Chapter 11: California Uber Alles vs. Back-to-Back Civil War Champs: Part V

Ever since the invention of atomic weapons, war across borders has become suicidal for all parties, so no proper World War III has ever erupted. Instead, the Cold War was fought within borders, in anti-colonial wars where both sides poured in resources and sometimes even their militaries to assist their proxy governments. Almost never did Russian forces directly fight American forces, and the few times it happened were kept secret by both sides, unwilling to escalate the Korean War to nuclear war.

However, late stage capitalism moves the world inexorably towards war. But within the constraints of war in the nuclear era, that means that World War III will necessarily be a civil war within a country, likely a country that nobody thought would ever see war, a country large enough that its fronts could contain expeditionary forces from the whole militarized world. You've read the preceding parts of this book, presumably, so it should be obvious that I think World War III and the Second American Civil War will be the same war.

It is highly ironic and therefore highly dialectical that the next world war would be a proxy war fought on the soil of the nation that exported proxy war worldwide. The hamfisted attempts of China to get Biden elected, and the equally hamfisted attempts of Russia and the DPRK to get Trump reelected, will not be the end of the matter. These efforts will escalate until one day, arms and "military advisors" are flowing from Eurasia to their favorite faction fighting in North America.

The last civil war had a similar dynamic, but America was still enough of a backwater at the time for it not to matter much. The extent of European meddling in our Civil War was that Britain built and sold some warships to the Confederacy, and eventually as a result was forced to pay reparations to America for the shipping those warships sunk. France also took advantage of the chaos to form an unholy alliance with the Mexican bougies and recolonize the place, in direct contravention of the Monroe Doctrine we were too busy to enforce. But even though the rich of Europe longed for a Confederate victory that would justify turning the screws harder on their own domestic labor, they largely kept those sentiments cloaked behind liberal process arguments like "states' rights" in their newspapers, and out of their countries' foreign policies.

America is no longer a backwater. Love it or hate it, it's the lynchpin of the world economy. Every country on Earth will have a stake in the victor of our civil war. Smaller nations may just send volunteers to fight for one side or another. Medium nations willing to stick their necks out might ship arms to one side or another, either openly or in secret. Large nations may even deploy troops to fight alongside one side or the other, but will probably try to avoid shooting any non-Americans on the opposite side, so it doesn't escalate to nuclear war. But other nations will have a direct stake in the outcome of this war, and will fight in it.

Perhaps the nation with the biggest stake will be Canada. Thousands of miles of undefended border is fine between imperialism and imperialism's little brother. But what happens when America looks ready to tip over into socialist revolution? Justin Trudeau (or whichever capitalist replaces him) will not be able to countenance anything that upstages his fake leftism, or gives the Canadian workers hope for a better life. Canadians by the thousands, maybe even millions, will sign up for the Union Army as well as Wall Street's Pinkertons. But that won't be the end of it. Capitalist Canada is basically a shell government for the oil and mining interests that dominate its economy and its international investments, investments that socialist America already has strong opinions about (see: DAPL, Keystone XL). The Canadians have betrayed their own Native nations for these interests; they will betray America too if they think they can get away with it. They will do everything short of open war to help Wall Street. They will not begin war because their national sovereignty will be forfeit if they make that bet and lose. But they certainly might invite capitalist Britain, France, Australia, and/or New Zealand to station troops in their territory, they certainly would finance and arm several Klan guerrillas fighting in America, and they might even try to extend diplomatic cover to Wall Street, proposing ceasefires and talks whenever the Union gains the upper hand, and "peacekeeping forces" in any border states or states the Union needs to control for victory.

All of this is to say that when we inevitably crush Wall Street anyway, Canada will be scared shitless by the retribution it will have brought down on itself. We will have every moral reason to invade, but we can find a more legal one that will turn their own radlibs against them: we can recognize the sovereignty of every First Nations government in Canada, and invite them to apply for statehood. This would solve several problems at once: increasing Native representation in their own damn government, as well as giving us a legal reason in harmony with the liberals' own idpol lawyering to station troops in the heart of Canada and break it apart if necessary. We could also use this precedent to extend similar statehood to our own Native nations at the first opportunity.

Canada has withstood American invasion twice and succumbed to it once. Canada only exists in its current form because British troops and colonial militias all based out of the thirteen colonies conquered it in the Seven Years' War. But during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, America could not overcome Britain and Canadian militias working in concert, and its invasions were crushed.

Canada has one-tenth of the population of America, and even if its traditional allies in the former British Empire helped it, America could conquer it. A socialist America will surely feel compelled to do so; five thousand miles of border through which counterrevolution can and will slip is far too much. If capitalist Canada does not submit to thorough Finlandization for the whole civil war, and I strongly doubt it would, then it will have signed its own death warrant.

Australia and New Zealand will be a different matter. Even as capitalists, they require an alliance with the world's strongest navy in order for their economies to survive. At the time of their founding, that was Britain; now it's America. If the US Navy becomes a socialist organization, what will they do? The EU does not have anywhere near enough naval power to replace America, especially not in the Asia-Pacific region. Japan does not, but one day conceivably could. Same with China. Aussie and Kiwi capitalism will therefore either attempt to maintain their export economies through strict neutrality, or go all-in on Wall Street during the civil war.

Australia is, like Canada, home to many mining corporations. There is a lot of Australia worth mining, but these corporations enjoy doing business abroad. They exploit the mineral wealth of the entire region. Under the terms and conditions of American imperialism, they can do that. Without American imperialism in place, under strict neutrality, they would have a lot less certainty about their overseas investments and would be forced in the long term to mine in Australia or nowhere at all. So although a Labor government there might initially be inclined to neutrality in our civil war, a Coalition government would not, and in the long term the corporate interests that control Labor would be inclined to try to stop us too. The Kiwis would be obliged more or less to follow Australia's lead.

Finally, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the City of London known as the United Kingdom will have been in the tank for Wall Street from the first. Unlike Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Britain will join the fight as directly as possible, protected by their American-derived nuclear Trident missiles, in order to protect the City's only begotten son Wall Street, as well as its investments in America. They will join the fight with the most advanced working class of the reactionaries. Corbynite Labour, for all its issues, was miles ahead of anything in Canada, Australia, or New Zealand in recent years. There are communist entryists even in the Brexit Party there. There is a radical working class tradition in the UK going back to the Levellers in the English Civil War. Even the Tories are in hock to the workers to a point now, as Boris Johnson's majority depends on working class Labour seats taken at the last election. Britain may go to war with us, but it will have the most advanced socialist resistance movement of any nation to do so. Our civil war may well spark a civil war there.

Onwards to the ending!