With President Trump’s debacle over the funding of his “ego
wall” have resulted in the longest government shutdown so far, do walls and
barriers between nations still work?
By: Ringo Bones
For those old enough to remember, the construction of the
Berlin Wall in August 13, 1961 have left me somewhat bemused given that during
that time, there are military jet aircraft that can fly around 3 times the
speed of sound that could make any wall irrelevant. Even though that the Berlin
Wall is now a distant memory after the Cold War thaw that relegated it to the
dustbin of history back in November 9, 1989 declassified documents that have
been revealed back in 2004 have shown that the then East German government
already has plans to “automate” the wall with computer guided guns said to make
the wall ready for the year 2000. Given their somewhat checkered history in the
20th Century, are walls nothing more than a Medieval solution to a
21st Century problem?
After reading The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations
Are Changing Our World by Tim Marshall, it seems like walls more or less offer
mixed results to the problems it intends to solve. The Israeli Wall that formed
the barrier between the Israeli and Palestinians seems to be almost 100-percent
effective when it comes to its intended function - i.e. stopping militants from
conducting suicide bombing attacks on major metropolitan areas in Israel.
Consequently, such walls are also referred to as “Apartheid Walls” and are not
winning Israel new friends elsewhere on the planet anytime soon.
Another “effective” wall is the so-called Moroccan Wall or
more properly known as the Moroccan Western Sahara Wall that separates the
Moroccan occupied west from the Polisario controlled east. The structure
stretches for 1,700 miles or 2,700 kilometers and is actually more like a
combination between a “berm” and a minefield. It was created back in August
1980 and was deemed to be very effective in its intended function as it ended
the violence of the border dispute around 1991. Unfortunately, this “uneasy
peace” is currently costing Morocco 40-percent of the country’s GDP. Would
Donald J. Trump’s U.S. – Mexico “ego wall” prove to be more “economically
viable”?
