Confederate-Union Alliance

How can we have a POD where the US breaks up and the Confederates gain independence, and somewhere down the timestream we end up (by the year 2004) with a COnfederate-Union Alliance about as close as the Anglo-American alliance that we see now? Presumably it'll be easier if there is an amiable separation, but what about if the Confeds win the ACW?
 
Not able to draw up a full timeline, but two possibilities occur to me:

1 Both the USA and the CSA become allies during the coldwar against the USSR. Both the CS and US hold a mutual dislike of communism and the Soviet Union (assuming the CSA has not itself undergone some form of communist revolution at some stage - probably more along the lines of Maoist agrarian communism, though).

2 The CSA and USA form an alliance during the first Gulf war: both are heavily reliant on oil from the middle-east. Wheather this alliance would have held in the second Gulf war is open to question, though.
 
Top