State Department Reports 2022
Report on the Threats of an American Civil War - 2022.11.05
The danger of a Civil War in the United States of America has been mentioned in the SD predictions on the Trump presidency in 2017. Due to the attempted storming of the Capitol on 2021.01.06 and the current extremist positions of the Republican party, it is now a much discussed trope also in the American and international media. In this report, the SD attempts to analyze the patterns which might precede a Civil War, and the path it could follow.
One example of discussions on this subject is an article in The Guardian from 2022.11.06.
Precedent Examples
There are two precedent cases of which the SD has got enough awareness to be able to use them as comparisons, the Yugoslav Wars and of course the U.S. Civil War from 1861-1865. Other cases, like the Russian Civil War, the "Sonderbundkrieg" in Switzerland and the English Civil War, lie too much in the past or have a too different starting scenario to be useful.
Similar to the situation in the U.S., socialist Yugoslavia was structured formally into states with a relatively high degree of sovereignty. Most Yugoslav citizens spoke "Serbocroatian", with some local exceptions. Power centered on two states, Croatia and Serbia which had quite different historic and cultural backgrounds.
This mirrors the situation on the U.S. East Coast - two power centers, the Southern states and the states around New York, with the same language, English, but local variants. The states on the Pacific Coast are culturally nearer to New York. In the original U.S. Civil War, they aligned with the "North", although without much influence as they were not yet fully developed.
Hate Propaganda
One pattern which preceded the Yugoslav Wars was the hate propaganda against the Albanian minority in Kosovo. Serbs organized festivals and published propaganda to paint Kosovo as their "core territory" and managed the autonomous region like a colony. At the same time, Serbs understood themselves as people punished by history, suppressed and always threatened. This pattern appears also in the white population of rural America, especially in the South.
After the end of Tito's reign, Yugoslavia slowly began to democratize, allowing elections in the states. The U.S., in contrast, seem to be an established democracy. But the U.S. is a two party system, with all other parties chanceless and only detrimental to "their" political direction. Locally, therefore, the U.S. can be seen as a one party system, too, in many states and places. Hate propaganda is used by Republican politicians to motivate their voters, similar to the Serb population under Milosevic and the Croat population under Tudjman.
Local Insurrections
The Yugoslav Wars started with an insurrection of Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia in 1990, after the elections in Croatia in April 1990 led to a nationalist led government in that state. A Musogradian expedition visited those territories in September 1989, already observing some tensions. The conflicts started slowly, in rural regions, without much notice. A compareable pattern in the U.S. would be an installation of independent political structures and borders in a rural area within a Democrat ruled state like New York or Pennsylvania. This has been seen only on a small scale.
Authoritarian Government and Fascism
It is generally assumed that the Republicans are currently striving for permanent minority rule, claiming the U.S. are a "Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy". There are various pathways towards that goal - controlling the Supreme Court (already achieved), controlling local elections through gerrymandering (partially achieved) and changing the constitution through an assembly of States (in progress, but not yet achieved).
The gain of power by legal means, combined with terror tactics, is a hallmark of classical Fascism as executed by the Italian and German fascists. Similar patterns occurred in other European countries in the 1930s. Sometimes a semi-legal military coup was executed. In contrast to this, Communist governments historically won power in civil wars or under occupation regimes, not through legal means. The only major exception to this rule is Spain, where Fascists gained power through a military coup combined with a bloody civil war.
We expect that Trumpist Republicans will follow the "semi-legal" path to install their version of a "Constitutional Republic", in combination with limited terror tactics. Measures to make their rule permanent will follow both on a state and a federal level. Such an "authoritarian America" has been used as background by many authors, e.g. Philip Roth, Philip K. Dick, or Robert Charles Wilson ("Julian Comstock").
The SD believes an important building block of this would be the control of the U.S. Army, but currently the high professionalism of the Army protects it from becoming partisan. In Yugoslavia, between 1980 and 1990, the officer corps was purged of non Serb officers. Such a step in the U.S. would be another pattern to be observed, especiall in an early, more or less hidden phase of an American-fascist system.
Secession
The original American Civil War formally started with the secession of the Southern States and their attack on Fort Sumter. We do not expect such a scenario to be repeated from the side of the Republican ruled states. The current policies of Trumpist Republicans point towards dominance over all of the United States, using the groundwork laid with the creation of a plethora of rural States and the manipulation of the easily corrumptible FPTP voting system through gerrymandering.
In Yugoslavia, a comparable Serbian attempt to dominate and centralize the federal state led to the secession of Slovenia, a highly developed small state at the Austrian and Italian border. The Yugoslav government tried to suppress this secession with military force, but failed in a short war. The question is what would happen in the U.S. if Republican ruled states try to change the Constitution or established electoral law to cement their dominance and to force all states to follow their "cultural" policies e.g. in regards to abortion or racial equality. Would California or Hawai'i try to escape such a rigged system through secession, using their National Guard forces and local, sympathetic U.S. Army forces to guarantee their security?
We hold this to be highly probable, especially if a Republican state supermajority would try to amend the Constitution or break democratic rules on Presidential elections by determining electors through their State parliaments. Such a pattern does not appear in current discussions in liberal media, but the structures to enable it are present. A Republican president might even be happy to let them go as it would secure Republican majorities in the rest of the country.
