"Tear Down This Wall!"

An Anatomy of the Barriers that Divide Us

Few expected the events of November 9th, 1989. Pressure had been mounting for months and civil unrest had spread across the coal-polluted cities of East Germany, but when the regime’s spokesman, Günter Schabowski, mistakenly announced that East Germans would be free to cross the border, it was over. Western media subsequently proclaimed open borders, crowds gathered at checkpoints, and one of the most iconic symbols of human history fell, not by the powder of artillery or the radioactive waves of a nuclear Armageddon, but through the peaceful and sudden change in people’s minds. Walls are not just pieces of concrete, steel and armed guards in their watchtowers. They symbolise something greater and can show curious observers like yourselves something about the social, political and economic factors shaping a region and its people. As the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall rapidly approaches, the Cold War is no more. Soviet totalitarianism is no more. The Iron Curtain is no more. But walls still play a role in the human psyche, both physically and metaphorically. We shall look at three examples of walls in three different places, understand their meaning, question their effectiveness, then engage in a thought experiment about a world in which hard borders are non-existent and humans are allowed to move freely between states.

It may be an obvious fact that walls are man-made, artificially-introduced objects, but the implications of such a simple statement are considerably more complex. It means that there is no inherent value or meaning in walls, only those introduced by human perception. It also means that there is nothing natural about walls, or indeed about borders and states. As Benedict Anderson famously advocated, these are ‘imagined communities.’ There is no way you can taste, touch, or feel the United States of America. True, contrary to nations and states, walls are physical objects, captured and interpreted by our senses. But their whole purpose is to mark, protect or even expand territory and border lines drawn and imagined by humans through their long history of conflict, war and diplomacy. Most of the Berlin Wall was still physically intact after the events of November 9th, and yet, everyone refers to that day as the day of its fall. In other words, the Cold War symbol was defined much more in terms of its subjective, humanly attributed meaning than the objective agglomeration of concrete and barbed wire that composed it. Indeed, when this meaning ceased to exist, so did the physical and geographical existence of the wall, which was demolished shortly afterwards, as the two Germanies reunited. 

This leads us to our first example: The Great Wall of China. It has not been active for millennia, given that Mongolian invaders no longer pose a threat. Somehow, it still has meaning, but this meaning is not necessarily the same as it was 2000 years ago, thus highlighting a second important point about walls: their meaning can change over time — it is not fixed in stone, as the walls themselves are. To illustrate this, let us get back to our example. The Great Wall of China is actually a series of walls spanning around 6000 kilometres. Some of them date back to the sixth century B.C., but the best-preserved ones were built during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Their main objective was to keep the northern nomadic herders out, as they craved the south’s wealth and luxury. After Genghis Khan unified the Mongols and conquered China, his son established a new dynasty, the Yuan, but subsequent peasant revolts led to its fall and the rise of the Ming dynasty, who then decided to put an end to northern incursions. They were convinced that the massive fortification would inhibit nomadic aggression as well as resist the erosive effects of weather and time — and they spent vast amounts of resources to put their plan into action. Northern incursions did continue, however, and the low morale and harsh living conditions for troops stationed at the wall led some of the Chinese defenders to socialise and even collude with northern combatants. Thus, the military effectiveness of the wall was questionable, if that. The structure finally shed its old meaning when the Ming’s successors, the Manchu (or Qing), expanded Chinese territory northwards, making the wall unnecessary. But then something happened: the wall assumed new meaning. It became a symbol of China’s ancient power and history, as well as engineering and architecture. It was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It remains the world’s largest military structure and an invocation of human ingenuity. It also attracts around 10 million visitors every year, boosting revenue from tourism. In other words, the wall is no longer used to keep people out; it is used to bring them in. Military relevance gave way to symbolism, archaeological history, and economic development as the new defining elements of one of the world’s most ancient structures. 

