Can Secession Happen in America Without Civil War?
Talk of civil war and calls for national breakup have become almost an automatic, allergic reaction in the wake of polarizing national flashpoints. After high-stakes events like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, or Donald Trump’s decision to deploy active-duty military to Los Angeles last June, mentions of “civil war” and secession surge dramatically across social media and search platforms.
This conversation reignited in January, after two civilians were shot and killed by U.S. immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis, prompting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to activate the state’s National Guard to back up local law enforcement. Speaking to The Atlantic, Walz drew a provocative parallel to the battle that sparked America’s first civil war: “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” In a far more unorthodox take, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura called for the state to leave the U.S. entirely and join Canada. “I think someone seriously should contact Canada and ask them if they’re open to this,” he said.
These two comments from men who’ve held the same state office perfectly frame the core of modern popular discourse about American fragmentation: full-scale civil war is the nightmare many fear, while clean, orderly secession is the fantasy embraced by growing numbers of people on both sides of the political divide. But can one ever really exist without the other? And what would an actual secession of any part of the United States look like in practice?
Since the 1990s, Silicon Valley futurists have calmly predicted the eventual collapse of what they frame as an outdated U.S. nation-state, rarely spelling out the messy, violent details that would accompany such a shift. The viral, tongue-in-cheek meme splitting North America into the blue “United States of Canada” and red “Jesusland” has circulated online since the mid-2000s. But as partisan polarization between red and blue America has deepened on nearly every major policy and cultural issue over the last two decades, a growing share of Americans across the political spectrum have come to see secession and national breakup as the best solution to the country’s seemingly unresolvable divides. In 2023, then-Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted online: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states. Everyone I talk to says this.” This loose premise also formed the core of the 2024 box-office hit Civil War.
In recent years, a handful of organized independence movements—including California’s Calexit and the Texas Nationalist Movement—have emerged to tap into this widespread frustration, and their support has steadily grown. A 2023 Axios poll found that 20% of all Americans support a “national divorce.” And a YouGov survey released just days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration found that 61% of California residents believe their state would “be better off if it peacefully seceded” from the union.
But here’s the catch: In reality, secession—the process by which a portion of a sovereign state splits off to form a new independent country—is almost always a brutal, painful process. Most secession attempts fail entirely, and roughly half end in open violence. When secession does happen peacefully, like Czechoslovakia’s 1993 Velvet Divorce, it almost always meets a specific set of preconditions: the breakaway region is home to a distinct national population concentrated in a defined geographic area, and it already holds formal internal borders and some level of autonomous administrative status that can form the foundation of a new state. None of these conditions exist in modern-day America.
In practice, red and blue voters are deeply intertwined across the country. Political divides cut straight through states, not just between them: deep blue California is home to millions of Republican voters, while solid red Texas counts millions of Democrats among its population. Divides also run through neighborhoods and even individual households. Any secession plan rooted in ideological division would almost certainly force a dangerous, violent process of “unmixing” and forced relocation to sort Americans into ideologically aligned new states. Imagine trying to draw new, coherent borders that satisfy a majority of people in a hyper-polarized political environment; then imagine the cascading security crises, trapped minority populations, and mass displacement that would follow. This is exactly what unfolded during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan and the 1974 division of Cyprus, and there is little reason to think it would be different in the U.S.
Many proponents of a “national divorce” draw a direct parallel between secession and the legal end of a marriage. But while divorce is governed by clear, established civil law, there is no agreed-upon legal framework for secession in the U.S. There is no formal process, let alone precedent, for dividing the country’s collective assets and liabilities. How would the trillions in U.S. national debt be split between new countries? What would happen to Social Security benefits for current and future retirees? Who would claim ownership of military bases, weapons stockpiles, and the U.S. Navy’s fleet? Given the deep animosity that would accompany any American secession process, both sides would almost certainly rush to seize as much territory and resources as possible.
Beyond assets and debt, there is the question of international recognition: Which of the two new countries would inherit the United States’ permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council? If, for example, California broke away, it could never gain formal UN membership as long as the rump United States retained its Security Council seat and veto power, which it would almost certainly use to block California’s application. What’s more, if the U.S. federal government refuses to officially recognize a breakaway state, no neighboring country like Canada or Mexico will recognize it either—they cannot risk angering their powerful economic and political neighbor. Just consider the enormous international coercive power the current U.S. administration already wields; imagine how harshly it would punish any country that formally recognized a secessionist American state.
