--THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES--
Few things in history were so impacting as the decay and ultimate death of the United States of America, consummate by 1992.
To shorten the story, let's go to the 70's, or as many Americans call it, the Lost Decade. In a frenetic succession of events, the increasingly corrupt Nixon administration started falling apart after the Watergate scandal, things only got worst when Vice President Agnew refused to step down even with scandals swallowing him. A backstage compromise was accepted, Agnew would resign and be forgiven by Nixon, who would fight to keep his head. With the old VP out (but all the scandals still in), the search for a new one started, but the President wanted to do a show of force with the congress and would delay as much as possible the nomination of the new Vice President, he tried to do this with rivers of money and bribes flowing to the pockets of legislators, but it ultimately fail. Nixon ran to appoint Gerald Ford and then resigned one day before the Senate vote. The worst crisis in a very long time was getting started in America.
Ford was to many the epitome of the crisis. An unelected man in the highest post of the nation, who would in a few weeks nominate a VP equally unelected. Democracy seemed no more than a bad joke. Massive protests took the streets, masses of people showed their dissatisfaction not only with politics, but with the economy too, as the United States was going down since the 1973 oil shock. Feeling the pressure, the president released new economic measures to at least stop the crisis getting worst and for everybody surprise, it worked, artificially, as it would become clear in a few years but it worked. Enjoying a modest, but steady, high in popularity, Ford could now focus in his reelection.
As 1976 came, the Democratic Party was a mess. No one seemed to have such a national appeal to unify the party and no new name had the chance to arise, as in the case of former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter who got fearful after polls showed that his name recognition was as low as 2%, he then decided to wait and run for the Senate, an election he easily won in 1980 with 60% of the vote. With the clock ticking two candidates started gaining momentum: Jerry Brown, governor of California, and George Wallace, governor of Alabama. After a highly divided primary the decision was left to the DNC which picked Brown to be it's face in the ballots. In a revival of 1968, Wallace decided to run an independent campaign.
Ford's nomination was a hard task for the Republican Party to achieve, as another California governor also wanted to be president (Ronald Reagan), his VP pick was even more eventful, as it took an herculean effort of the president to convince Nelson Rockefeller to continue in the administration and run for the post he was never elected. The effort however, was in vain, as on October 1, 1976, the Vice President was killed in a campaign event in Pittsburgh. The action was directed to President Ford but missed it's target, creating a political phenomenon that would define history. The Ford campaign was suffering the effect of people discovering that the 1975 economic relief was artificial and his unpopularity was getting higher and higher, but after the Rockefeller murder the game soon changed. Apart from the voting intention boom because of the sentimental results of the attack on the VP, Ford started blaming the whole thing (without any consistent proof) on the radical left. In fact since the Nixon years leftists where getting more and more organized and since the start of the crisis started performing attacks on many cities, especially in the South and the Midwest. Ford's tough words however only made them grow stronger.
With both Ford and Wallace blaming all the countries problems on the leftists and associating Jerry Brown with the worst of it, the election only got better and better for the Republican. Even with this whole situation, Brown managed to win in the popular vote. It wasn't enough to take the presidency as Ford had won enough states to continue to be the President of the United States.
The second term however already started almost as bad as the first. Ford promised in his campaign that he would stop interfering in economy and let the market take the reins, but with a new crisis on the horizon and a spike on unemployment, the promise was getting harder to keep. The President spent almost half of his second term trying to equilibrate between his fragile Congress base, the market and the increasingly angry population, until the Iranians made him fell from his already precarious balance.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent second oil shock further disestabilized the US and helped the USSR, which had it's economy growing nonstop since the start of the decade. Another economic crisis in less than 10 years would be hard for America to overcome, but it would get worse. Still in 1979, Saudi Arabia would fall to Revolution too and the growing regional pressure would torn Iraq apart in a bitter civil war. Suddenly, the three main American partners in the Middle East were no more.
