Joseph E. FALLON
The post-Cold War world order depends upon the military and economic powers of the United States to sustain it. Especially now as that order is being challenged by Russia and China. But those powers depend upon the United States’ domestic stability. And that stability is being undermined by political polarization and talk of secession. “And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”[1] If the United States falls, so too does the post-Cold War political order.
With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (July 1, 1991)[2] followed by the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union five months later (December 31, 1991)[3], the Cold War, which had lasted 45 years, ended in a victory for the United States. While “there were no direct military campaigns between the two main antagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union…billions of dollars and millions of lives were lost in the fight.[4]
The consequence of that collapse was momentous. It elevated the United States to a level unprecedented in world history. Instead of being one of two rival superpowers, the United States was now the world’s hyper-power “a state that dominates all other states in every domain (i.e., military, culture, economy, etc.); it has no rivals that can match its capabilities.”[5] It is unchallenged. It is unchecked.
The post-Cold War world is a unipolar world based on Pax Americana – “a period of relative peace and stability that extended throughout the area of American influence.”[6] Maintained by the United States through “endless military deployments.”[7]
According to the Congressional Research Service – “a public policy research institute of the United States Congress[8] – the United States has engaged in “at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022.”[9] Compared to 218 in the previous 200 years and those included the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
Therefore, continuation of a unipolar world order rests on the ability of the United States to intervene whenever and wherever, without limit, without challenge. Can this be done indefinitely? No.
Map 1.[10]
The reasons are external and domestic.
Externally, “[t]he U.S. is experiencing ‘hegemonic overreach’ defined a ‘the con-tradiction between the hegemon’s growing military-political commitments and its slipping economic capability relative to rising challenger states.’”[11] The key challenger to the United States is China. These external factors will be addressed first.
Domestically, and more importantly, is the increasing polarization of the electorate in the United States between Democrat/Blue States and Republican/Red States. The outcome of which will determine whether the U.S. remains stable and united; prerequisites for a hyperpower and a unipolar world order. The domestic factors will be examined second.
The strategy of the United States for maintaining a unipolar world order has been to apply the Cold War policy of containment to Russia and China. (Map1)
Containment is application of the Rimland theory. According to Yale Professor Nicholas John Spykman, “Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia, who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”[12] (See Maps 2 and 3)
Map 2. Spykman’s Rimland
Such a policy eventually provoked a reaction from Russia and China. While the U.S. controls the Rimland, Russia strengthened its defensive positions in Western Eurasia, then launched an invasion of Ukraine. (Map 4)
China responded to containment by projecting its military power further into the Western Pacific. It is now in position to threaten Guam, the key United States base in the Central Pacific.[13] A defeat in Guam would expel the United States from the Western Pacific. The new defense line of the United States would be the third island chain centered on Hawaii 4,000 miles to the east. (Map 5)
Map 3.[14] U.S. Containment of Russia and China
Map 5. Three Island Chains[15]
Map 4.[16] Where are U.S. and Russian military bases in the world?
This would leave Micronesia and Melanesia open to Chinese economic, military, and political penetration, posing a threat to Hawaii. After Hawaii, the next defensive line for the United States is the West Coast of North America. (Map 6)
If Russia and China can collaborate, diplomatically and militarily, they may be able to neutralize the strategic advantage of the United States, military technology, and thereby undermine the unipolar world order.
