Do Walls And Barriers Between Nations Still Work?

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 20^th Century, are walls nothing more than a Medieval solution to a 21^st 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”?