I just don’t think balkanization can work at this point for the US, there aren’t enough national contradictions for any sort of balkanization project to last. Yes, there is a possibility for separate native states, but they would be quite small and unable to defend themselves against a larger US. A new afrika type state could exist, and would be quite large, but again wouldn’t be able to drift away from greater US influence. There aren’t much clear divides in the US where you can draw clear borders for new states. The US national project has already been mostly successful, most of the country has been “americanized” and sees itself as part of the greater project. If you were to just create separate states, those states would just see themselves as heirs to a greater national project and attempt to unify against the contradiction that people of the same nationality also exist in the other breakaway states. The country would plunge into perpetual civil war till one state unifies into the greater US. Much like how warlord era china eventually resulted in the KMT attempting unification and then the PRC completing it, because the contradiction that all these separate warlord states existed yet still held the same Chinese nationality couldn’t last.

The closest we got to an actual divide and fracture in the US national project was the civil war, where Dixie, the south, truly did try and have a different national identity then the Yankee dominated north due to the domination of a slave owner elite and an economy almost entirely dependant on slave labor and cash crops. But that national identity is as good as gone now. Yes, people in the south still fly Confederate flags, but they do so because they’re racist, not because they hate America or don’t see themselves as American.

I just don’t see balkanization working unless a greater power intervenes constantly to make sure the bickering warlord states don’t eventually unify, which would be an incredibly costly endeavor. Didn’t work out well for the Japanese for example.