Map 6. Map of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, 2008[17]
This is a distinct possibility. The fall of the Soviet Union was due to economic collapse, not military defeat. And the limitations on the military power of the United States were demonstrated in Afghanistan in 2021. Despite unrivaled military techno-logy, after twenty years of war the United States was defeated by Taliban insurgents.[18]
Chart 1.[19]
“The United States has more power; its foes have more willpower…Since 1945, Americans have experienced little except military frustration, stalemate, and loss.”[20]
Currently, the United States military “is too small and too old to fight on numerous fronts. Force drawdowns since the end of the Cold War and 20 years of fighting in the Middle East have left the U.S. military a shell of its former self.”[21]
In their 2023 article, “Addressing the U.S. Military Recruiting Crisis”, David Barno and Norma Bensahel noted “During the last fiscal year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15,000 active-duty soldiers, or 25 percent of its target. This shortfall forced the Army to cut its planned active-duty end strength from 476,000 to 466,000. And the current fiscal year is likely to be even worse. Army officials’ project that active end strength could shrink by as much as 20,000 soldiers by September, down to 445,000. That means that the nation’s primary land force could plummet by as much as 7 percent in only two years – at a time when its missions are increasing in Europe and even in the Pacific, where the Army provides many of the critical wartime theater enablers without which the other services cannot function.”[22] (Chart 1)
The United States military is also too weak and too unprepared. This was confirmed in the annual report of The Heritage Foundation on United States’ military preparedness, the “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength” by[23]. (Table 1)
Table 1.
Moreover, the military has been politicized undermining unity and combat effect-tiveness. “Woke ideology undermines military readiness in various ways. It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex. It under-mines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialties and areas for which they are not qualified or ready. And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.”[24]
Further weakening the combat readiness of the United States military is the dramatic decline in its purchasing power for salaries, supplies, and equipment due to budget cuts and inflation. (Graph 1)
Graph 1.[25]
Map 7.[26]
By collaborating, Russia and China can exploit these vulnerabilities. “For example, if the United States were to engage Russia in a direct confrontation, it will be forced to deploy military equipment and personnel from all over the world to the Eastern European front. By doing so, the U.S. would be forced to draw forces from other regions of the world, such as the West Pacific, where our presence is critical in deterring China.”[27] And vice versa. (Map 7)
Map 8.[28] Russia’s military scope in Western Eurasia
And this is occurring. On December 12, 2021, Newsweek reported “an unprecedented bond between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping has allowed the United States‘ two top rivals to force President Joe Biden into a two-front crisis that could spread his administration too thin to respond adequately to either. And should a shooting war erupt, there’s little guarantee the U.S. would come out on top.”[29] (Maps 8 and 9)
Map 9.[30] China’s military scope in the Western Pacific
Map 10.[31]
China’s military advantage in the Western Pacific is expected to increase. (Map 10)
In a war, the greatest ally for China is the greatest enemy for the United States – geography. Taiwan is 100 miles from China,[32] but 6,000 miles from the West Coast of the United States.[33] The vast distances between the United States mainland and its military bases in the Western Pacific, half a world away, makes resupplying those bases in times of war a logistical nightmare. (Map 11)
Map 11.[34]
“What many Americans don’t realize is that years of classified Pentagon war games strongly suggest that the U.S. military would lose that war…Whenever we war-gamed a Taiwan scenario over the years, our Blue Team routinely got its ass handed to it, because in that scenario time is a precious commodity and it plays to China’s strength in terms of proximity and capabilities,” said David Ochmanek, a senior RAND Corporation analyst and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development… At that point the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster [Air Force Lt. Gen] Hinote, said”.[35]
With limited resources and confronted with threats on two-fronts, the United States has responded by concentrating on Europe. It is supplying arms to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia.
On March 6, 2022, Thomas Friedman writing in The New York Times hailed the use of sanction proclaiming, “The Cancellation of Mother Russia Is Underway”.
