AHC: List situations that Balkanize America after 1900

I'm inspired to post this thread after exposing myself to the "Crimson Skies" series which is set in a world where the USA Balkanizes circa 1930. The cause of this in the series is a number of events including the decision to allow alcohol prohibition to be delegated state by state and not made law across the country which leads to cultural divides across state lines and a second outbreak of influenza similar to the Spanish flue. These events then make the Stock Market Crash of 1929 the stray that broke the camels back and the states of the USA as well as the provinces of Canada disunite and form into 27 different countries.

I'd like to see what other ideas can be formed by the members of this site which could be used to create other TLs in which the countries of America (Canada, Mexico, and the USA) could plausibly Balkanize after 1900. This is a task which I find very exciting but extremly difficult to accomplish after 1900. Any ideas would be appreciated as they could help me in forming a TL I'd like to write with this very setting.

PS:please post other ideas besides a Yellowstone eruption. :rolleyes:
 
In 1944, the Japanese military launched "Fu-Go" (a.k.a. "fire ballooons") in an effort to strike terror into the United States, dropping bombs into Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Michigan and Iowa. At the same time Unit 731, planned OPeration CHERRY BLOSSOMS AT MIDNIGHT, which would have placed biological weapons onto the same balloons.

Starting in c. 1945, according to Soviet leaders there was the belief that the U.S. economy would collapse in c. 1953/1954.

In 1956, the Southern Congressional delegation (with the notable exceptions of Al Gore Sr. and Lyndon B. Johnson) signed a manifesto condemning the Supreme Court over its "abuse of judicial power".

Combine these elements and you have a terribly unstable ATL, ready for "dieselpunk action"....
 
You can count on one hand the instances that Japanese balloon bombs made landfall on the North American continent. The seasonal jet stream didn't really favor their passage across the Pacific.
 

Meerkat92

Banned
You can count on one hand the instances that Japanese balloon bombs made landfall on the North American continent. The seasonal jet stream didn't really favor their passage across the Pacific.

Indeed. The most plausible scenario I've ever seen involving Japan bombing the continental US involved a teleportation device.
 
Presidents of the United States, Post WWII
Harry Truman (1945-1953)
Douglas MacArthur (1953-1961)

Barry Goldwater (1961-1969)
Lloyd Bentsen (1969-1977)

Terry Sanford (1977-1979)
Birch Bayh (1979-1989)

During the MacArthur years, the moderately conservative President avoids divisive issues such as a change to the status quo on segregation.

Without OTL's Civil Rights Act vote as a tool against him, Barry Goldwater neither gets the Southern vote nor is unable to turn Northern voters conservative with his persuasive argument.

Rebel Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey eventually splits with the party over the failure to bring any civil rights legislation before the House in Congress, and forms the Social Democratic Party, which gains a majority of the African-American vote nation-wide.

Anti-war Republicans like John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller later leave the Republican Party in opposition to the bipartisan coalition supporting President Bentsen almost unconditionally for the duration of the wars in Nicaragua and Brazil, forming a separate third party rather than joining the SDP, which during this period became increasingly radicalized over the war and the adoption of discriminatory policies against African-Americans in places like California and New York.

The progressive Southern governor turned President, Terry Sanford, is assassinated in Puerto Rico, initially blamed on separatists but then found to be a member of the white, mainland born upper-class of the island (encouraged by government policies rewarding immigration to the island by mainland citizens). The assassin claims to have been motivated by Sanford's in this ATL relatively leftist stance on "the race issue".

Vice-President Bayh succeeds him and stays "moderate" on "the race issue", maintaining the status quo, and later winning his own two-term presidency for his efforts, endorsed by many Republicans eager to keep the SDP out of office.

Which leaves us in 1989, with a US that is rather colonial in the Caribbean and Latin America, essentially operating under a creeping Apartheid system, has a large and seething radical left fueled by those factors.

