Following startling national incidents such as the assassination of Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump’s military actions in Los Angeles, discussions of “civil war” and secession calls rise sharply on the internet. This trend reemerged in January when immigration officials shot two citizens in Minneapolis, leading governor Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard. Walz wondered if this could be a Fort Sumter moment during a conversation with The Atlantic. In the meantime, ex-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura proposed the idea of leaving the US to unite with Canada.

These remarks illustrate the discourse surrounding American fragmentation: an escalating civil war as a dreadful scenario, and a neat secession as an idealistic vision. But is one feasible without the other, and what would secession from the US encompass?

Since the 1990s, certain futurists from Silicon Valley have forecasted the disintegration of the American nation-state without outlining the horrific aspects. The mid-2000s concept splitting North America into a blue “United States of Canada” and a red “Jesusland” endures, and rising polarization has led many to consider secession as a viable resolution. “We require a national divorce. We need to split between red states and blue states,” wrote then-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2023.

Coordinated independence movements such as Calexit and the Texas Nationalist Movement have gained momentum, with a 2023 Axios survey revealing that 20 percent of Americans advocate for a “national divorce.” A YouGov survey indicated that 61 percent of Californians believed their state would thrive better if it seceded peacefully after Trump’s second inauguration.

The challenge of secession lies in its harrowing pathway. Half of all secessionist efforts escalate into violence. Successful non-violent secession, like Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce, depends on nationally unique, regionally concentrated populations with governmental recognition, none of which currently characterize the US.

The red and blue segments of America are deeply interwoven, with political divisions permeating states, neighborhoods, and even family units. An ideologically motivated secession would necessitate a perilous reorganization of Americans. Establishing a new coherent map would pose significant challenges, resulting in security dilemmas and refugee crises, akin to the situations in India and Pakistan in 1947 and Cyprus in 1974, likely to unfold in America as well.