“The most important innovation in this war is the use of the economic equi-valent of a nuclear bomb, simultaneously deployed by a superpower and by supreme-powered people. The United States, along with the European Union and Britain, has imposed sanctions on Russia that are crippling its economy, critically threatening companies and shattering the savings of millions of Russians at an unprecedented speed and scope that bring to mind a nuclear blast…because the world is now so wired, supreme-powered individuals, companies and social activist groups can pile on their own sanctions and boycotts, without any government orders, amplifying the isolation and economic strangulation of Russia beyond what nation-states are likely to do. These new actors – a kind of global ad hoc pro-Ukraine-resistance-solidarity-movement – are collectively canceling Putin and Russia.”[36]
However, the uses of sanctions are often, as in this case, a sign of the sponsors’ political and military weakness. The League of Nations failed sanctions on Italy for the Italo-Ethiopian War, October 11, 1935 to July 15, 1936,[37] is a case in point. With Russia, sanctions have similarly failed. Sanctions have not ended the war. Most of the world, in particular, China and India, the world’s second and sixth largest eco-nomies, respectively[38] have refused to impose sanctions on Russia. And Russia is still standing and Russia is still fighting. (Map 12)
While the transfer of arms to Ukraine has equally failed to defeat or deter Russia, it has also undermined the national security of the United States. On August 29, 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported “The war in Ukraine has depleted American stocks of some types of ammunition and the Pentagon has been slow to replenish its arsenal, sparking concerns among U.S. officials that American military readiness could be jeopardized by the shortage.”[39]
Three months later, The Wall Street Journal reported “The flow of weapons to Ukraine is now running up against the longer-term demands of a U.S. strategy to arm Taiwan to help it defend itself against a possible invasion by China, according to con-gressional and government officials familiar with the matter… the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating a nearly $19 billion backlog of weapons bound for Taiwan, further delaying efforts to arm the island as tensions with China escalate”.[40]
Map 12.[41]
Moreover, “The war in Ukraine has exposed deficiencies in America’s defense industrial base that could jeopardize the ability to fight a war with China. The capabilities for fighting are also essential for deterring China.”[42]
Responding to its military unpreparedness to confront a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the United States sought to strengthen its position in the Pacific with a trilateral security pact with the U.K. and Australia, AUKUS. But the vast distances separating the three parties makes the ability of AUKUS to aid the United States in any conflict with China in the Pacific negligible. (Map 13)
The impact of events in Europe and in the Pacific on the ability of the United States to remain a hyperpower and maintain the unipolar world order, is, however, secondary to the growing political polarization dividing the United States. A divide which will only increase if the United States is perceived to have lost its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine or suffers outright military defeat by China in the Pacific.
Map 13.[43] The geopolitics of AUKUS
The domestic polarization between left and right is expressed in incendiary language and/or acts of physical violence or threats of same on issues as diverse as capitalism, socialism, Wall Street, climate change, oil drilling, oil and gas pipelines, federal lands, federal government, statehood for the District of Columbia, Green Agenda, foreign aid, United States history, United States Constitution, United States Supreme Court, Congress, Executive Orders, Electoral College, Census Bureau, Social Security, Medicare, welfare, workfare, economics, regulations, national debt, debt ceiling, balanced budget, employment, unions, work place environment, police, FBI, crime, violence, property, housing, rent, racism, discrimination, affirmative action, quotas, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), reparations, courts, laws, law enforce-ment, bail, incarceration, prisons, drugs, homelessness, sex, homosexuality, marriage, adoption, parental rights, transgenderism, sports, taxes, the military, education, abortion, euthanasia, death penalty, Covid, mandatory vaccinations, mandatory masks, religion, the Bible, language, hate speech, free speech, sensitivity training, free asso-ciation, domestic terrorism, immigration, illegal aliens, border controls, border patrol, amnesty, guns, citizenship, and voting and voting tabulation.
It is a “culture war” between two increasingly different peoples with two irreconcilable ideologies. Waged by population relocations, referred to as “voting with your feet,” it is resulting in ideological consolidation by regions.
The effect is impressive and potentially destabilizing. People are moving primarily from Democrat/Blue states to Republican/Red states; dubbed by Forbes as “leftugees.”[44] (Map 14)
Map 14.[45]
Blue and Red states are becoming ideologically homogeneous. On September 3, 2022, The Economist reported “American policy is splitting, state by state, into two blocs.”[46] Blue states – Democrat / liberal / socialist. Redstates – Republican / conserva-tive / capitalist.
