Aerial view of migrants waiting at the United States-Mexico border wall in El Paso, Texas, on November 5, 2023. Photo: AFP.
These are bad times for economic, commercial, geopolitical and geographical integration between countries. Although ideal for generating post-truth stories that can distort the survival of globalization.
“If you want more market freedom, build better walls.” It is the ironic title of a column by Adrian Wooldridge, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and author of the book “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World,” with which he writes I want to highlight a phenomenon that goes unnoticed.
The planet is being fortified at a forced pace by the complicit silence of neoliberals and those who demand the free transit of workers, goods, services and capital, while in the opposite direction they act at will to preserve their earned privileges.
It is, says Wooldridge, as if the slogan “Tear down this wall,” which sounded with unusual resonance before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which buried the Cold War and lit the fuse for the globalization of markets, had given way to another expression that expresses that rather out Convenience to create insurmountable barriers to success in the future.
Elizabeth Vallet, head of the Center for Geopolitical Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal, has presented figures on this paradoxical infrastructure plan that aims to hinder economic, commercial and social transit, as well as cooperation and good neighborliness between nations and peoples.
And this is what happened in a study published by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a think tank that claims to provide research to improve immigration, promote dialogue and integrate development policies with “new ideas for adoption into increasingly complex policies.” to carry out. With surprising results.
Vallet calculates that there are 74 separation walls between states worldwide, six times more than at the end of the Cold War, stretching over more than 20,000 miles, or about 32,000 kilometers.
Perhaps the most sophisticated of all is the double containment barrier, which stretches nearly 1,000 kilometers each along the Saudi borders with Iraq and Yemen. However, without forgetting the 3,200 raised by Pakistan against India – another of the most sensitive sovereignty disputes that Islamabad has with New Delhi, particularly over Kashmir – reinforced by trenches 3.5 meters deep and 4.3 meters wide . Width for more than 650 kilometers. With more than a thousand armed border guards.
Example buttons from a fortified world
Unlike the Great Wall of China, the Wall of Pakistan is visible from space due to its high light emission. However, the iron wall that separates Israel from Gaza is apparently short compared to these two Goliaths.
If not, as David Betz, a professor at King’s College London, explains, the so-called Iron Dome, Israel’s air defense system, with its missile interceptor shield and radar armor, should be considered a full-fledged fortress. Especially because “they are spreading to more and more latitudes on the planet.”
Or the new US embassy in south London, a postmodern building that appears to have been designed according to medieval architectural concepts due to its extensive network of ditches, dykes and ponds that separate it from the nearest street by more than 30 meters. Betz wrote “The Saved Age: Fortifications in the 21st Century,” an eloquent essay on this phenomenon.
Vallet remembers several of these example buttons. One of the most recent came at the end of 2021, when the Polish parliament approved the construction of a border wall with Belarus. Not to mention, in the same year, the 30-foot-tall Church of Separation from Mexico, dedicated by the governor of Texas, financed with state and private funds and sponsored by the Trump administration, whose president made it a mandatory election.
Israel also chose this exercise to complete its siege of the Gaza Strip, which it reinforced with sensors to achieve complete isolation of the Palestinian population. As did Turkey, which reinforced its stone barriers on its border with Iran, while Greece completed another 40 kilometers of the steel wall separating it from its Turkish neighbor and is appealing to Europe to financially support additional sections in the future.
No continent is immune from border fortifications. Of the 74 existing buildings, most were built this century and at least another 15 are in the planning stages.
The main purpose of almost all of them is to prevent illegal immigration flows, even if they have not precisely demonstrated their effectiveness in this regard. But there are also those with a defensive priority and as a legacy of times of war or which are justified to prevent terrorist attacks or organized crime and are particularly linked to smuggling.
The big business of border fortification
Wooldridge points this out big business in the field of border fortifications and it is ironically questioned whether its defenders are also defenders of the free movement of goods and people.
Because The prevailing idea seems to be that only with walls can governments protect their industries and businesses and select their friendly markets to continue to encourage trade and investment flows. Wooldrigde points out that a 2001 report estimated “constructing a security perimeter of this type” at a market cost of $59 billion.
The abundance of these fortifications can be seen, among other places, in the upper-class district of Johannesburg, the financial capital of South Africa, where a four-meter-high wall with power lines and seismic sensors was built to prevent anyone from interfering with their businesses. This climate has given rise to companies like American Gladiator Solutions, which specialize in strengthening school security against armed attacks by students.
However, they cannot guarantee maximum security. Sometimes not even elementary protective measures. The Hamas attack on October 7th reminded Israel of September 11th, as demonstrated by the forced fence built by Tel Aviv to stem the flow of Palestinians and strengthen its national security Building fortresses is not a sufficient guarantee to stop social unrest.
This false sense of security doesn’t just exist today. Perhaps the best-known example in recent history is the famous Maginot Line, which consumed 6% of France’s entire military budget between 1930 and 1937, without being able to stop the Nazi military offensive in 1940.
Several Palestinians wait to get to Jerusalem, from which they are separated by a controversial wall that Israel built along the West Bank. Photo: Portal.
The turn of the millennium brought fever to the walls
Vallet shapes that Fastening concept from three main aspects. It is solidly composed of resistant material, has regularly shaped edges to prevent access and its functionality is to prevent the transport of goods and people.
However, it also has four differences: it generally responds to a unilateral decision, but can also be made through bilateral or multilateral agreements; usually respects the country’s territorial sovereignty; It covers part of the border connecting two nations and may include surveillance devices such as cameras, sensors, drones or military checkpoints.
Currently, this expert states: “They multiplied” because “at the end of the Cold War there were only a dozen walls,” which accelerated the feeling of being “cornered.” Given the risk that, as its proponents claim, may cause “imminent dangers” to the world or domestic order. Which, in his opinion, “legitimizes their constructions.”
Covid-19 “has confirmed this trend conceived since 9/11.” In cases like China’s with Myanmar, or South Africa and Zimbabwe along the Limpopo River, they follow France’s moves in the 18th century to close parts of the south of the country and illustrate the idea of the wall as infrastructure to combat the effects of pandemics avoid or minimize.
“The changes have been significant since the beginning of the millennium.” There are no longer peaceful separationssuch as those erected between the two Koreas, between India and Pakistan or on Cyprus to separate the Greek and Turkish communities.
Now, 24% of these walls are intended to supposedly control criminal movements, 32% were built to stop unwanted migration flows and 23% were hypothetically built to combat terrorism. Those from Israel, Saudi Arabia and those from Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan claim to obey the latter. But they all have one common denominator: they violate the principle of the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
In the name of state sovereignty, Vallet clarifies how Donald Trump bragged in January 2019: “There are 77 major walls or significant separations worldwide, and 45 countries plan to build such walls. In Europe alone, more than 800 miles (almost 1,300 kilometers) have been built since 2015. All achieved 100 percent success. Let’s stop crime at our southern border.”
However, behind this so-called “universal efficiency” lie indirect costs and reactions that threaten prosperity. Tunnels and a variety of opportunities emerge to overcome these obstacles, the black market erupts, production centers and economic enclaves close, cross-border cooperation collapses, and geopolitical crises arise that negatively impact globalization and promote commercial fragmentation and industrial protectionism .
For Wooldridge, “the dream of a world without borders has always been impossible,” but One in which mobility is promoted and the security of the exchange of goods and people is guaranteed is entirely feasible. Especially “if you want to advance globalization.” Because walls, in contrast to bridges, threaten market freedom.
(Taken from public)