It’s pretty dull reading to be honest, because of my familiarity with milhist discussions and because it doesn’t say anything new for this type of discussion.
To start off, the article logically concludes that civil war can be provoked by the combination of domestic culture war contradictions coming to the fore, economic downturn, and being on the losing end of a war that the United States is directly involved in.
Analysis is then obscured or outright incorrect due to the author’s focus on the American Culture War and related tropes. Tax for example is one. The kernel of truth is that population and thus labor is important for economic and military matters. However focusing just on raw population number obscures that education, technology, and of course economic structure are significant factors to the productivity of labor and consequentially the tax that will be collected. Thus while New York’s population is small it is able to contribute $393,135,616,000.00 (Source: SOI Tax Stats - Gross Collections, by Type of Tax and State - IRS Data Book Table 5) to the Federal Government. Another factor lost in comparing raw population number is age; Florida has 21.1% estimated to be 65 and older in comparison to NY, CA, and TX whose respective percentages are 17.5%, 15.2% and 13.1% (Source: US Census Bureau Quickfacts https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/NY,TX,CA,FL/PST045222 ) which means that Florida is less productive than its population number would make it seem. There’s other factors that make the focus on population numbers myopic but it’s getting a bit long for the post; in summary it’s an analysis that’s too simplistic and would lead towards erroneous conclusions if acted on.
Another aspect of the author’s analysis being clouded by the American Culture War focus is how industrial capacity is essentially only this paragraph:
Certainly, that’s what could happen. Of course, depending on who exactly is seceding, one must recall that much of the U.S.’s most important manufacturing and productive infrastructure, particularly that of the military variety, resides in states at risk of secession. Texas, for example, holds most of the country’s key oil production facilities. Many of the U.S. military’s most important high-tech weaponry is manufactured, or stationed in, southern states: whether it’s the F-35 in Georgia or the critical munitions factories in Mississippi and Louisiana, including this one: (picture Louisiana gunpowder factory)
Finally, it is surprising that the author hasn’t incorporated any lesson from either the earlier phase of the Ukraine conflict or this present phase of the conflict. In other words, the combination of armed (para)military and propaganda can allow for the loyalist Federal forces to extract resources, manpower, and taxes from seemingly rebel-aligned areas. The present conflict after all started with initial Ukrainian contact at the borders of Crimea and the seperatist-held parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. This also means that a secessionist Texas will have to move quickly to suppress loyalist uprisings in its urban settlements just as Federal forces will have to go into the countryside to secure lines of communications. The frontlines of the second American civil war will harden around geographical features rather than administrative lines.
tl;dr - Article’s analysis is undermined because cursory application of economic data and history means that red states don’t have industrial supremacy despite right wing culture war tropes.
It’s pretty dull reading to be honest, because of my familiarity with milhist discussions and because it doesn’t say anything new for this type of discussion.
To start off, the article logically concludes that civil war can be provoked by the combination of domestic culture war contradictions coming to the fore, economic downturn, and being on the losing end of a war that the United States is directly involved in.
Analysis is then obscured or outright incorrect due to the author’s focus on the American Culture War and related tropes. Tax for example is one. The kernel of truth is that population and thus labor is important for economic and military matters. However focusing just on raw population number obscures that education, technology, and of course economic structure are significant factors to the productivity of labor and consequentially the tax that will be collected. Thus while New York’s population is small it is able to contribute $393,135,616,000.00 (Source: SOI Tax Stats - Gross Collections, by Type of Tax and State - IRS Data Book Table 5) to the Federal Government. Another factor lost in comparing raw population number is age; Florida has 21.1% estimated to be 65 and older in comparison to NY, CA, and TX whose respective percentages are 17.5%, 15.2% and 13.1% (Source: US Census Bureau Quickfacts https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/NY,TX,CA,FL/PST045222 ) which means that Florida is less productive than its population number would make it seem. There’s other factors that make the focus on population numbers myopic but it’s getting a bit long for the post; in summary it’s an analysis that’s too simplistic and would lead towards erroneous conclusions if acted on.
Another aspect of the author’s analysis being clouded by the American Culture War focus is how industrial capacity is essentially only this paragraph:
In other words, it is taken as fact that in the realm of the “real” economy the winner are unquestionably the red states. BEA GDP statistics however says otherwise. California dominates agriculture and related; is number one when it comes to manufacturing, and is neck-to-neck with Texas in the field of machinery manufacturing. (source: https://apps.bea.gov/itable/?ReqID=70&step=1#eyJhcHBpZCI6NzAsInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyNCwyOSwyNSwzMSwyNiwyNywzMF0sImRhdGEiOltbIlRhYmxlSWQiLCI1MDUiXSxbIkNsYXNzaWZpY2F0aW9uIiwiTkFJQ1MiXSxbIk1ham9yX0FyZWEiLCIwIl0sWyJTdGF0ZSIsWyIwIl1dLFsiQXJlYSIsWyIwMDAwMCJdXSxbIlN0YXRpc3RpYyIsWyItMSJdXSxbIlVuaXRfb2ZfbWVhc3VyZSIsIkxldmVscyJdLFsiWWVhciIsWyIyMDIxIl1dLFsiWWVhckJlZ2luIiwiLTEiXSxbIlllYXJfRW5kIiwiLTEiXV19) For DoD spending specifically, California too appears in the top ten of awarded defense contracts with $57.4 billion in defense spending (source:https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3194361/dod-releases-report-on-defense-spending-by-state-in-fiscal-year-2021/) and from that report’s data California’s notable top contractors are Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, General Atomics, Aerospace Corp., and General Dynamics. And although New York state contributes a large amount of services, it still makes a surprising amount of “real” products which means it makes top ten in a surprising amount of manufacturing fields in the BEA data. In other words, from the BEA data it is far from certain that the red states will have supremacy in industry.
Finally, it is surprising that the author hasn’t incorporated any lesson from either the earlier phase of the Ukraine conflict or this present phase of the conflict. In other words, the combination of armed (para)military and propaganda can allow for the loyalist Federal forces to extract resources, manpower, and taxes from seemingly rebel-aligned areas. The present conflict after all started with initial Ukrainian contact at the borders of Crimea and the seperatist-held parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. This also means that a secessionist Texas will have to move quickly to suppress loyalist uprisings in its urban settlements just as Federal forces will have to go into the countryside to secure lines of communications. The frontlines of the second American civil war will harden around geographical features rather than administrative lines.
tl;dr - Article’s analysis is undermined because cursory application of economic data and history means that red states don’t have industrial supremacy despite right wing culture war tropes.