As Pew Research Center noted November 13, 2020 “Race, religion and ideology now align with partisan identity in ways that they often didn’t in eras when the two parties were relatively heterogeneous coalitions.”
Ideological consolidation is seen in party control of state legislatures, governor-ships, and courts. It potentially partitions the United States into a Red Heartland bordered by a Blue West Coast and Blue Northeast with two isolate Blue pockets in the Midwest and Southwest.(Maps 15 and 16)
Ideological consolidation culminates with a “political trifecta.” According to Ballotpedia, The encyclopedia of American Politics, “State government trifecta is a term to describe single-party government, when one political party holds the governorship and majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. The following are variations of the term:
- Trifecta: One political party holds the governorship, a majority in the state senate, and a majority in the state house in a state’s government.
- Trifecta plus: A trifecta and a working majority of the state’s court of last resort siding with the political leaning of the party in power.
- Trifecta with supermajority: A trifecta in which both legislative bodies have a supermajority, commonly defined as either 60 percent or two-thirds of seats held by a single party.
A trifecta with a supermajority increases the odds of a party passing new bills with only token opposition from the minority party.
As of March 11, 2023, there are 22 Republican trifectas, 17 Democratic trifectas, and 11 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.”[49] (Map 17)
Map 17.[50]
“The chart below shows the percentage of the population living under Democratic trifectas, Republican trifectas, and divided governments. Population figures are taken from the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 2020 estimates.”[51]
The chart shows approximately an equal split between Red and Blue state trifectas.
Chart 2. Percent of Americans living under trifectas as of January 2023
| Total | Democratic trifectas |
Republican trifectas |
Divided governments |
|
| Population | 328,771,307[52] | 136,955,272 | 130,058,201 | 61,757,834 |
| Proportion (%) | 100% | 41.7% | 39.6% | 18.8% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The phenomenon of physical political relocation extends beyond people migrating to Red states. It includes counties in Blue states seeking to secede and join a neighboring Red state. This is permitted by the United States Constitution. Article IV, Section 3 declares – “no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”[53]
Precedents exist for counties secession from a state. In 1820, the northern counties of Massachusetts voted to secede and became the State of Maine.[54]
In 1863, the northwestern counties of Virginia voted to secede and became the State of West Virginia[55].
The only difference between then and now is many current secession move-ments seek to join another state rather than form a new state. But the principle remains the same; voters’ approval in the counties seeking to secede followed by the consent of the respective states’ legislatures and the United States Congress.
On January 10, 2023, The Brookings Institution reported on the growing phe-nomena of local movements seeking to change state borders. “The Pacific Northwest is home to a long-running movement to reorganize state lines along political rifts. In Oregon, Washington, and northern California, as in much of the United States, rural counties are much redder than their densely populated, coastal counterparts. Citing dissatisfaction with the liberal policies of the state government, citizens in some rural Oregon counties have organized to place on the ballot the question of whether to break from their home state to join neighboring Idaho-a reliably red state for the past fourteen presidential elections, where Republicans helm every statewide and federal office. In 2021, five of those counties in Oregon forged ahead and voted to join Idaho. Similar votes are likely to be held in the future in rural counties in Washington and northern California.”[56] (Map 18)
Map 18.[57]
Eastern counties in Oregon have voted to leave Oregon and join Idaho. (Map 19)
Map 19.[58]
If secession from Oregon is successful, it will energize similar secessionist movements in Maryland, Illinois, and Colorado. In the Mid-Atlantic, Republican state lawmakers in heavily Democratic Maryland made overtures in 2021 to the state legislature in West Virginia expressing their desire to secede from their home state. The lawmakers – all representing portions of three counties in Maryland’s rural western panhandle – claimed in their letters that West Virginia, in both its professed values and the heavily Republican lean of its government, would be a better home for their consti-tuents than Maryland, where Democrats enjoy supermajorities in the State House and reclaimed the Governor’s Mansion in November. Residents of the three counties have not yet been asked to weigh in on the switch via a ballot question, though the lawmakers have indicated that such a step could be taken in the future.”[59] (Maps 20 and 21)
