Foreign Relations of an Independent Confederacy?

[Snake Featherston]

Oy. What a mess these Fire-Eaters have made. I just picture grain raids into the Great Plains after the Indian Territory becomes a hellhole of slaughter.

The interesting thing about Confederate food agriculture is that a lot of it is in the territory that was most pro-Union during the Civil War, as the planters were not interested in food if they could make money via cotton. Their decision to grow wartime cotton crops at the expense of food contributed more than is realized to Confederate wartime starvation, and that happening when the CSA is a yet-to-be instead of an is-right-now means bad stuff happening in the postwar CSA. Planters were not very nice or very smart people. An independent CSA is going to resemble more Imperial Russia without any industrial centers to turn even into a Petrograd, industrially speaking, though CS industry of a more cottage variety would exist.

An independent CSA is in the most realistic case either North Korea if functional and run by Machiavellian competent evil bastards or Pakistan if run by incompetent evil bastards. I might note, too, that a CSA trying to keep democracy will be more aggressive than a dictatorship run by its generals. The generals have everything to lose with a new war with the USA, politicians might find a means to say the benefit of such a war outweighs the risks as they've too much to lose without a war......especially if it comes to having to distract an unhappy public at home by saber-rattling that winds up going very very badly.....

 

[Wolfpaw]

An independent CSA is in the most realistic case either North Korea if functional and run by Machiavellian competent evil bastards or Pakistan if run by incompetent evil bastards. I might note, too, that a CSA trying to keep democracy will be more aggressive than a dictatorship run by its generals. The generals have everything to lose with a new war with the USA, politicians might find a means to say the benefit of such a war outweighs the risks as they've too much to lose without a war......especially if it comes to having to distract an unhappy public at home by saber-rattling that winds up going very very badly.....

This is the thing. The radicals inside the CS are going to be clamoring for more land and filibustering. Jefferson Davis supported annexing pretty much every Mexican state touching the Rio Grande while he was still a US politician. Then again, there is one place that the CSA can go that nobody may bother to defend: Haiti.

I think we'll see a resurgence in filibustering and popularity for filibusters in the CSA, especially as it becomes more of an international pariah, which is going to cause collapse at home. Any national-unity government that sees war as a way out won't hit the USA, it'll hit Latin America.

 

[Anaxagoras]

The interesting thing about Confederate food agriculture is that a lot of it is in the territory that was most pro-Union during the Civil War, as the planters were not interested in food if they could make money via cotton. Their decision to grow wartime cotton crops at the expense of food contributed more than is realized to Confederate wartime starvation, and that happening when the CSA is a yet-to-be instead of an is-right-now means bad stuff happening in the postwar CSA. Planters were not very nice or very smart people. An independent CSA is going to resemble more Imperial Russia without any industrial centers to turn even into a Petrograd, industrially speaking, though CS industry of a more cottage variety would exist.

Not to mention the fact that cotton and tobacco exhaust soil much more quickly than does wheat. Southern planters were not particularly good at rotating crops and were generally unwilling to let fields lie fallow for a few seasons in order to replenish themselves.

Jefferson Davis supported annexing pretty much every Mexican state touching the Rio Grande while he was still a US politician.

IIRC, he said that Manifest Destiny should extend to Panama as well as to the Pacific.

 

[Johnrankins]

This is the thing. The radicals inside the CS are going to be clamoring for more land and filibustering. Jefferson Davis supported annexing pretty much every Mexican state touching the Rio Grande while he was still a US politician. Then again, there is one place that the CSA can go that nobody may bother to defend: Haiti.

I think we'll see a resurgence in filibustering and popularity for filibusters in the CSA, especially as it becomes more of an international pariah, which is going to cause collapse at home. Any national-unity government that sees war as a way out won't hit the USA, it'll hit Latin America.

The CSA will invade Hati only if they have a burning desire seeing CSA infantry hanging from every lampost. They would have no real navy and thus no real way to land and supply more than a relative handful of men.

 

[Fiver]

There's enough of a Confederate national identity in the Confederacy's armies across classes for that army to hold the Confederacy together and even the usual short war PODs leave precedents the army can appeal to in order to seem not like what it's actually being/doing.

I can find plenty of examples of officers encouraging the men based on their state. Can you show any where they were rallied or encouraged based on being Confederates?

A CS dictatorship would have enough stability to prevent the thing coming unglued for some time, it has no ability to engage in power-projection and will have enough problems sustaining itself to avoid any kinds of wars with the USA or Mexico.

Much of the Third World shows just how "stable" military dictatorship is. In OTL, much of the CSA military leadership spent more time quarreling with each other than fighting the Yankees. Most of the CSA Army will be disbanded after independence due to inability to pay them and the pressing need to get them back to growing food. Most people in the CSA believed their central government was to strong, not that it needed more power.

