Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

The energy is the federal government itself. It owns the tanks and the bombs should your state decide to withdraw 'by force'. Never happening. The only valid option right now is to Amend the constitution which requires 38/50 states to ratify it. That is 76% of states. (e.g. never happening). The union is kind of a done deal until or unless the federal government somehow fails.

View on HN

There’s no scenario where a state leaves by force. There is a point at which apathy leads to dissolution. If no one cares, then it’s inevitable. It’s entropy.

Those tanks and bombs and jets and nukes are kept in states though. A secessionist state with a federal arsenal could opt to hold onto it.

Ukraine gave Russia the nukes it held within its border. Looking back probably not a great idea.

> tanks and bombs and jets and nukes are kept in states though

We're talking about a military coup in the United States, which is a big topic, but technically, very few tanks and bombs or jets or nukes are in states. In part, for this reason. They're on federal property. States have militias; the U.S. has aircraft carriers and cruise missiles. If a secessionist government tried to invade federal territory, I would be wholly in favor of a decisive (if compassionate) military response.

That federal property, though, is usually surrounded by states. The states could easily declare that it has seized that property.

The bigger challenge, as it always is, is the people.

> states could easily declare that it has seized that property

Anyone can declare anything. What matters is who the troops and missile launchers listen to. That’s the Pentagon.

That depends entirely upon the circumstances. It's unclear to me what would actually happen if that loyalty was put to the test.

Would soldiers who live in these states obey DC's order to kill their neighbors and friends?

They certainly might, depending on the circumstances. But it is unclear to me that the outcome would be simple.

If the situation is such that a mass of state residents is physically attempting to overwhelm a military base like at the end of "V for Vendetta", then the political situation will have long been obvious and preparations will have been made. Things will have gone way past some 60%/40%, gerrymandered state government making a declaration.

>Ukraine gave Russia the nukes it held within its border. Looking back probably not a great idea.

This is a popular factoid, but it often leaves out the fact that Russia had the codes to use the nukes, the ability to maintain them, and that other countries (like the US) wanted the nukes out of Ukraine.

If they had kept them, it is far from clear that they would be a nuclear power today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com