Map 20.[60] State Border before Secession
Map 21.[61] State Border after Secession
In the Midwest, “Over two dozen counties in Illinois, including four in the southern portion of the state that border ruby-red Kentucky, have taken steps to leave Illinois for redder pastures, including by passing non-binding resolutions that encourage local officials to explore the possibility of leaving the state.”[62] (Map 22)
Map 22.[63]
27 Illinois Counties That Have Passed Referendums to Explore Seceding From State
In the Rocky Mountains, “…residents of a county in northern Colorado have explored the idea of joining heavily Republican Wyoming.”[64] (Map 23)
Map 23.[65] Weld County, Colorado seeks to join Wyoming
“And in 2021, a New Mexico state senator proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would allow counties to pursue secession, either by joining neighboring states or by creating a new one.”[66]
While constitutionally valid, population relocations and counties secessions are seen as a threat by Blue states supporters. They have responded with rhetoric both hyperbolic and inflammatory; asserting the existence of Red states threaten the continued unity of the United States.
CNN, a news media “strongly align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas[67], declared Red states are engaged in “an effort to define a nation within a nation…the real threat in the red state effort to set their own course may be less an advantage for one side or another than a challenge to the nation’s underlying cohesion. As red states grow more aggressive about going their own way, while working to preempt challenges from above (the federal government) or below (blue local governments), they are testing how much divergence the nation’s fundamental cohesion can take before it begins to unravel. “You have a very dangerous situation,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and legal adviser to the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “This is a direct threat to the nation as a unified entity.”[68]
Then how should Blue states respond to Red states? On February 23, 2023, left-wing commentator Keith Olbermann demanded Blue states wage ‘economic civil war’ on Red states. He declared since “The blue states have all the money, they must starve the red states into submission.”[69] Blue states might have the money, but red states produce the food. Red states are the breadbasket of the nation. (Map 24)
Map 24.[70] Red states as breadbasket of the United States
Economic civil war works both ways. Red states can stop exporting food to Blue states.
Accusations Red states promote national disunion for adopting legislation contrary to the ideological views of Blue states and, therefore, to preserve national unity Red states must be starved into submission have elicited a predictable response from Red state supporters. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for “a national divorce.”
“We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s (sic) traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”[71]
There is precedent. The United States is governed by the Constitution of the United States. Drawn up by delegates in1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia[72], it was a secessionist document. Thirteen states constituted the United States at that time. The union was governed by its first constitution, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, (1781-1787)[73]. Changes to the Articles required unanimous consent of the states. Article VII of the proposed second constitution specified that “The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.”[74]
In justifying Article VII, James Madison, Founding Father and Fourth President of The United States, wrote in The Federalist No. 43, January 23, 1788, “On what principle the confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be super-ceded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it?…by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.”
The growing tension between Red states and Blue states, and the specter of secession, however remote, has a potential, greater than actions by Russia or China, to undermine the position of the United States as the world’s hyperpower and thereby perpetuation of the post-Cold War unipolar world order.
