The Myth of Peaceful American Secession
Discussions of U.S. secession and civil war have become a near-automatic reaction, much like an allergic histamine flare-up, following any high-profile shocking national event. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, for example, or when Donald Trump deployed active military to Los Angeles last June, online chatter about “civil war” and demands for states to split from the union spiked dramatically.
That same heated discourse flared up again this past January, after two local residents were fatally shot by federal immigration agents on Minneapolis streets, prompting Governor Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard to back up local police. Speaking to The Atlantic, Walz posed a provocative question, referencing the battle that ignited the first U.S. Civil War: “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” Going a step further, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura made an outlandish call 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 argued.
These two comments from current and former Minnesota governors neatly frame the core of modern popular conversation about American fragmentation: a catastrophic full-scale civil war is the widely feared worst-case scenario, while an orderly, peaceful secession is often framed as the ideal solution. But can secession really happen in the U.S. without devolving into widespread bloodshed? And what would a successful split from the union actually look like for the states and people involved?
Since the 1990s, a cohort of Silicon Valley futurists have calmly predicted that the outdated U.S. nation-state will eventually break apart, rarely elaborating on the violent chaos that would likely accompany such a split. A popular mid-2000s meme even jokingly split North America into a liberal “United States of Canada” (encompassing blue U.S. states) and conservative “Jesusland” for red states. But as ideological 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 as the only workable fix for the country’s unresolvable differences. In 2023, then-Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spelled out this view in a viral post: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states. Everyone I talk to says this.” This core premise also formed the loose plot of the 2024 blockbuster film Civil War.
Organized pro-independence movements, from California’s Calexit to the Texas Nationalist Movement, have popped up in recent years to capitalize on this rising frustration, and have seen their support levels steadily climb. A 2023 Axios poll found that 1 in 5 American adults support the idea of a “national divorce” along ideological lines. Shortly after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, a YouGov poll released that same week found 61% of California respondents agreed their state would “be better off if it peacefully seceded” from the union.
But here’s the catch: In practice, secession—when a portion of an existing sovereign state breaks off to form a new independent country—is almost always a messy, traumatic process. Most secession efforts fail entirely, and roughly half end in violent conflict. The rare examples of peaceful secession, such as Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce, only succeeded because the separating population was culturally distinct, geographically concentrated, already had defined internal borders, and held special administrative status that made an amicable split possible. None of these preconditions exist in modern-day America.
The reality is that liberal and conservative voters are deeply interspersed across the country. Political divides cut straight through states—deep blue California is home to millions of Republican voters, just as deep red Texas has millions of Democratic voters—they also split neighborhoods and even individual households. A secession along ideological lines would almost certainly require a dangerous, forced sorting and re-segregation of Americans along political lines. Think of the challenge: drawing a coherent new set of national borders that satisfies a majority of people in a hyper-polarized political environment. Then consider the inevitable security crises, populations trapped on the wrong side of new borders, and mass waves of displaced people. This is exactly what unfolded during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, and the 1974 division of Cyprus—and it would almost certainly happen in the U.S. as well.
Many secession supporters frame the split as similar to a marital divorce. But while marriage dissolution is governed by clear, established civil law, there is no agreed-upon legal framework to manage a U.S. state or regional secession—no formal process, and no precedent for splitting the country’s shared assets and obligations between new nations. How would the trillions in U.S. national debt be divided? What would happen to Social Security benefits earned by current and future retirees? Who would claim control over existing military installations and naval vessels? Given the bitter animosity that would precede any American “national divorce,” both sides would almost certainly rush to seize as much resources and territory as possible.
Beyond asset division, there is also the question of international status: which side of the split would get to keep America’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council? For example, an independent California would never be able to gain admission to the United Nations as a recognized sovereign state as long as the rump United States retains its Security Council seat and can veto any new membership application. What’s more, if the federal government in Washington refuses to officially recognize a breakaway state, no other country—from neighboring Canada to Mexico to European powers—will recognize it either, for fear of angering the still-powerful United States. We have already seen how much coercive power the current U.S. administration wields on the global stage; imagine how harshly it would punish any country that extended recognition to a secessionist American state.
