“Because of Texas’ wealth — [it’s the] 15th largest economy in the world — [foreign nations] do not want to have bad relations with Texas,” Ross says. “There are many countries, China for instance, that want to preserve their ability to access countries with major oil and gas reserves, so Texas fit into that.”

Unlike the first republic, a modern nation of Texas needs to have positions on things like the Isreali-Palestinian conflict.

“But what was interesting was that Texas’s positions were often quite different from the remaining United States,” Ross says.

What would Texas’s foreign policy entail? Texan country singer and humorist Kinky Friedman imagines what he would do as the Texan secretary of foreign affairs.

“I think the first thing we would do is go to the third-world countries and teach the women how to grow big hair and give the men Rick Perry wigs,” he says. “I will keep us out of war with Oklahoma. And one of the first countries we’ll open free trade with is Cuba. We will be opening cigar stores all over Texas. We’re not supporting their economy, we’re burning their fields.”