As Christopher Warshaw, Associate Professor of Political Science, George Washington University, warned “As states go in different directions on social and economic policy, the consequences will be deeply felt by all Americans, regardless of their place on the political spectrum, with implications around the world.”[75]
[1] “Mark 3:25,” King James Bible online, Mark 3:25 KJV “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” (kingjamesbibleonline.org)
[2] Daria Czarnecka, “Dissolution of the Warsaw Pact,” ENRS, August 21, 2015, https://enrs.eu/article/ dissolution-of-the-warsaw-pact-1-july-1991
[3] “Collapse of the Soviet Union”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, December 2, 2002, https://www.britannica. com/event/the-collapse-of-the-Soviet-Union/The-rise-of-Yeltsin-and-the-foundation-of-post-Soviet-Russia
[4] “The Cold War erupts,” U.S. History.org, 2008-2022, https://www.ushistory.org/us/52a.asp
[5] “Hyperpower,” Wikipedia, February 25, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpower
[6] “Pax Americana,” Political Dictionary, 2022, https://politicaldictionary.com/words/pax-americana/
[7] Simon Tisdall, “After Afghanistan, the Pax Americana is over – as is NATO. About time too,” The Guardian, August 21, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/21/after-afghanistan-the-pax-americana-is-over-as-is-nato-about-time-too
[8] “Congressional Research Service,” Wikipedia, March 5, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Congressional_Research_Service
[9] Ben Norton, “U.S. launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798, MRonline, September 16, 2022, https://mronline.org/2022/09/16/u-s-launched-251-military-interventions-since-1991-and-469-since-1798/
[10] Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann, “AUKUS alliance and France in the Indo-Pacific: towards non-alignment,” Eurocontinent, October 20, 2021, AUKUS alliance and France in Indo-Pacific: towards nonalignment? – Eurocontinent
[11] Dennis Florig, “Hegemonic overreach vs. imperial overstretch,” Review of International Studies, Volume 36, Issue 4, October 2010, pp. 1103-1119, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210510000197
[12] “Rimland,” Wikipedia, September 28, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimland#Concept
[13] Rachel Sharpe, “US ‘would lose a war with China fought in the Pacific, is unable to defend Taiwan from an invasion and there are fears the Guam military base is at risk NOW’, Pentagon sources warn,” The Daily Mail, May 16, 2020, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8326109/US-lose-war-China-fought-Pacific-Pentagon-sources-warn.html
[14] “Conference of U.S. Foreign Military Bases,” Institute for Policy Studies, January 12, 2018, https://ips-dc.org/events/conference-u-s-foreign-military-bases/
[15] “Three Island Chains”, DgOhNL-X4AEAUYY.jpg (522×422) (twimg.com)
[16] “Where are U.S. and Russian military bases in the world?,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2015, Where Are U.S. And Russian Military Bases In The World? (rferl.org)
[17] “Map of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia,” 2008, diferença+polinésia+micronésia+melanésia. gif (400×278) (bp.blogspot.com)
[18] John Daniel Davidson, “Our Defeat in Afghanistan Is Only The Beginning,” The Federalist, September 2, 2021, Our Defeat In Afghanistan Is Only The Beginning (thefederalist.com)
[19] “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength”, The Heritage Foundation, October 18, 2022, Heritage Foundation, Graphics | The Heritage Foundation
[20] Dominic Tierney, “Why Has America Stopped Winning Wars?,” The Atlantic, June 15, 2015, Did America Win or Lose the Iraq War? – The Atlantic
[21] James Di Pane, “U.S. Military Forces Cannot Fight on 2 Fronts”, The Heritage Foundation, May 29, 2022, U.S. Military Forces Cannot Fight on 2 Fronts | The Heritage Foundation
[22] David Barno and Nora Bensahel, “Addressing the U.S. Military Recruiting Crisis”, WarontheRocks.com, March 23, 2023, Addressing the U.S. Military Recruiting Crisis – War on the Rocks
[23] “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength,” The Heritage Foundation, 2022, 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength | The Heritage Foundation
