It's in the news this week that University of California at Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program has found that half of Americans surveyed believe that civil war is inevitable, and within the next few years. I'm trying to imagine what that would look like and would like to hear what everyone else is imagining.
It's not going to involve a roll of barbed wire at the Mason Dixon line. Sarah Vowell notes in the New York Times that even state lines aren't very good dividers between all-red on one side and all-blue on the other. She lives in a blue county within a red state. Most red states are blue around their capitals. So how would civil war look?
A lot of the agitation for civil war is coming from individuals and Saturday afternoon militias who are angry with Democrats and in some cases with democracy itself. They're furious, armed, stocked with ammo, and ready to come out fighting. That’s fantasy war. They might imagine themselves as heroic foot soldiers but they're no army. In some cases the militias are somewhat cohesive squads. But war isn't just individual courage and squad level tactics. War needs a governmental organization to define the objective at the outcome, generals to plot the large scale strategy, and the organization of supply lines,communication, command structure, and so on. Some of the homegrown militias have made small inroads into these areas but there is little sign that any of them is ready to grow into an army much less a secessionist government.
There's another way that a sort of civil war could take place. States could secede from the union. My state has a preponderance of red voters and a lot of interest in conservative to libertarian leadership, in folks like Janice McGeachin (the one in the famous photo sitting in a pickup holding a gun and a Bible) and the more famous Ammon Bundy. Folks like them might attempt to lead a secession.
If a state outvotes its minority members and attempts to secede, it will run into US laws and legal precedent that make it very difficult, if not impossible, to do so. That could put an end to the whole effort. A state or group of states could declare revolution, though, and insist that they are no longer bound by US law. But small libertarian enclaves and“sovereign citizens” have tried that tactic already. It hasn't worked because it's tough for one or a handful of people to declare “I am not bound by your laws!” and make that stick against the weight of the whole US government. If, say, a couple dozen red states banded together, overcame the objections of the Democrats that tend to be a majority in even red states' urban areas, and agreed to secede together, they might secede as a revolutionary group.
If they did, it seems unlikely that the US military would then march across the border of, say, Oregon into Idaho, take prisoners, and demand surrender. Taking out the leaders of a secessionist government with targeted drone strikes … well, possible in a war movie but it just doesn't seem likely in real life. More likely is that the US government would let them go but reclaim federal assets within the secessionist states, such as government lands, or obtain payment in kind: Give the US this land at the boundary of the secessionist states and we'll relinquish our claim on that chunk in the middle, say. Similarly, states might sue the fed for recently paid taxes.
What then? The secessionist government would need to recreate the federal programs on which its citizens rely: Social Security, medicare, federal funding for schools and infrastructure, and so on. They would have some money in the form of taxes no longer paid to the federal government, but they wouldn't have the laws, processes, and general bureaucracy necessary to run the programs. States would find themselves missing laws that they need to protect the environment, to protect residents from business cheats, and so on. That would delight their libertarian residents at first, no doubt, but soon they would realize the downside. Secessionist states would, like Brexit UK, lack import/export agreements with foreign countries that supply products they need or that buy products they sell, including with the US itself. And they would have to build the new government in the midst of turmoil as many of their residents and businesses flee to US states while disgruntled US residents try to move in.
I see this as the big roadblock that stands in the way of a civil war based on secession: lack of leadership. The military branch of the secessionists includes people like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers: not the sort to manage an army much less a government. The political branch is loaded with armed, angry people who can actually lead just a little. After all, it takes some organizing to become the senator from Georgia or to take over of a wildlife refuge in Oregon. But these folks are still the impatient, anger-management-issue sorts, not patient deep thinkers. It’s hard to imagine them handling tedious political negotiation between factions and the detailed development of a bureaucracy to run the complicated gears of a national government. It's remotely possible that the more organized power players who fund the Republican party might step up to help but they would likely dabble at government with more self assurance than skill, repeating Jared Kushner's lackadaisical effort.
That's where I see the civil war failing: the people who want it are more the “Shoot first! Let God sort ‘em out!” types and not the sort ready to take on the frustrating, tedious problems of actual government. They might, and probably will, cause small scale mayhem. I can't imagine them running a country, even a small one, though. If they can manage the complicated process of secession, they’ll still be the dog that caught the car.