War-gaming 2012: The New Republic of Texas
I made a mistake the other day. The silverbacks over on Vox's site were having a good old time, thumping their chests, throwing leaves in the air, and snorting and bellowing about how great things were going to be once Texas seceded from the Union. And I, as is my nature, just couldn't resist posting one little line, tweaking the cowboys and suggesting that perhaps this time it might not exactly be 1836 all over again.
My mistake. Big mistake. Okay kids, you can knock off the hate mail now. Insulting Minnesota and Minnesotans doesn't get any traction with me anyway; I'm not from here in the first place and my loyalty to this state is purely mercenary. I live and work here because I'm well-paid to do so, and, trying to get back on-topic, I've been thinking and writing—and occasionally getting well-paid for my thinking and writing—about Post-American History for more than 20 years now.
So let's go back to using our forebrains, and try to war-game this out. Assuming Texas actually can and does secede, and the rest of the United States does not overtly attempt to prevent its leaving: what happens next?
Here's what I've got so far.
- I call this scenario, 2012: The New Republic of Texas, to put it in the short-term near-future. If I was writing this as a pitch for a publisher I'd call it 2015, just to buffer the publisher's usual 1- to 2-year lag time and give the book a longer shelf-life. The events herein can take place any time between 2011 and 2016.
- Important word: overtly. Don't forget it.
- Following the Texan Declaration of Independence, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham, speaking in New York, frames the soon-to-be-famous Rodham Doctrine, officially severing all ties between the United States of America and the Republic of Texas. Expatriate commentator Vox Day, writing from the safety of a bank vault in Switzerland, observes that Ms Rodham could have saved everyone a lot of time by simply saying, "Oh yeah? Well, we didn't want your stinky state in our country anyway! F*** Texas!"
- The New Republic of Texas immediately secures its southern border along the Rio Grande River. In a display of schadenfreude almost two hundred years in the making, the state of Oklahoma immediately petitions Congress to secure its southern border, along the Red River, and this time Congress responds with remarkable speed and overwhelming funding. The Red River Wall is completed in record time.
- The trouble starts in the rough country, between El Paso and Big Bend. With a violence not seen since the days of Pancho Villa (that would be 1916, for those of you who learned history in public schools), bloody cross-border raids into Texas wreak terrible havoc. Women stampeded, cattle raped; the Texans are outraged. The Mexican government disavows any responsibility and blames it all on the Juarez cartel.
- Somewhere near Taos, a small group of highly spiritually attuned New Age American psychics detects a tremor in the force, so profound it momentarily interrupts their conversation and almost causes them to spill their shiraz. Then they resume talking about themselves and their latest book-signings and gallery openings.
- To stem the flow of refugees north, Oklahoma asks for and gets permission to blow the I-35 bridge and put gunboats on Lake Texoma. Marietta becomes a key forward firebase destined to join Khe Sanh and Falluja in the annals of American history.
- Throughout the next months, the cross-border raids increase in violence and extend east, eventually all the way to Brownsville. The Mexican government disavows any responsibility and blames it all on the Gulf Cartel. President Yomama, alarmed by the spreading violence, order six battalions of the newly formed Civilian Homeland Security Corps to New Orleans. This first operational deployment of the CHSC yields mixed results: two battalions desert and stay in New Orleans, at least until all the liquor stores have been looted and their hold over the local narcotics trade has been consolidated, but four battalions do eventually straggle along in fairly good order in the general direction of Lake Charles.
- In a firefight near Laredo, Texas Rangers score their first significant victory over the border raiders. More importantly, in this fight they seize incontrovertible evidence that the raiders are neither narcoterrorists nor renegade Mexican federales, but rather Venezuelan troops of the Che Guevara brigade, equipped with advanced Chinese weaponry.
- Being unrecognized but having been given provisional NGO status, the Texans go to the UN and demand intervention. In response, the Mexican ambassador whimpers and simpers and asks how anyone could expect poor suffering Mexico to do anything, given the norteamericanos' insatiable appetite for illegal drugs, and besides, those aren't terrorists, they're freedom fighters, waging war to liberate their brown brothers from the oppressive tyranny of the cowboy-booted white Texans. The UN General Assembly, being fully capable of believing in two diametrically opposed things at the same time without the least hint of cognitive dissonance, passes a resolution equating Texanism to Zionism and supporting the right of self-determination for persons of indio-hispanic ancestry living in Texas.
- Rigoberta Menchú publishes, I, Rigoberta Menchú, Again, describing her years underground with the Che Guevara Brigade, fighting against the terrible racist Texans. Despite accusations that she was provably in New York or London during most of the time period described in the book, it spends twelve weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, wins her another Nobel Prize, and becomes required reading in all American public schools.
- At the Durban III conference, Texans are declared to be "just like white South Africans, only with even funnier accents." Throughout North American and Europe, college students protest, riot, and demand that everyone everywhere divest from and boycott Texas.
- Bono holds a charity concert in Dubai, to raise awareness and money for the suffering Mexicans in Texas.
- The UN Security Council, alarmed by the way events are rapidly spinning out of control, votes unanimously to intervene. Two companies of Pakistani peacekeepers on full UN expense account are dispatched to Puerto Vallarta to secure and protect the hotel bars, and an absolute embargo on all arms and potential war materiel is imposed—on Texas. Elements of the French and Russian navies are dispatched to the Gulf of Mexico, where they enthusiastically enforce the blockade of the Texan gulf coast ports.
Okay, that's all I've got so far.
Your move.
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