Best case, an attempted dictatorship in the CSA results in the execution of the plotters. Worse case it results in something like the Spanish Civil War. If the coup plotters somehow come out on top, expect the border states to try to rejoin the US.

 

[Snake Featherston]

I can find plenty of examples of officers encouraging the men based on their state. Can you show any where they were rallied or encouraged based on being Confederates?

The entirety of the Overland Campaign. The Confederate Army *was* the Confederate nation, and it is the only institution with a national focus-legitimacy.

Much of the Third World shows just how "stable" military dictatorship is. In OTL, much of the CSA military leadership spent more time quarreling with each other than fighting the Yankees. Most of the CSA Army will be disbanded after independence due to inability to pay them and the pressing need to get them back to growing food. Most people in the CSA believed their central government was to strong, not that it needed more power.

Best case, an attempted dictatorship in the CSA results in the execution of the plotters. Worse case it results in something like the Spanish Civil War. If the coup plotters somehow come out on top, expect the border states to try to rejoin the US.

A CS military dictatorship will create stability because it will be focused on maintaining the power it already has, not on a risky major war with the United States that could endanger its whole grasp on power.

 

[Wendell]

This is the thing. The radicals inside the CS are going to be clamoring for more land and filibustering. Jefferson Davis supported annexing pretty much every Mexican state touching the Rio Grande while he was still a US politician. Then again, there is one place that the CSA can go that nobody may bother to defend: Haiti.

I think we'll see a resurgence in filibustering and popularity for filibusters in the CSA, especially as it becomes more of an international pariah, which is going to cause collapse at home. Any national-unity government that sees war as a way out won't hit the USA, it'll hit Latin America.

Haiti? Really? I don't see it.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Haiti? Really? I don't see it.

An independent black state founded by a revolution against slavery? I certainly do see it.

 

[Wendell]

An independent black state founded by a revolution against slavery? I certainly do see it.

Is that sarcasm

The only thing Dixie would find there is opposition. What practical purpose would there be for pursuing it. Now, if what happened was a war with Haiti resulting from Confederate acquisition of its western neightbor, then that would be possible. Otherwise, a war in Haiti would be (any may be anyway) the worst possible idea for the Confederate foreign policy.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Is that sarcasm

The only thing Dixie would find there is opposition. What practical purpose would there be for pursuing it. Now, if what happened was a war with Haiti resulting from Confederate acquisition of its western neightbor, then that would be possible. Otherwise, a war in Haiti would be (any may be anyway) the worst possible idea for the Confederate foreign policy.

No, that's the CSA's rationale for invading it, given how much influence the South had on US policies and US-dickery to Haiti, an independent CSA *will* want to remove Haiti as a state.

 

[Johnrankins]

Is that sarcasm

The only thing Dixie would find there is opposition. What practical purpose would there be for pursuing it. Now, if what happened was a war with Haiti resulting from Confederate acquisition of its western neightbor, then that would be possible. Otherwise, a war in Haiti would be (any may be anyway) the worst possible idea for the Confederate foreign policy.

Agreed, they might hate the island but even at their most delusional I don't think they would invade. What could they get out of it except their own deaths?

 

[Snake Featherston]

Agreed, they might hate the island but even at their most delusional I don't think they would invade. What could they get out of it except their own deaths?

I was pointing out that from the POV of a state with the Cornerstone Speech as its version of Washington's inaugural address invading Haiti makes a good amount of geopolitical sense. Of course it making this and their accomplishing it are two different things.

 

[Johnrankins]

No, that's the CSA's rationale for invading it, given how much influence the South had on US policies and US-dickery to Haiti, an independent CSA *will* want to remove Haiti as a state.

And have absolutely no way of doing so. In their wildest dreams they couldn't build a navy capable of transporting an army large enough to take Hati.

 

[Snake Featherston]

And have absolutely no way of doing so. In their wildest dreams they couldn't build a navy transporting an army large enough to take Hati.

Again, I never said that they could do it, I was just noting that from a CS ideological viewpoint Haiti being invaded is a perfectly sensible thing to do. I agree the CSA will be extremely unlikely to invade there but if it ever developed a navy that *could* do such things, Haiti is an inevitable target of such actions.

 

[Wendell]

I was pointing out that from the POV of a state with the Cornerstone Speech as its version of Washington's inaugural address invading Haiti makes a good amount of geopolitical sense. Of course it making this and their accomplishing it are two different things.

Trying it would almost certainly threaten the integrity of the CSA.

 

[Johnrankins]

Again, I never said that they could do it, I was just noting that from a CS ideological viewpoint Haiti being invaded is a perfectly sensible thing to do. I agree the CSA will be extremely unlikely to invade there but if it ever developed a navy that *could* do such things, Haiti is an inevitable target of such actions.

Hit and run raids? Yes Actual invasion? No It would be a bloody mess and as little as I think of the CSA the vast majority of the CSA Army would know it would wind up a bloody mess that would gain them very little or nothing at staggering costs.