The Independents in New York and California want out of the new American empire, but work with apartheid supporters; the environmentalist movement is not tied to social liberalism in this world and is on the rise; the Social Democrats have an armed wing and a lot of members understandably hardened by decades of racial injustice; and the South has been catered two by both parties for so long that it will likely go berserk should the Republican-Democrat coalition in Congress "turn against them" on the race issue; which consequently colonialist Reps in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Panama would see as reason enough to secede, probably only to be toppled in violent revolutions by the second-class citizens of their fiefdoms.
 
Stalin is succeeded by a radical isntead of by a more moderate fellow like Khrustchev (sp? - I think it's right but it looks funny right now). Maybe Beria, maybe someone else.

After more and more purges, science gets worse till Yuri Gagarin is killed in a launch failure. The U.S. launches a man into orbit, and the Soviets feel hopelessly behind. The Soviet leader has blundered so much that Cuban is lost, and they see no hope. So, during the 1962 State of the Union address, they hire a group of terrorists to blow up the Capitol building. In what is called the "American Gunpowder Plot," these men succeed. All of the government is gone, any people left outside Washignton to protect agaisnt such an attack are also killed.

While there is some attempt by governors to meet and choose a leader till electiosn can be held, there is squabbling among those who support integration and thsoe who don't, some radicals in the segregated South see this as a sign they shud start their own country in mississippi or South Carolina, and the ilitary has a few people who want a coup so they can get back at the Soviets, who seem to have spnsored this terrorism.

Of course, there the problem is making sure nuclear war doesn't happen, but if the Soviets' part isn't revealed, or they can maintain deniability, claiming it was just rogue agents (and it could be) then I think you could.

In this scenario, you might not get dozens of countries but I coudl see a number of them, some more friendly toward each other than others.
 
I don't know how possible it is to balkanize America after 1900. But before 1900 is a different story. An obvious one is a southern victory in the ACW. A really interesting one, however, would be trying to keep the Articles of Confederation going for as long as you can (to make sure the West gets settled). And then, after a while, the US just falls apart into different states. They already would've acted mostly autonomous for a while.
 
If you can figure out a way to keep all the communists and fascists from being rooted out of the US government in the 40's and 50's, you can have a nasty self-destruction from within the federal government.
 
* In June 1961, George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, and Elijah Muhammad, Nation of Islam, met in Washington D.C., proclaiming that if the American Nazi Party were take power, African-Americans would receive a national homeland, preferably in the South, sparking national attention. They met again in February 1962 in Chicago, Illinois, during a rally introduced by Malcolm X, proclaiming Jews as the "common enemy"...

* Here is an extremely obscure one. In February 1975, Dr. Paul Berg of Stanford University attended a conference of scientists in Asilomar, California designed to set voluntary guidelines regading recombinant DNA technology. During the conference, Berg announced an experiment to combine a simian virus known as SV40 with DNA from bacteriophage lambda (known to cause cancerous tumors), and to place it into a strain of E.Coli bacteria. Imagine an airborne version of cancer being accidentally unleashed the conference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA
 

Meerkat92

Banned
* In June 1961, George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, and Elijah Muhammad, Nation of Islam, met in Washington D.C., proclaiming that if the American Nazi Party were take power, African-Americans would receive a national homeland, preferably in the South, sparking national attention. They met again in February 1962 in Chicago, Illinois, during a rally introduced by Malcolm X, proclaiming Jews as the "common enemy"...

Sweet Anti-Satan! You need to make this into a TL! :eek::)
 
I am guessing that with the economic collapse predicted in c. 1954 (see #2), along with LaPlace's scenario (see #5) along with DTF955BaseballFan's scenario (see #6) you have a scenario wherein both foreign and domestic PODs serve to overthrow the United States through forces foreign and domestic....
 

burmafrd

Banned
Rolls eyes.

After WW2 things were really very quiet in the US. Frankly most of the noise as regards Civil rights were in the newspapers and in Washington. The vast majority of people in the US were only moderately interested.

It was not until the 60's that things changed. A full 10 years + after all these very unlikely scenarios.
 
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