Secession! Long Live the Republic of Texas!
Yeah, right. Like Hell that will ever happen.
But now that I have your attention, let me tell you why this is a ridiculous pipe dream, for any U.S. state in general and Texas in particular. Facebook friends, forgive me because you will see some things that you've seen already.
1. Oil
Texas is not quite the oil magnate that it once was. Sure we have the Eagle Ford shale deposit that will keep production up for about ten years, and there is offshore deposits, too (more on that below), but really the strategic value of Texas is not the oil, but the oil refineries. Texas alone has 20% of the United States' oil refineries. So imagine if Texas really tried to secede and the United States was faced with a loss of 20% of its refining capabilities. There's no way that the Federal government would just let that go.
2. Geography
Imagine if Austin were named the capital of a new Republic of Texas. It is the most sensible choice since it has been the state capital for over 150 years now and all the infrastructure for a regional bureaucracy is there already. And, it is pretty much in the middle of the state. But do you know what else is in the middle of the state, about 60 miles north of Austin? Only about 60,000 U.S. soldiers at a little place called Fort Hood. And less than a hard days drive away is another 40,000 U.S. soldiers at a little place called Fort Bliss. And both of these are conveniently linked directly to Austin thanks to I-35 and I-10. Oh, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma just across the Red River. There's also U.S. Air Force bases in Little Rock, Arkansas, Bossier City, Louisiana, Oklahoma City, and two in New Mexico.
OK, let's talk about four of the state's major metropolitan areas: Beaumont-Port Arthur, Houston, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville-McAllen. All of these are coastal areas, and three of the four are heavy with those oil refineries I mentioned. Think of how easy that makes things for the U.S. Navy to control the coastline for miles inland and land troops as needed to control those precious refineries. In short, geography is solidly against the secessioners.
3. Money
Like all the states, Texas gets a lot of money from the Federal government for a variety of projects. And like all the other states, we generally like our Federal money. Our politicians may gripe and piss and moan about states rights and occasionally leave millions of dollars of Federal money on the table like morons over some silly, contentious issue, but for the most part they sure don't object to the idea of Federal aid. If Texas seceded, that money would be gone. To make matters worse, suddenly the new Republic of Texas would need to somehow fund its own military, immigration and customs, FAA, Border Patrol (and we'd have a lot more border to patrol, too), agriculture department, justice department, commerce department, and all those other departments that now Texas only funds partially via sales and property taxes (we don't even have a state income tax). One of the worst issues to hit the new Republic will be transportation. The Texas Department of Transportation is funded exclusively by Federal gasoline tax revenue. And Texas is freaking big- we need a lot of highways and we need to do a lot of driving to get from Point A to Point B. Secession would mean the new Republic will be left with thousands of miles of highway to maintain, and no money to maintain a mile of it. Consider what that means for commercial transportation.
Of course, the state economy would immediately take a hit. Even if the new Republic could secure its refineries and maintain oil and gas production, how those products would get to market is a big question. After all, the state was blockaded the last time it tried to secede, there's no reason to think that it couldn't be again. A lot of national and international corporations would probably pull out of the state or shut down operations. That would mean an immediate loss of not just business taxes, but laid off employees (read: a huge loss of income and income taxes, too). The government could raise taxes to pay for things, of course, but raising taxes while employment and consumer demand is plummeting will do nothing but hasten economic ruin.
No matter how you look at it, Texas would become the nation's newest Third World country pretty quickly- especially after the first hurricane when the new and flat broke government is faced with disaster mitigation...
4. The World Community
Very few nations despises the United States enough that they would risk major retaliation and badly-degraded diplomatic relations with the U.S. and dare reach out to the new Republic. Even fewer could make a difference if they did (notable exception to both: China). No nation of any importance would dare even acknowledge Texas as a sovereign nation, much less come to its aid in any meaningful way. Some of the more anti-United States Islamic countries might, but this is Texas we're talking about: the heart of xenophobic, Bible-thumping Christendom. Even in dire straits I think any overtures from those nations would bring a , "Thanks, but no thanks" response from the Republic of Texas. One last thing: without international recognition, the Republic of Texas would have zero access to offshore oil reserves- after all, with no international recognition those reserves would be in U.S. territorial waters, not Texas territorial waters...
To put this bluntly: the dream of seceding from the Union is just that: a dream. Not just for Texas, but for any state. Sorry, secessionists, but even if secession were somehow possible, you would be a lot worse off afterward than you think you are now. And, sorry the rest of the Union: you're stuck with us.