North Dakota vs. Kyrgyzstan

A Russian analyst has predicted that in addition to handing the reigns of the global economy to Russia and China, the United States will be so divided that it will actually break up into six states, separated as follows:

the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

While the economic aspect of this projection is probably more accurate than I would like to believe (although I don’t why China, a burgeoning economic powerhouse, would allow the Russian mafia state with no manufacturing or technological capability to be part of its global domination), regarding geopolitics, I think the Russian analyst is confusing US history with his own. While regionally divided on many social and economic issues (although in many ways the division is more urban/rural than east/west), the United States is not the Soviet Union.

The “stan” countries of the former USSR had absolutely nothing to do with Russia. They were simply colonized by the tsar and forced to speak his language. The first real chance they had to separate - when Russia was absolutely at its weakest point militarily - they ran. (And the running is not yet over as Chechnya has sought independence since 1991.) They became Soviets by brute force.

While cynics (and liberals) argue that the United States was colonized in a similar manner, its not as if there are smoldering pockets of natives around the country that are simply waiting for their chance to overthrow the state and return to their nomadic way of life. Whatever else it is, the United States was founded primarily on an idea. Nothing has shown that the regions of the country are no longer committed to the basics of that idea. While the US does have regional, social, religious and economic fault lines, it has always had these fault lines (that’s one reason why we have two houses of Congress). One could argue that these divisions are growing, but I do not believe they are growing to the extent that the central states, for example, will all of the sudden secede and form their own country. Despite our differences, the regions truly have too much in common and too much at stake to break apart. I have absolutely no doubt that, when tested, we’ll bind together.

At minimum it will not occur because the six-state arrangement would place Los Angeles and New York (the only two cities that liberal elites on either coast really care about) in different countries. That alone would cause riots in Hollywood.