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Notes -
It seems like based on current trends, a west coast transitional federal council engages in inland-facing imperialism that winds up resisted by approximately 1 trillion local and ethnic/religious interest groups while a red state coalition led by Texas supports them as a buffer to guard their flank in New Mexico and maybe props up some small states(greater Idaho, deseret, etc) to prevent a land link to Colorado. So fairly close I guess; but a Texas-led red state coalition already exists and you can expect especially the ones nearby to throw in with their larger, richer neighbor even more.
I think you’re right that New Mexico functionally ceases to exist in this scenario but Colorado would probably wind up as a major rival towards the Texas led coalition because it’s a geographically isolated blue spec facing a suddenly-expansionist and much larger neighbor- something like Finnish Russophobia except they both wind up with nukes. I also expect an independent republic of Texas to eventually try to split northern Mexico off from the rest of the country because the industrial zone it contains would be pretty key to Texas maintaining both its war machine and standard of living in the imperial core, although I’m not sure how it would do that(probably not a ground invasion).
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