All of this assumes the split would be acrimonious, of course. Secession advocates often imagine a mutually agreed, friendly split from the union. But this fantasy ignores the very real practical, even existential, threats secession poses to the U.S. federal government. In its 1869 Texas v. White ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly held that the union is “indissoluble,” writing that there is “no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.” Gaining that consent would be incredibly difficult. Because all 50 states are legally equal under the U.S. Constitution, the American federal system creates a massive precedent problem for secession. If California won independence with federal approval, Texas would immediately demand the same right. One successful secession could trigger a domino effect that shatters the country into dozens of small fragments, especially as remaining states see fewer and fewer benefits to staying in a shrinking union. This fear of secessionist contagion is why countries like Russia and Indonesia move immediately and harshly to crush even small secessionist movements, to deter others from rising up.
In fact, the only major foreign powers that have a clear incentive to support American secession movements are the geopolitical rivals of the United States. From the perspective of leaders like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, the collapse of American power into multiple smaller, mutually hostile countries would be a massive strategic victory. Russia has a long history of stoking secessionist sentiment in the U.S., including in Texas and California. One of the earliest leaders of the Calexit movement, Louis Marinelli, actually relocated to Russia in 2016 and ran the organization from Russian territory, even opening an unofficial California “embassy” in Moscow, before cutting ties with the movement amid negative press. “Calexit was not created by Russia,” Calexit founder Marcus Ruiz Evans wrote in 2019, “but made a series of mistakes in associating with Russia early on.” Even when secession movements are entirely homegrown, hostile foreign powers will almost always work to encourage and fund them to weaken the U.S.
Walz faced widespread criticism for overstatement after he compared the Minneapolis shooting to Fort Sumter. But what if tensions between state and federal security forces continue to escalate, more protesters and federal agents are injured or killed, and armed forces from each side end up clashing directly? A 2024 conflict simulation run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law concluded that this exact chain of events is how a new American civil conflict could begin.
Any number of ongoing events could continue to escalate polarization, distrust, and political violence across the U.S. But a full-blown secession crisis would require a major political leader or party to champion independence—someone who can outline a clear alternative future and rally a large share of the public behind the cause.
Thankfully, there are currently no major national leaders, regional governments, or established political parties calling for secession in the U.S. In part because of the unifying pressures of America’s two-party system, there is very little room for distinct regional separatist parties to emerge—there is no American equivalent to the Scottish National Party or the Parti Québécois today. But that does not mean there are no plausible tipping-point scenarios that could lead to secession. Below are two plausible, grim scenarios that unfold in the aftermath of a contentious national election.
First, imagine a disputed presidential election in 2028 or 2032. American politics has continued to deteriorate, and both sides have already adopted a “win at all costs” approach, with top leaders warning for months ahead of voting that the election will be stolen. Once all votes are counted, neither side is willing to follow Al Gore’s example and concede a tight, bitter race. Both sides claim victory in the presidency and denounce the other as illegitimate. For the first time in U.S. history, the country is split between two competing presidents claiming full authority.
This split is accompanied by waves of repeated, escalating political violence. As far-right voices increasingly clamor for an independent red-state nation and far-left activists push for “BlueExit,” both competing presidents declare martial law and order the military to disobey orders from their rival. Months of deadlock eventually force both sides to agree to a negotiated split of the country into two large ideological blocs, a process that triggers further fragmentation and partition-style violence.
In the second, closely related scenario, imagine that one of the leading presidential candidates in 2028 is closely tied to a state or region that already has latent secessionist support, like Texas or California. Once again, the election results are contested, and the incumbent party refuses to leave office and transfer power.
A widespread sense that American democracy has failed has been the tipping point for major leaders in other countries to back local separatist demands. For example, a key turning point for Catalan independence activists came in 2012, when then-Catalan president Artur Mas aligned with secessionists during a constitutional crisis with the Spanish central government, pushing the movement from the fringe to the mainstream of Catalan politics.
In an American version of this scenario, imagine a disillusioned Gavin Newsom, for example, backs California independence and aligns with the California Independence Party after a disputed national election, leaving the U.S. federal government facing an unprecedented crisis. It could allow a referendum on California independence, which would almost certainly trigger a cascade of further secession demands and potential total dissolution of the union. Or it could reject any secession attempts, which would almost certainly lead to open violence.
Abraham Lincoln framed this as a choice between dissolution and blood, and he chose blood. Even today, secessionist conflict is the leading cause of organized political violence in international politics. Proponents of secession argue it is a safety valve that will end and defuse American political violence. But in reality, it is the exact opposite.
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