(June 26, 2016 at 6:21 am)Mathilda Wrote:(June 26, 2016 at 5:50 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Maybe in the future secession won't start a bloody civil war. But the Federal government has both asserted that power and enforced it by arms, and that is the reality on the ground any secessionsists must face. And when push comes to shove, it won't happen.
Ultima ratio regis, and all that.
I disagree. Not that Texas has a chance of independence, but that it must necessarily end in a war. Sure that has been the case in the past but it's not the case in modern history. We live in an age of mass media and social media. Try to imagine a world in which the US army enforced martial law in Texas because the local government under a democratic mandate from the people decided to stop paying taxes to the US and declared independence. Think about the quagmire that was Iraq. Think about the standing of the US on the international stage if it came to that.
I don't see that concern over international standing prevented us from instigating an illegal invasion of Iraq and following it up with years of military occupation. Indeed, we rather spited world opinion in that affair, wouldn't you agree?
And as many folks here on this forum have already shown, sympathies in America would probably not redound to the benefit of rebel Texas.