The start of the 1980's recession sent shock waves trough the world. In Chile, a renewed Civil War managed to oust and hang Augusto Pinochet and declare the second Socialist Revolution in the Americas. In Colombia, the FARC laid siege to Bogotá for more than a month before the government could repel the rebels. In the United States, Gerald Ford was the only man to blame, the most unpopular president in history.
Political violence in the country was in an all time high, the Black Panther Party was booming in membership and actions (and also getting boomed by the government's brutal repression), the communists and socialists formed armed cells all over the country and were surprisingly getting more and more support in rural areas. Right-wing groups also started forming their own little militias to patrol against the red specter and the black people, battles between political enemies were widespread across the nation, getting to the point to raise concerns among the NATO countries.
The tension got even worst because 1980 was an election year and a very unusual one. Various third parties campaigned to replace the Democratic-Republican order and were boosted by desertions of both sides, but especially from the Republicans, a party in a moral and leadership crisis for almost a decade now. The unprecedented elections had a very predictable result; after months of voter suppression (especially in Black plurality areas after the rise of the BPP), gerrymandering and political repression, Ronald Reagan was the next president. But he was elected in a very strange manner. Because of the wide array of competitive candidates, Reagan won with 32% of the popular vote, the smallest percentage of a winner since John Quincy Adams, but also because of the many candidates, the vote spoiling went on all ways but it ended benefiting the Californian as he managed to get various small wins and consolidate a 271 win in the Electoral College. Ultimately, 5 candidates received electoral college votes, a sign of the times for the country.
As the new President was inaugurated, protests and rebellions took the country denouncing the third consecutive president not elected by the majority of the people. Reagan promised to handle the issues with an iron hand, which he did. Hundreds of protesters were arrested or died in clashes with the police, a new red scare took control of the discourse and repression to the Black Panthers, socialists and communists organizations became commonplace in the news. It also didn't help that the economic crisis hadn't gone anywhere and was only getting worse. One of his fist actions as President was to withdraw from Vietnam, a task Ford couldn't complete in his term; the veterans coming home were, however, angry and deluded with the country that sent them to fight a useless war half the world away. Right wing terrorism was increasing by the day and the tensions were going to heights never reached.
In 1983, Reagan was assassinated in a domestic attack in New York. While the country celebrated the presidential death, the political class looked terrified to their destiny. Violent clashes between right wing militias (with the help of white supremacists) and the Black Panther Party (with the help of the communists) turned into a huge domestic battle near Atlanta, to which the President George Bush responded by sending National Guards reinforcement to Georgia.
By the 1984 elections, the hated incumbent once again faced a large swath of opponents that spoiled the vote of each other, but this time the pressure was just too big for the Republicans to handle and the party finished the elections in a distant fourth. In the House contingent election, Ted Kennedy is selected as the President that would face the worst political situation since Lincoln.
Kennedy would launch a wild plan of modernization to appease the tensions, it would basically form a new constitutional convention to "reform" some outdated parts of the text. His main proposals were abolishing the Electoral College, include explicit protections to minorities and enlarge the Federal Government's powers in relation to the states (and the economy, but this is not so much related to the constitution) to better manage times of great crisis. Initially he got a good bit of support from the Congress and the population, only finding resistance in far right groups (that were loud), but his inability to conduct the process in a quick and multi-partisan manner made the proposals lose more and more appeal to all groups interested. After much delay the opposition parties jumped from the reformation idea and started attacking the president day and night, the right wing and white supremacists militias felt emboldened to conduct activities with no shame to hide, promoting massacres of Blacks,
presumed socialists, natives, homosexuals, non Christians and other minorities. The labor unions and the organized left demanded from the President an adequate response, but as it failed to come, they turned to radicalization once and for all. The President's support base evaporated.