Rather than defending against bloodthirsty armies of invaders, many modern walls are built simply to curb unauthorised migration. As you read this, you are probably thinking of the headline-grabbing US-Mexico wall, and the attention it recently got from Trump’s political ascension. However, the case I would like to discuss is the less-known, but equally important border fence built between the Spanish North-African territory of Melilla and Morocco. It is one of the most fortified borders on the planet. The barrier is divided into a series of layers. First, a tall metal fence, followed by a tilted fence; then barbed wire, another tall fence with more barbed wire, and a flexible top section. On the Moroccan side, you will find a ditch followed by more fences. Everything is monitored by surveillance cameras and guards. Most of the immigrants come from Sub-Saharan Africa. They flee war, persecution and economic hardship. One of their strategies is to gather a big group and focalise their advance into one punctual point of the fence, overwhelming the guards and trying to reach Spanish territory where they are guaranteed certain protections by European law. Some are sent to migrant centres where they are safe from immediate deportation, others are immediately driven back and badly hurt by the guards. After the refugee crisis of 2014-5, both Spain and Morocco increased their defences at the border, reducing the number of trespassers significantly. The wall thus symbolises a division between rich and poor, former colonies and former metropoles, and its meaning is stronger than ever, as a wave of right-wing populism and xenophobia infects European politics. What is interesting is that no matter how big the fence is, people will continue to come. Their desperation is so great that facing a wall head-on, hiding under vehicles or walking into oversaturated boats become logical, even necessary steps. 

For an article commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, this last example seems fitting: it is also a symbol of the Cold War, and a persistent one. The wall — a border barrier in the form a demilitarised buffer zone — between the northern Democratic Republic of Korea and the southern Republic of Korea seems like a relic from a past age. A product of US-Soviet disputes in East Asia after years of Japanese colonialism, a World War, and the bloody Korean War of 1950-3, the border drawn at the 38th parallel breaks one nation into two ideologically opposed states. As the Soviet Union disintegrated and China turned to state capitalism, the North Korean regime refused to compromise, doubling down on its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its open hostility towards the US and its allies. In the meantime, the differences between each side of the border barrier were only accentuated as South Korea’s Asian-Tiger-style economic miracle became as real as a Samsung smartphone and a Hyundai SUV — while famine and state control over the economy became the norm in the North. Just like the families that were permanently separated because their members happened to be on different sides when the wall was erected, the Korean peninsula has learnt to live with a division that is not just between rich and poor, technological and primitive, democratic and totalitarian; more than anything, it is between open and closed. Thus, it is to the subject of openness that we now turn. 

For all the talk of the history and meaning of walls, this article’s mission has been to break them. Its title is taken from a certain American President who, in a famous speech to Berliners in 1982, exclaimed: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” If walls are dependent upon the subjective meanings people give them, then a change in people’s minds could potentially confine them to history books. In that spirit, the British publication The Economist published an article in 2017 imagining a world where borders were open. And by open, it did not mean ‘no borders’ or the end of the nation-state, but open: goods, services, capital and especially people would be able to move freely across states. Workers would go to where they are most productive, getting payed larger salaries by richer clients, reducing labour waste and making the world probably trillions of dollars richer. Latin Americans would flee from urban violence, and Sub-Saharan Africans from murderous dictators, making the idea of open borders a moral one. Since the North’s institutions are hard to replicate in the Global South, a family moving from Bolivia to the Netherlands seems like a much more straightforward way of fighting absolute poverty. This is not to say that emigrating is easy, but that the option should be there for those who wish to (or must) pursue it. 

We do not live in the age of the Ming dynasty, and Mongol invaders have nothing in common with Syrian refugees. The reason why the largest economy in the world became large in the first place is because it went from a few million white settlers and black slaves in agrarian 1800, to 320 million diverse and mostly urban citizens in high-tech 2019. The development of a country’s economic and political institutions is also hurt by the number of walls erected to ‘protect’ the same institutions. Progress is more than just building bridges. It is about tearing down walls.