'Trump People Likely To Wreck Us': Historian Timothy Snyder Warns America May End in Five Years

Renowned historian Timothy Snyder has warned that the US may not continue to exist in its current form over the next five, 10 or 15 years. He argued that Trump supporters may be more likely to wreck the country as a political entity than to establish a homogeneous authoritarian regime stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

The warning appeared on Sunday alongside concerns about growing political polarisation, state-level resistance to federal authority, and renewed discussion of a possible national divorce.

The news came after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly demanded a legal dismantling of the nation following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination. Greene told supporters she wanted a peaceful national divorce, arguing the country was too far gone and no longer safe.

Polls conducted since 2021 by universities, YouGov and others found that a third or more of Americans expected a civil war during the next decade or so, according to the source article.

How Trump Loyalists Might Wreck The US

Author Kurt Andersen articulated this quiet unravelling in The New York Times, anticipating themes from his upcoming novel, The Breakup. He noted that a national divorce remains fictional for now, but argued that careless rhetoric has blinded the public to a profoundly strange new reality.

For him, America functions like a 'bitter, loveless marriage', where states stay technically but less enthusiastically united mostly because splitting up is too complicated, dreadful or expensive.

The current state of affairs is what Andersen described as 'uncooperative federalism' and 'soft secession'. During the past two Democratic presidencies, many red states and counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. They prohibited local police forces from enforcing some federal gun regulations. The term was a trollish play on Democratic sanctuary cities, which similarly declined to cooperate with certain federal immigration policies.

Soft Secession Across The US Takes Hold

Texas Governor Greg Abbott took immigration matters into his own hands by deploying the National Guard to line the banks of the Rio Grande with coils of razor wire. Abbott ordered his troops to prevent federal border agents from helping migrants who became tangled in the barricades. More than two dozen Republican governors endorsed this show of anti-federal strength. Andersen presented these actions as examples of growing anti-federal defiance.

Democratic-led states and cities are similarly practising soft secession in the Trump era. Local police routinely decline to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Many states have passed laws to shield residents from prosecution if they are charged elsewhere with facilitating abortions, while several stockpiled abortifacients in case federal laws make them difficult to acquire.

Will The US Wreck In Five Years?

Various combinations of blue states have banded together to perform functions the federal government has abandoned or degraded. They formed a climate alliance that participates in international forums the Trump administration will not attend.

These states are also creating de facto regulatory agencies for cap-and-trade carbon markets, and issuing medically legitimate childhood vaccination recommendations. A coalition of attorneys general has sued the administration over birthright citizenship, tariffs, and the denial of federal funds to Democratic-controlled states.

Against this backdrop, Snyder argued that the United States' 250-year history does not guarantee its survival over the next five, 10 or 15 years. States have a beginning and they have an end. His comments were presented in the source article as part of a broader argument about the risks posed by Trump's authoritarian presidency.

Escaping a Loveless Marriage Through Velvet Divorce

Snyder stressed that Trump people are much more likely to 'wreck the U.S. as an entity' than to succeed in generating some kind of 'homogeneous tyranny from the Pacific to the Atlantic'. This highlights a scenario where the geopolitical danger is administrative fragmentation rather than a monolithic dictatorship. IBTimes UK cannot independently verify these geopolitical claims, so take everything lightly.

Andersen shares this underlying anxiety about an unsustainable status quo, writing that Americans cannot keep going this way. Escaping federal dysfunction and avoiding real hostilities over the long term will require some kind of radical shift.

Some propose transitioning to a system like the regional autonomous communities in Spain, where local governments collect nearly all taxes and forward a negotiated share to the national government. Others point to Switzerland, where individual cantons hold the power to reconfigure themselves and decide citizenship.

Even these drastic democratic compromises might not be enough. Someday down the line, the nation may decide it has no choice but to call it quits. Andersen suggested the nation might eventually follow the lead of post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, which executed a calm split in 1993 dubbed the 'Velvet Divorce'.

Orchestrating a conscious national uncoupling for a country as heterogeneous as America would be extremely difficult and painful, but in the long run, it might still be better for the kids.