Tiny United States of America

[RMG]

What POD would shrink the United States of America of 2004 to just four or five states? It can be at any time-- the only condition is that the shriveled USA operates using our Constitution (amended as necessary but still recognizable) and a flag that's at least vaguely similar to OTL's.

[david3565]

Originally Posted by RMG

What POD would shrink the United States of America of 2004 to just four or five states? It can be at any time-- the only condition is that the shriveled USA operates using our Constitution (amended as necessary but still recognizable) and a flag that's at least vaguely similar to OTL's.

Two possibilties. The first is nuclear war and the second is military occupation. Neither of those are bloody likely. You could try for a modern day ACW or second ARW, but the chances of those happening on next to nill.

[Leo Caesius]

I imagine that the US would continue to maintain its current flag and Congress, even if the rest of the states were lost - much like the Catholic Church, which continues to appoint "cardinals" to dioceses in North Africa that don't have a single catholic soul, or ROC-Taiwan, the parliament of which has "representatives" appointed to each of the (mainland) provinces they lost to the Communists.

[poster342002]

It might have a flag resembling something like Liberia's (which is very similar to the USA's): a single star with the red & white stripes.

What could bring about this smaller USA? Perhaps a longer, harder and drawn-out war of independance that ends in some kind of stalemate. This might leave vast swathes of what is the USA in OTL still under British control in the ATL - with only a few states succesfully digging in and remaining independant. Or perhaps a partially-succesful Confederate invasion of much of the north sometime after a civil war in which the CSA managed to break away form the US. Perhaps the CSA continues to build up it's military, fearing attack from the USA, and launches pre-emptive action backed by the British?

It is doubtful whether such a truncated USA (if it indeed went by that name in the ATL) would be a superpower on the world stage.

[Duncan]

Originally Posted by RMG

What POD would shrink the United States of America of 2004 to just four or five states? It can be at any time-- the only condition is that the shriveled USA operates using our Constitution (amended as necessary but still recognizable) and a flag that's at least vaguely similar to OTL's.

Not quite sure what parameters you're setting; a PoD "at any time", but "shrink the US of 2004"? Do you mean it has to be allowed to grow to current size first, or can it be stifled at birth?

If the latter, what about the threatened New England secession of 1812 that someone mentioned in another thread? If that precedent established the right of a state to secede, who knows what others might follow in later decades, or how the expansion of the US might have been altered?

[David S Poepoe]

Originally Posted by RMG

What POD would shrink the United States of America of 2004 to just four or five states? It can be at any time-- the only condition is that the shriveled USA operates using our Constitution (amended as necessary but still recognizable) and a flag that's at least vaguely similar to OTL's.

As a means to cut government bureacracy the 50 states of the Union are reconfigured into 5 - which I won't bother to name. This allows the firing of 40 senators and their staffs and various other cost savings.

[Leo Caesius]

Originally Posted by David S Poepoe

As a means to cut government bureacracy the 50 states of the Union are reconfigured into 5 - which I won't bother to name. This allows the firing of 40 senators and their staffs and various other cost savings.

This is precisely what President Berzelius Windrip does in Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.

[poster342002]

Originally Posted by David S Poepoe

As a means to cut government bureacracy the 50 states of the Union are reconfigured into 5 - which I won't bother to name. This allows the firing of 40 senators and their staffs and various other cost savings.

Isn't that not so much of a "shrunken" US as an administrativley re-organised one? I'm assuming that the above idea does not involve the loss of any existing US-territory, but the integration of a number of states into larger-sized "super-states"? I get the inpression there is a widespread dislike of the idea of a "strong central/federal government" in the USA, so I'm not sure if this proposal would meet with enthusiasm since it might be a step in that direction - notwithstanding the budgetary gains that might follow such a reorgnisation.

[RMG]

Originally Posted by Duncan

Not quite sure what parameters you're setting; a PoD "at any time", but "shrink the US of 2004"? Do you mean it has to be allowed to grow to current size first, or can it be stifled at birth?

I just meant that as of 2004 the ATL USA is much smaller than OTL's 2004 USA.

I'm not sure what made me post this thread. I've just had the image of a US flag with four stars flying over Washington for some reason.

Oh, hey, here's an idea: At some point, the USA falls to fascists and starts a world war, which it loses. The victorious allies balkanize the USA into many small countries, leaving a rump United States consisting of Washington and a couple of nearby states.

[David S Poepoe]

Originally Posted by RMG

I just meant that as of 2004 the ATL USA is much smaller than OTL's 2004 USA.

I'm not sure what made me post this thread. I've just had the image of a US flag with four stars flying over Washington for some reason.

Oh, hey, here's an idea: At some point, the USA falls to fascists and starts a world war, which it loses. The victorious allies balkanize the USA into many small countries, leaving a rump United States consisting of Washington and a couple of nearby states.

Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana are the basis for a new nation?

[Suit_N_Tie]

Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana are the basis for a new nation?

I think he means Washington, D.C.

[RMG]

Originally Posted by Suit_N_Tie

I think he means Washington, D.C.

Yeah, I was too lazy to write two extra letters. Whoops.



ObWI: What if the US Capital moved to Washington state?

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by RMG

ObWI: What if the US Capital moved to Washington state?

Wouldn't work. Seattle already has Boeing and MIcrosoft so they don't need another corporate head office, and newscasters would just feel silly saying the name every day if it moved to Walla Walla

[David S Poepoe]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

Wouldn't work. Seattle already has Boeing and MIcrosoft so they don't need another corporate head office, and newscasters would just feel silly saying the name every day if it moved to Walla Walla

I thought they were losing Boeing. Which, if anybody remembers Benny Hill, is the sound of something falling off an airplane.

[Scott Rosenthal]

I thought that Boeing had already moved to Chicago....