All of this assumes the split would be acrimonious, which is what secessionists often dismiss. Pro-secession groups typically imagine a mutual, friendly separation from the United States. But this view ignores the practical, even existential, threats that 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,” and that secession is only possible “through revolution or through consent of the States.” Winning that consent from all required parties would be incredibly difficult. Because all 50 states are legally equal under the U.S. system, granting secession to one state would set a dangerous precedent that would open the floodgates for others. If California won federal approval for independence, Texas would immediately have a strong claim to the same right. A single secession could trigger a domino effect that splits the country into dozens of tiny fragments, as remaining states would see less and less benefit to staying in a shrinking union. This fear of “secessionist contagion” is why countries from Russia to Indonesia crack down hard on even small independence movements early on, to deter other regions from making their own secessionist claims.
In fact, the only foreign governments that have a clear stake in supporting American secession movements are the U.S.’s top geopolitical rivals. For leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the collapse of U.S. power into multiple smaller, mutually hostile nations would be a major strategic win. Russia has a long history of stoking pro-secession sentiment in the U.S., in both Texas and California. One of CalExit’s earliest leaders, Louis Marinelli, relocated to Russia in 2016 and ran the secession group from Russian territory, even opening an unofficial California “embassy” in Moscow, before cutting ties with the movement amid negative press over his Russian ties. In 2019, Calexit founder Marcus Ruiz Evans acknowledged: “Calexit was not created by Russia, but made a series of mistakes in associating with Russia early on.” Even when secession movements are entirely homegrown, U.S. rivals will almost always work behind the scenes to amplify and support them.
Walz faced widespread criticism for overhyping tensions after his Fort Sumter comparison. But what if tensions between state and federal security forces do continue to escalate, leading to more injuries and deaths among both protesters and federal agents, until forces from each side directly clash with one another? A 2024 war game run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law concluded that this exact scenario is the most likely starting point for a new civil conflict in the U.S.
Countless future events could continue to push polarization, distrust, and political violence higher in the U.S. But a full-blown secession crisis would still need a prominent leader or established political party to champion the independence cause—someone who can lay out a clear alternative future and rally a large share of the population behind that vision.
For now, thankfully, there are no major national leaders, regional governments, or established political parties openly calling for secession. In large part due to the unifying pressures of the U.S. two-party system, there is little room for distinct regional separatist parties to emerge—nothing comparable to the Scottish National Party in the UK or the Parti Québécois in Canada. That said, there are plausible tipping-point scenarios that could push secession into the mainstream, many rooted in future national election disputes. Two of the most likely, and most troubling, are outlined below.
First, imagine a disputed presidential election in 2028 or 2032. By that point, U.S. politics has continued to decay, with both major sides fully embracing a “win at all costs” approach. Long before votes are cast, prominent leaders from both camps are already warning that any loss will be the result of a stolen election. When all votes are finally counted, neither side is willing to concede a narrow, contentious race the way Al Gore did in 2000. Instead, both candidates claim victory to the presidency and denounce the other side as illegitimate. For the first time in U.S. history, the country is split between two competing, rival executives.
This political split is accompanied by constant, widespread cycles of political violence. As far-right activists increasingly demand a separate conservative Red-State America and far-left groups push for BlueExit for liberal regions, both rival presidents declare martial law and order the military to ignore all orders from the opposing side. After months of intractable deadlock, both sides agree to attempt a negotiated split of the country into two large ideological blocs—but this only triggers further fragmentation and widespread partition-style violence.
The second scenario is a variation of the first. Imagine that one of the leading presidential candidates in 2028 is closely tied to a state that already has simmering pro-secession sentiment, such as California or Texas. Again, the election result is hotly contested, and the incumbent party refuses to step down and hand over power.
A widespread perception that national democracy has failed has historically been the tipping point for prominent regional leaders to cave to local pressure and back secession. For example, a defining moment for Catalonia’s independence movement came in 2012, when Catalan president Artur Mas aligned with separatists during a constitutional crisis with the Spanish national government, pushing the movement from a small fringe cause into the political mainstream.
In the U.S. context, this could play out with a disillusioned sitting California leader like Gavin Newsom throwing his support behind the California independence movement after a contested national election. This would create an immediate crisis for the U.S. federal government. It could allow a referendum on California independence, which would almost certainly trigger a cascade of other secession demands and potentially the full dissolution of the country. Or it could reject all secession efforts, which would almost certainly lead to widespread violence.
Abraham Lincoln once framed this as a choice between national dissolution and bloodshed, and he chose to fight to preserve the union. Even today, secessionist conflicts are the leading cause of large-scale political violence in modern global politics. Secession advocates frame a split as a safety valve that would end America’s current political violence by separating irreconcilable groups. But in reality, secession would not end violence—it would be the spark for far worse bloodshed.
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