[24] Thomas Sopher, “The Rise of Wokeness in the Military,” The Heritage Foundation, September 30, 2022
[25] “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength”, The Heritage Foundation, October 18, 2022, Heritage Foundation, Graphics
[26] Benjamin Denison, “Bases, Logistics, and the Problem of Temptation in the Middle East,” Defense Priorities, May 12, 2022
[27] James Di Pane, “U.S. Military Forces Cannot Fight on 2 Fronts”, The Heritage Foundation, May 29, 2022
[28] Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann, “Ukraine: the geopolitical shift between the United States and Russia,” Eurocontinent, April 6, 2022
[29] Tom O’Connor, “Putin and Xi Working Together to Force Biden into a Two-Front Crisis He Can’t Win,” Newsweek, December 12, 2021, (newsweek.com)
[30] “How US Forces Could Respond to a Chinese Attack,” Pinterest, 2018, 94e0c41e24945ea665e5 fafc70e02b22.jpg (1140×790) (pinimg.com)
[31] Anthony H. Cordesman, “Chinese strategy and Military Forces in 2021: A Graphic Net Assessment”, CSIS, August 3, 2021”, 210607_Cordesman_Chinese_Strategy.pdf(csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com)
[32] David Brown, “China and Taiwan: A really simple guide,” BBC News, August 8, 2022, China and Taiwan: A really simple guide – BBC News
[33] “The distance from Los Angeles, California to the middle of Taiwan,” travelmath, Distance from Los Angeles, CA to Taiwan (travelmath.com)
[34] Graham Allison, “The U.S.-China Strategic Competition: Clues from History,” The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, February 2020
[35] Jack Kitfield, “We’re going to lose fast: U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack,” Yahoo News, March 11, 2021, ‘We’re going to lose fast’: U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack (yahoo.com)
[36] Thomas L. Friedman, “The Cancellation of Mother Russia Is Underway,” The New York Times, March 6, 2022, Opinion | The Cancellation of Mother Russia Is Underway – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[37] “League of Nations Applies Sanctions Against Italy,” Wikisummaries, November 10, 2022
[38] Caleb Silver, “The Top 25 Economies in the World”, Investopedia, September 1, 2022, Countries by GDP: The Top 25 Economies in the World (investopedia.com)
[39] Gordon Lubold, Nancy A. Youssef and Ben Kesling, “Ukraine War Is Depleting U.S. Ammunition Stockpiles, Sparking Pentagon Concern”, The Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2022
[40] Gordon Lubold, Doug Cameron, and Nancy A. Youssef, “U.S. Effort to Arm Taiwan Faces New Challenge With Ukraine Conflict,” The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2022, U.S. Effort to Arm Taiwan Faces New Challenge With Ukraine Conflict – WSJ
[41] Pierre-Emmanuel Thomann, “Ukraine: the geopolitical shift between the United States and Russia,” Eurocontinent, April 6, 2022
[42] Seth G. Jones, “The U.S. Isn’t Ready to Face China on the Battlefield,” The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2022, The U.S. Isn’t Ready to Face China on the Battlefield – WSJ
[43] Ibid.
[44] Chris Dorsey, “America’s Mass Migration Intensifies As ‘Leftugees’ Flee Blue States And Counties For Red,” Forbes, March 17, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisdorsey/2021/03/17/americas-mass-migration-intensifies-as-leftugees-flee-blue-states-and-counties-for-red/
[45] Jared Walczak, “Americans Moved to Low-Tax States in 2021”, Tax Foundation, January 4, 2022, https://taxfoundation.org/state-population-change-2021/
[46] “American policy is splitting, state by state, into two blocs: This will have profound implications for the union”, The Economist, September 3, 2022
[47] “Partisan composition of state legislatures – state senates,” Ballotpedia, The Encyclopedia of state legislatures, 2023
[48] Ibidem
[49] “State government trifectas, Ballotpedia, The Encyclopedia of American Politics, 2023
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures#cite_note-4
[53] “The United States Constitution,” National Constitution Center, 2023, Full Text of the U.S. Constitution | Constitution Center
[54] “Maine,” Wikipedia, March 18, 2023, Maine – Wikipedia
[55] “History of West Virginia,” Wikipedia, March 13, 2023, History of West Virginia – Wikipedia
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