News & Current Events
Expert Predicts Civil War Will Split The U.S.—The Map Is Terrifying
There may be a stressful breaking point in the US within the next ten years, according to an analyst who has issued a dire civil war warning.
With California at the top of the list and expected to split from the US in 2035, a professor is warning that sections of America could secede within the next ten years.
“The Golden State could declare its independence amid growing polarisation with the federal government and spark a Civil War by doing so,” says political scholar Benjamin Cohen of the University of California-Santa Barbara.
Cohen revealed how he envisioned the scenario would unfold, writing at the start of his 20th novel in a fictional news bulletin: “After years of festering discontent with the direction of politics in Washington, California today formally declared its independence as a sovereign nation.”
“President [JD] Vance has threatened a military takeover of state government in Sacramento, backed by National Guard troops from nearby red states. Armed conflict looks increasingly possible.”
States that choose to secede from the US would do so in order to establish an independent nation, eschewing the US Constitution, federal laws, and federal government in favour of self-governance on matters ranging from trade and defence to taxes.
Cohen supported his theory by pointing out that there are currently changes occurring in so-called “dream states” where momentum is growing for individual state causes that challenge staying under the larger US umbrella, even though states officially withdrawing from membership seems unlikely, at least for the time being.
“Identity can be a very powerful motivator,” the professor explained. “That’s why I worry about the risk of civil war. When it comes to something as strong as a sense of community identity, rationalism falls by the wayside.”
He is not alone in his worries, though, as a recent YouGov survey found that up to 40% of Americans believe that another civil war is “somewhat or very likely” to break out in the next ten years.
But the same proportion said that rather than individual states, conflict may erupt between Republicans and Democrats.
Nevertheless, the warning comes as tensions between President Donald Trump and California’s governor are still rising, made worse by the president’s decision to send armed troops into the state to quell growing demonstrations against the administration’s immigration sweeps.
According to Cohen, if the federal government tries to prevent states from achieving independence, the US Supreme Court’s decision that it would be unlawful for states to leave the union without the approval of every other state might spark a civil war.
“I wish I could be that sanguine about it,” the professor continued, who spent three decades as the Louis G. Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy in the Political Science Department at the university before retiring from teaching in 2021. “I’m not. It seems to me we cannot ignore the risks of the current fissures and fragmentation — the breakdown of a sense of community.”
Cohen acknowledged that it’s “difficult” to “imagine how things would divide up” in the event of a civil revolt that turned violent, but he added that “the probability of such a war is substantially greater than zero.”
This likelihood is covered in detail in his new book Dream States: A Lurking Nightmare for the World Order, which also provides his personal opinions on how to resolve new conflicts.
“I consider secession a grievously underappreciated phenomenon,” he explained. “My motivation to write this book was to call people’s attention to this fact.”
“We tend to simplify geography by looking exclusively at the existing lines on a map that separate one sovereign state from another,” Cohen continued.
“But the reality is there are many people within those states that are very unhappy with the arrangement. They’d prefer to draw the lines in a different way. In some cases, they’re prepared to fight to redraw those lines.”
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