the breakup are economic crisis and foreign influences. Nationalism rode on the wave of economic crisis and foreign influences fed it. Yugoslavia never recovered from the oil crisis in the seventies, and high standard of living was maintained by credits and by spending reserves. In the eighties people started to feel it and that's when nationalism started to awaken. By the end of eighties it was clear that something must be done because the has hit the fan. Complex reforms were to be undertaken and entire country was to be reorganized. That's where foreign influences come in. Foreign support was given to various nationalist leaders and parties instead.

US is of course very much different. Nationalism isn't much of a threat to the US yet, mainly because all those nationalities in way created American nationalism, they're a part of it. English, French, Germans, Irish etc... Also, they don't have any option. What could Americans of Irish roots do, even if they wanted to secede? Exactly nothing, for several reasons: 1. There are too few of them, 2. Ireland couldn't support them against the US even if it wanted to 3. Even if they win, they wouldn't have any more contact with Ireland than they have now. I use Ireland as an example, it's the same with any European country. Also, America enjoys cordial or friendly relations with their ancestral countries.
But, one very large ethnic group is very different - Latin Americans. They have a different cultural upbringing (not all of them of course, but a big chunk), different language and the countries they can relate to are around the corner - save Brazil, it's entire Central and South America and cultural links are much easier to maintain when the distance is not so great. Unlike with European countries, US often has strained or even unfriendly relations with many of those countries. Hell, most of the time they can identify with one another visually because their skin colour tend to be darker. There's your nationalistic spark.

On the other hand, US is much more susceptible to economic crisis. It highly indebted and its trade deficit is huge. US is maintaining their economic might by the means of dollar, their strategic control of resources in many parts of the world (or even better, their control of strategic resources) and of course, their military might and political influence. And what is now happening in the world? Dollar is losing its value, it's slowly losing status of the worlds prime currency, keeping control of resources is getting harder because others are making a grab for them and their political influence is waning, which could be seen in the Kosovo case. It is pretty much limited to western Europe and few of their protectorates around the world, like Afghanistan. To combat that and to keep the current world order, they started using more of their military muscle, which in a way backfired because their debt has risen and political influences have deteriorated even more, even if they did manage to acquire control of some resources. So basically you have huge spending combined with huge deficit and debt while dollar is losing value and in all probability all that is going to continue. There's your economic reason.

We come to foreign influences, and this is where US is "most safe", so to speak. Other countries don't see the breakup of the US in their interest, because US and its European allies are very good markets for their growing economy, US is still able to resist such advances because at the moment its economy and military are still strong enough and it is very unlikely that key foreign powers needed for that to happen could find so much common ground to make a coordinated effort.

Of course, this is all pretty far in the future, but the most dangerous thing for the US is that with time, all those factors will only get stronger. 1) Spanish speaking population is on the rise, both through immigration and their higher birth rate, 2) economy is very fragile and it doesn't look that it will improve, more chances are it will deteriorate and 3) other countries in the world in whose interest it is that America loses some of its power and influence are on the rise.

I'm not saying that it will happen for sure or that it will happen soon, but US is very far from being "totally safe". I personally don't agree with that Russian political scientist, especially on his view of new countries that will emerge. Even Izvestia (they published the article) described it as unlikely and pretty much ridiculed it. If something like that is to happen, it probably won't in our lifetime.

Then again, US of A in its history has shown that it is sort of a mutant (in a good way) that is highly adaptable and could thrive in conditions that other countries would find lethal. We'll just have to wait and see, but I wouldn't say that the idea of US breaking up is science-fiction or reject it outright as wishful thinking...

[JR-]

excellent analysis, my thanks.