JOURNAL: Nation-state firewalls

Stress reaction:

• India and Bangladesh. A 2,500 mile (~$1.2 billion dollars) fence to seal the border from what India fears could become the "new Afghanistan."
• US and Mexico. A 2,000 mile state of the art barrier being constructed in incremental installments.
• Israel and the West Bank. 436 miles of concrete barriers.
• Saudi Arabia and Iraq. A 550 mile wall at a cost of $600 million (part of a ring to encircle the entire country, as with the fence to the south with Yemen).
• Spain and Morocco.
• Thailand and Malaysia. 75 km border fence.
• Pakistan and Afghanistan. A 2,400 km fence.
• Kuwait and Iraq. Upgrade to the 215 km fence with Iraq.
• Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
• UAE and Oman.

Question: if the Berlin wall (et. al.) were a sign of a fundamental contradiction in the communist system that ultimately destroyed it, are these walls a sign of a similar contradiction (albeit different, given the change in directionality)?

Comments

[Hans]

To me it seems that these walls are for keeping people out, the Berlin wall was for keeping poeple inside.

[Hans]

Zoo Walls vs. Castle Walls.

[rbrooks]

Nation States trying to ward off dissolution?

[londamium]

Firstly, it's worth pointing out that border fences are not exactly new, and the motivations behind their proposed constructions are diverse, with the objectives encompassing pork-barrel corporate welfare spending, legitimate security concerns, creating territorial facts in ongoing land-ownership disputes, political pr, anti-immigration measures, territorial demarcations useful for determining ownership of mineral rights and regime/governmental paranoia.

Secondly, the bulk of the projects listed will never actually be built.

Thirdly, the wall between Morocco and Spain is traditionally described as the Mediterranean; the Ceuta and Melilla enclaves already have a fence.

[Duncan Kinder]

Two historical precedents:

. Great Wall of China
. Hadrian's Wall

Neither the Chinese nor the Roman empires constituted "nation-states" in the post-Westphalian meaning of the term.

[AE]

The walls won't matter. People and capitol move at will through the "Flat" world.

[adam]

Its fascinating that globalisation, which is supposedly all about making the world flatter, appears to be more about creating new divisions.

Still fences are great - as any houseowner can tell you they mean that you don't see whats on the other side. I am reminded of the old dodderer Reagan who said "Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders." This is, amazingly, true. And the same basic fact can be said about guerillas. They seep through walls.

Which brings us to these modern Maginot Lines or for those with a Vietnam-memory Mcnamara lines. For those who don't remember this state of the art line of tens of thousands of sensors missed the North Vietnamese tanks which appeared in South Vietnam - having come all the way down the trail without being detected.

Fences are - at their hearts - about what you don't see, by making the fence these nations are choosing not to see whats next door. Some of these nations are armed with nuclear weapons, this is pretty much the definition of "trouble brewing".

[Azr@el]

Fences, we have fences around our nations to protect ourselves and our countrymen from others, the outsiders, we have fences around our communities to protect ourselves from our countrymen, albiet poorer countrymen, we have fences around our hearts to protect ourselves from ourselves, the only true outsider.

[georgelarson]

"Which brings us to these modern Maginot Lines"

The Majinot Line did hold back the Germans. They had to go around it.

[Bill Moore]

Fences and walls work to some extent. The walls established in Israel greatly reduced terrorism attacks on their soil. The barrier that the French created between Algeria and Tunsia prevented insurgents from crossing. A fence was used effectively to some degree in the Omani insurgency. It may be the information age, but physical barriers still work at making it much more difficult to move people. And as georgelarson pointed out the Marjinont line did work, it forced the Germans to go around. If they a line all the way around France they would have held the Germans back (minus the airborne infantry) long enough to mobilize their Army. Some old school methods still work.

[Kotare]

Julia Lovell in her book The Great Wall makes the observation that the Chinese, particularly in their earlier phases of wall building, used walls 'offensively' - as a way of extending control and suveillance into new frontier regions, and channelling steppe warriors into killing grounds or away from productive areas.

What is interesting about walls is (1) what they are built in response to - and here, picking up on John's 'stress reaction' point, more and more stresses are environmental factors, such as overpopulation, famine, water scarcity, land degradation, and (2) what they say about the psychology of those building them.

