A thread on why the Rhodesia example is pertinent to current American politics.

Rhodesia was a British settler colony in southern Africa. Its political status was below that of near independent dominions like Canada, Australia, and even South Africa under minority rule....

Yet, although Britain kept certain subjects under its purview, including the treatment of Black Africans who were the vast majority of the population, by mid 1920s Rhodesia was effectively self-governed by its White settlers who were about 5% of the population....

As Britain retreated from Empire in the 1960s, it faced a principal-agent problem in Rhodesia similar to the French in Algeria: the colonial settlers, who were otherwise loyal to Britain, refused to cede power to the majority Africans. Unlike Fraance, however,...

Britain could not and did not want to use force to squash the settler rebellion. It could not because an expedition of that nature would be extremely costly, threaten British investments in neighboring (apartheid) South Africa, and soldiers may have refused to fire on Settlers...

By the 1960s, Rhodesian Whites had a military that had participated in WWII, the Malayan Emergency, and other late British imperial ventures. They had a strong economy, arguably second to only South Africa. Also, they did not then face armed rebellion by Black Africans...

Critically, sections of Britain's Conservative Party supported the Rhodesian goal to not cede control.

The combo of British business and political supporters, local White intransigence, and their control of security forces allowed them to unilaterally declare independence....

By early 1970s, Britain had several rounds of talks with Rhodesians, and nearly granted independence under minority rule with vague promises of future transition to majority rule. But then arrived the Black African armed rebellion, independence of Mozambique and Angola, etc.,...

The takeaway for the current political clash in American is not why Rhodesia collapsed, but how it managed to secede and survive for 15 years: national elites being unable or unwilling to oppose local elites, local elite intransigence, and local control of security forces....

Pres. Trump and allied GOP leaders want local police to repress the protestors and implicitly back White militias. Controlling vast swathes of rural America may be too costly for any party to accept and there are billions in investments in cities affected by BLM protests....

Finally, small-town and city governments controlled by White suburban and business interests, as well as the law enforcement agencies who serve them, assuming the former still controls the latter, do not want to cede any substantive control or allocate resources to minorities....

So, a Rhodesia like situation where non-democratic localities slip out of the effective control of the national-government maybe a future reality of American politics. It would be akin to Rhodesia, but also, as Rhodesians mentioned aspirationally, akin to pre-1965 America.
End

PS. I will post a reading list on Rhodesia soon. And, my book delves into its creation and fall.

FYI: @NathanKalmoe and @laseptiemewilay