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It would depend on whether, in that time-line, Californians had massacred Cascadians.
So all they have to do is quite simple: set up some paramilitaries, hide them amongst the civilian population, wait until the doorkickers fuck up and do some atrocity then denounce publicly the oppression of the Cascadian people.
This is such a common pattern I can name dozens of examples of the top of my head, multiple of which are matters of US foreign policy.
Texas is a US state through this very mean.
No it is not. Texas is a US state because the republic of Texas voted to join the USA. The republic of Texas kicked off due to complaints about mistreatment by the Mexican empire of the Anglo settler population(among other reasons), but the Texas war of independence succeeded without US support and occurred during a preexisting Mexican civil war, allied to other seceding regions(some of which are part of Mexico today and others of which are other Latin American countries).
The republic of Texas army was mostly repurposed defense against commanches militias and not a U.S. poison pill, and Anglo settlement in Texas opened because the Spanish empire invited in borderers to fight commanches for them.
Gee, I sure wonder where that Anglo settler population came from, where their friends and family lived, why they were dismayed that Mexico abolished slavery or how they managed to secure an annexation deal that fast.
Complete mystery that. I'm sure the interests of the regional power that benefited directly from this deal and actually attempted to buy the land before are totally unrelated.
Now explain to me why the Southern politicians and volunteers that went there to help the revolution unofficially don't count as "little green men".
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