In the weeks since the Supreme Court handed down two major decisions — on Dobbs v. Jackson, handing abortion rights decisions to the states, and on New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, ruling that states could not pass restrictive laws on guns — people and pundits are again discussing the possibility of California seceding from the U.S. A CalExit if you will.
Thomas Elias of the Davis Enterprise addressed this in his syndicated column, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s political writer Joe Garofoli urged the state to either “lead or secede.”
As somebody who is repulsed by both these decisions and grateful California is positioning itself to be the heart of the resistance to an increasingly anti-democratic Supreme Court, I understand this sentiment.
Yet CalExit is a uniquely terrible idea, which would weaken economies and create civil unrest in both California and the U.S. it left behind.
Some may envision secession as an easy process. Californians go to the polls and vote, the legal wheels churn and in a few weeks or months the Republic of California is born and President Newsom is sworn in.
This is nonsense. If California were to try to secede, there is little reason to think the U.S. would let the state go easily. History — from the former Yugoslavia to the former Soviet Union — shows secession is never easy. If those examples seem far away, remember the last time a group of states tried to secede: The result was the Civil War.
California is too rich in resources, capital, real estate and industries for the U.S. to let it go. The U.S. without California would be a much poorer country, and all but the most MAGA-addled minds understand that.
While the Constitution does not specifically forbid states from seceding, there is nothing in that document that permits it either. Even if, by some geopolitical miracle, it happened, disentangling California from the U.S. would be an arduous task that would take years and damage both economies. Questions about trade, tariff and travel between the two polities as well as what would happen to companies and industries that rely on interstate commerce would be difficult to answer.
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One issue would be the future of California military personnel, bases, weapons and equipment. In the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War, this issue was hugely important and contributed to conflicts in both regions. There is no chance the U.S. would simply abandon all those military resources.
If California tried to seize those resources, the U.S. would likely respond with violence, but if California turned its military might over to the U.S., then the new country would be unable to defend itself. One solution would be to allow the U.S. military presence to remain in California, but that would undermine the project of California’s independence.
An independent California may be an intriguing idea for progressives, but a U.S. without California should be a terrifying one.
If California removed itself from the country, the Republican Party would dominate American politics and probably would build a permanent majority in Congress and the Electoral College. In other words, the newly independent California would find itself next to a huge right-wing country that would be deeply unsympathetic to California because of California’s progressive politics and its secession.
The politics of CalExit are further complicated because California is not as solidly progressive as many would like to think. In the 2020 election, Donald Trump got almost 35% of the vote in California. No state in the country produced more votes for Trump than California — it nosed out Texas for that dubious honor by about 110,00 votes. One out of every 13 votes Trump got in 2020 came from California. That was not enough to make him competitive in the state, but is more than enough to create problems if the state tried to secede.
It is also possible that a CalExit could trigger more secessions. That would weaken the U.S. more, turning it into several polities that would then enter into conflicts over military and other previously shared resources. Those conflicts could last for years and leave economic and humanitarian disasters in their wake.
The existential problem facing California — and indeed the entire U.S. — is that there is reason to believe the country cannot and perhaps should not hold together, but even more reason to believe that secession will lead to much bigger problems.
True, not everybody would lose from California seceding. Invariably, some people would find a way to make some money from the process, and some political leaders could gain as well. Most prominent among them would be Vladimir Putin, who would like nothing more than to see the U.S. weaken, break apart or collapse. Putin has been working toward that goal for years and has supported previous CalExit efforts. Californians would be foolish to help him.