The SD would advise the leaders of these states to establish lines of communication and structures to be able to react quickly and decisively if the situation makes this necessary. They also should make sure not to lose control of rural territories through local insurrections, as above. The costs to remove them at a point where they are established and supported by authoritarian states is much higher than any cost incurred by an early clampdown.
It also would be a mistake for only some states to secede, e.g. Hawai'i and the Pacific states. The remaining "blue" states would be in a much more dangerous situation in this case. Their negotiation position would be much better if all "blue" states would threaten to separate at once and install a new central government and President based on democratic principles. We do not believe, though, that this is probable.
Civil War
A separation of "blue" and "red" states could occur peacefully at first, in principle. But both political sides are present within most states, divided along City / Suburbs / rural lines. "Blue" cities would resist against the implementation of authoritarian rules by police forces under the control of a American-Fascist government. Rural "Red" counties would try to leave "Blue" states, seceded or not. This phase could be extremely violent, compareable to the Bosnian war with the siege of Sarajevo and the atrocities in Gorazde, but with a population two orders of magnitude larger, and better armed.
It is difficult to predict when and how the U.S. Army would insert itself in such a conflict. This depends on how the army would be purged or divided in case of secessions. About half of the soldiers come from ethnic minorities (Blacks, Hispanic both some 15%, Native Americans and Asian Americans both some 7% in 2004 according to Wikipedia). This makes the Army a major stabilizing force. It is even feasible that the U.S. Army command would not accept both a "legal" American-Fascist coup and the consequential secession of states resisting it, and take control of the U.S. government.
An attempted purge by an American-Fascist government would create a high number of discharged officers and soldiers who would be available to State National Guard forces, possibly taking equipment with them. Such a purge attempt could also lead directly to decisions by the Army leadership to take power directly.
In our view, the least probable case is that the Army remains both undivided and untouched during a Civil War like conflict. Either it decides to take power as an unifying force or it breaks up. In the latter case, the core question would be the control of the Navy, the Air Force and especially the Strategic Forces. The hope is that either the united Army or the distribution of heavy arms on both sides would make sure that the conflict would come to a quick end. If not, it is probable that localized conflicts would burn on for a prolonged time, completely destroying the economy.
External influences
Depending on the structures emerging during the first phase of such a conflict, external powers would try to mediate or to take influence. Some powers might be tempted to annex territory, especially Alaska as it is sparsely settled and isolated. Mexico might want to protect strongly Hispanic regions in the south, but probably only indirectly. We do not expect major numbers of external troops being stationed as "Peace Forces" due to the high level of hate propaganda and individual aggression which would be directed at such a force.
End Result
In contrast to the original Civil War, we believe an "United States" would not anymore be feasible after such a conflict. The resulting states and statelets would need to find new joint structures and especially new political forms, away from the deadly FPTP-based two party system which would have morphed into one party systems anyway. The timescale here is difficult to predict - it could be one or even two decades until North America regains stable structures. We derive this from the results and similar time scale of the Yugoslav Wars - some states found a stable structure quickly and even have joined the EU, while others took much longer to reach stability, with Bosnia-Herzegovina still not stable and Serbia oscillating between West and East.
Such a result would of course have geopolitical implications - China would rise to remain the only superpower, dominating both by its military and its economic power. It would be necessary, though, for Europe to support those regions of the former US which have a similar political orientation and setup to the European system. Possible "Pacific States of America" or "Atlantic States of America" would be relatively strong, but of course much weaker than the current U.S.A..
Alternative Developments
Of course history is not predetermined. Alternate pathways could be:
- Return of reason and decency on the Right, especially when those external forces meddling through "Social Media" can be contained.
- Stabilisation of a Rightist-Authoritarian system, even maybe after a civil war, similar to Spain in mid 20th century.
- Permanent conflict on a low level, with tensions between states and social groups simmering but not exploding.
- U.S. Army takes power and launches a process of renewal of the political structures of the U.S.A..
The first two pathways are relatively improbable according to our analysis. The third pathway is possible, but the American "Winner Takes All" system makes it improbable that peace can be kept especially around Federal or Presidential elections. Military rule might be a consequence, but the setup and size of the U.S. Army make it not very probable that it will be able to react as quickly as would be necessary. One trigger might be an external attempt to directly influence the conflict or even occupy territory, e.g. Alaska or Hawai'i.
A mixture of authoritarian and democratic states can exist if the central power is not questioned (e.g. the EU with Hungary), but when there is a roughly 50% split of both types and the central authority becomes weakened and delegitimized, the situation will not remain stable, as observed by Leopold Kohr in "Breakdown of Nations".
Finally, conservative American voters might get tired of the radical rhethoric and lies of Trumpist politicians. First signs of such a development have shown up in the 2022 House of Representatives elections . Republicans received a slight majority of votes and seats, but radical Trumpist candidates often fared worse than less radical ones. Similar results were seen in the Senate and State election results. Also, most interestingly, gerrymandering (ie manipulating the borders of voting districts) did not much influence the results, as there was only a small difference between vote and seat percentages for both parties.
Also, a split between radical Trumpists and more traditional Republicans, even if not made official by creating a Trumpist Party, will weaken the right and stabilize the country. This split is becoming more visible with the electoral success of the Governor of Florida, de Santis.
This might mark a turning point, slowly reducing the influence of radical politicians and a turn towards responsible politics.
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