Low level fighting quickly became a grave civil conflict that ravaged trough the country with support of governors, senators and representatives from all sides. Armies and militias formed and consolidated power bases and fought against each other in their "borders". Speaking of which, in the borders of the United States the situation escalated to a point were Canada and Mexico demanded the government to have a strong action or they would close all their land connections to the country. It would be ,however, an useless threat as soon after this Mexico would fall to a communist revolution, the same happening in France, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Greece, Portugal, etc. NATO was no more than a shadow of it's former self, now only hold together by Canada and the UK, also facing extreme political tensions.
Kennedy's inability to handle the seemingly close end of the Union provoked the more reactionaries Members of Congress to stage a coup against the president, but it ultimately failed by the ready action of the New York governor Mario Cuomo, who send army divisions (even if this was not even remotely in his capacities as governor) to Washington to protect the government. Now the President was politically hostage to the Governor. The duke controlled the emperor.
By this time, the divisions of the Second American Civil War were already clear, only having some focus of fighting in the border of Canada, Mexico, the Deep South and the Mid Atlantic regions.
In 1984 it was unclear whether elections would still be held or not. The President and most of the political class tried to force it to happen at all costs, but political violence made it impossible for it to be realized without major concerns about everything surrounding the electoral process and the safety of the voting population, so the elections were indefinitely postponed. The fall was now inevitable. Texas was the first state to declare secession, in October 23rd, followed by New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas. The Kennedy government at first stayed paralyzed, as the Texan secessionist movement was already well articulated for some time, but such a large and crucial part of the Union couldn't go away like that, it had to be a fight. In November 7th federal troops arrived in the self proclaimed Republic of Texas border around Memphis and the fight begun. Scenes of brutal savagery and death of hundreds of "Americans" in the Battle of Memphis shocked the country and sent it into a spiral of violence. Soon after California and Nevada declared their independence, as the New England states, the Communists controlled regions (with good overflows of soviet financial help) expelled federal troops still loyal to the Washington government and set up their own governments with regional characteristics. In the South, the communists formed a "Farmer-Labor" alliance (with the help of the Black Panthers) to bloodbath the white supremacists and walk all the way to Washington, DC. As they got near the forces of the north managed to expel them back to the Georgia-Carolinas limits, but at the cost of the end of the Cuomo-Kennedy "partnership", as they disagreed on which actions to take, eventually culminating in New York seceding from the Union and advancing with it's army through nearby regions. As the chaos continued, Canada and Mexico invaded the former giant to grab some parts of its deceased body; Mexico forced the Texan forces all the way up the Nueces river annexing the occupied land and also advanced in South Arizona, where a standstill with the capitalist Californian Republic made they reach a deal in which neither county would annex the area, but rather keep two puppet states in the border; and Canada would invade a great part of the North thinking about more natural resources (gas) but getting a huge problem that would precipitate the ongoing Canadian Civil War.
Finally, in July 4th 1985, the President Ted Kennedy, the Vice President Gary Hart and their cabinet would resign, effectively ending the United States of America. The Treaty of Nassau, signed in the Bahamas, formalized the borders and the recognition of all new countries.
Quick explanation:
- The Commonwealths: All of them are communists nations with different governments but united by the Denver Pact;
- The D.R. of the Great Lakes, Cascadia, Colorado and Georgia are the main communists nations in the former US;
- Misssippi is a black majority nation as of 2021, Georgia has a black plurality of about 30% blacks;
- Ohio and Utah are far right countries;
- Texas is not quite far right but almost there (but it's getting better nowadays);
- California, Virginia, New England, the American Union and Florida are all capitalists but with a more social democracy tendency;
- Virginia is the official successor state to the United States, but sometimes the American Union uses this title and symbolism too;
- Arizona is the Californian puppet-buffer state and Gadsden is the Mexican one, the future of this region remains uncertain, but at least a lasting peace has been established there.
NOTE: This is a worst case scenario that I forced to get to the conclusion that I wanted, so yes something are a bit far off, but the main goal, to have the US falling apart in many countries instead of the USSR was reached, so.... I consider this a win.
Also, this is my first map made on Illustrator, any tips and suggestions are appreciated!
