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I think a (the?) big elephant in the room with secession is that whichever side successfully cons the other side into jumping first keeps the Presidency for the next 50 years.* Get one of the Big Four states to bail, and suddenly there are 30 - 50 EC votes that your side never needs to worry about again. Now all of a sudden you get a massive leg up in domestic politics and implementing whatever pet domestic agenda you had in mind.
Right now, the echo of Lincoln still rings loudly in our years (the last American Civil War vet died in '56 and the last veteran bride just passed away in 2020). Every single President has been a combination of too much of a true believer in the American project and too much of a realpolitik pragmatist to give away a US state, even if there was internal support for it (there hasn't been.)
Ideologically, I think younger Americans (left and right) are less inclined to have a patriotism or nationalism towards their country as a motherland/fatherland. Some of them might see it merely as a tool to achieve their preferred policy ends (and indeed that's a common attitude towards government these days!) Combine that with an intense focus on maintaining domestic political power, a lack of pragmatic understanding** and a world where there is some native demand for a national divorce and I could see a future where a sitting President goes "besides millions of taxpayers, tens of thousands of servicemen, dozens of vital military installations, four or five different priceless natural resources, and one really nice vacation spot, what have those 40ish Electoral College votes ever done for us?" (Technically this even sort-of happened the first time; the feds did ~zip to stop secession until Lincoln took office.)
I'm not sure such a situation is likely per se, but I think it will be something that will be on the radar in the minds of future politicians in a way that it isn't of most currently serving ones.
An interesting barometer here is Brexit and the Scottish independence question. Obviously Brexit went through, and from what I can tell there's zero English interest in even something relatively mild (like sanctions) if Scotland actually votes to secede. I don't think that this rules out punitive actions or even military action against seceding states, but after a clear referenda I think it is politically trickier.
*In reality I suspect this is a mirage, actually, but a tempting one.
**I'm not actually sure if future governing generations will be worse at pragmatic understanding, to be clear. Certainly many younger people seem less pragmatically-minded, but I'm not sure that's ever been otherwise!
On the other hand, there's the Catalonian independence referendum that got declared illegal by Spain and people arrested for voting, while the rest of the EU gave zero fucks.
There's the ethnic cleansing of Artasakh, 200k people ran away. Russian peacekeepers lost iirc 10+ soldiers. Allegedly a few massacres too.
No one gives a fuck, somehow. Azeris are 'reliable allies'.
People only give a fuck if there's a lobby group.
Armenians have been staunch Russian allies for decades and are close to Iran, they were screwed over by their allies. On /r/europe the attitude is typically ‘it sucks, but that’s what you get for trusting Russia’.
They snubbed Russia in 2010s and tried to cozy up to the West. Also Russia is very much occupied at the moment, which is likely what let Azeris get away with the ethnic cleansing.
I have strong doubts Russians would have just eaten getting their troops killed like this if they weren't engaged in Ukraine.
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