[Azr@el]

Hadrian's wall was not designed to keep out barabarians , it was designed to delay their exist from roman dominion after raid, allowing roman forces to close and finish them. I'm not sure if the great wall of china served a similar purpose but most early walls were of this nature.

[adam]

Scout006,

A minor point on the Maginot Line is that French mobilisation was meant to take 3 weeks. Actually French mobilisation of around 3 million troops was completed in 17 days. The French then did nothing from September 1940 until April 1940 - because the Maginot Line blinded them to their opportunities. In other words until the Germans attacked. To be honest the point that is often made about the Maginot Line that the Germans attacked elsewhere (for example, say, Paris) seems counter-productive. A British general that kept the Kent Military Canal whilst losing London might be expected to be asked a few pointed questions.

Overall on fences I think Machiavelli said it best in The Prince: "It has been a custom with princes, in order to hold their states more securely, to build fortresses that may serve as a bridle and bit to those who might design to work against them, and as a place of refuge from a first attack."

Fair enough - and its the current view of all these nations that are building fences and walls - but note that word custom. Machiavelli isn't big on customs in The Prince. We'll jump his section on Italian nobles that blow their own fortresses to pieces.

"Fortresses, therefore, are useful or not according to circumstances; if they do you good in one way they injure you in another. And this question can be reasoned thus: the prince who has more to fear from the people than from foreigners ought to build fortresses, but he who has more to fear from foreigners than from the people ought to leave them alone. "

To summarise - if you're frightened of your population build fortresses, otherwise don't bother. The Israelis, as you note, are terrified by the unwilling part of their population that chafes against their rule; hence the need for a fortress.

Lets look at Johns examples - all feature governments that are, to a greater or lesser degree, feeling threatened by their own populations.

So back to the Big Mac: "It has not been seen in our times that such fortresses have been of use to any prince... I shall praise him who builds fortresses as well as him who does not, and I shall blame whoever, trusting in them, cares little about being hated by the people."

And thats the problem with fences, by making people feel safe they stop looking outside of their cosy box and seeing whats on the other side. In 1940 the French general staff might have seen that the Germans had lost many of their tanks in Poland. A daring general might consider that a quick offensive might have taken the Rhineland and ended the war - but in the way was the Maginot Line and no-one could see past it.

[boure]

+N/S Korea

[Marcello]

The Maginot line was not built to actually stop a german attack. It was built to deter the germans from attacking in the southern sector. It was always assumed that the real battle would be a meeting engagement between the anglofrench and german field armies in Belgium, not a frontal assault against fixed fortifications. Given the length of the border to defend and available resources building the Maginot line made a lot of sense. In many sectors anyway it was so weak that its psychological value was probably greater than the actual one.
The frenchs had got burned badly in WW1, when defense trumped offense. That coupled with a shitty demographic situation meant that there was little enthusiasm for hasty offensives.
The germans initially planned to collaborate with the french plans by charging into Belgium head on and smashing their heads against the french armies. Only after their plans had been compromised by a plane crash and much internal infighting they settled for what they actually did.

[Marcello]

"The walls won't matter. People and capitol move at will through the "Flat" world"

According to the most common estimates between 1949 and 1961 2.5 millions of people fled the DDR. Between 1962 and 1989, after the wall was built, this decreased to 5000. If this does not sound like a success when you speak about preventing people from moving freely I do not know what is.
I do not have the stats for the israel wall but I would suspect it is just as effective.

[Tom]

Hello,

You forgot an extremely important Wall: the sand and concrete 1'000km wall that divides the territory of Western Sahara in two parts. West of the Wall, occupied/annexed part of Western Sahara controlled by Morocco. East of the Wall, part of the Western Sahara controlled by Front Polisario.

All around the Wall: antipersonnel landmines ;
All along the Wall: Moroccan Army watchtowers and hi-tech electronic surveillance system provided by US.

[tbrucia]

Walls are barriers, but in a three-dimensional world the dome is the next wall. Anti-missile defenses are the modern extension of the wall, and these are (theoretically) invisible domes separating the 'us' from the 'them'. It's interesting that no one has mentioned the wall's antonymic counterpart: the tunnel. Every wall invites a tunnel, and not all are physical subterranean structures. (Even minefields normally have secret 'paths' through them -- informationally secret tunnels...). A 'tunnel' can be informational, when a wall (e.g. firewall) is designed to prevent the flow of information. And therefore wires, radio frequencies, light, and other media can be considered tunnels that allow information to pass through walls.