World Wide Divide

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Many such fortifications are already under construction or being planned. Writing for the Vancouver weekly GeorgiaStraight, Gwynne Dyer calls attention to numerous border-building projects around the world. There's India's nearly completed 1860-mile barrier along its border with Pakistan, Thailand's proposed 'security fence' along its frontier with Malaysia, Kuwait's upgrade of its wall along the Iraqi frontier, and Saudi Arabia's high-tech projects to close off its borders with Yemen and, more recently, Iraq. The list goes on, including the United State's contested fence along the Mexican border and Israel's equally controversial 'security fence.'

While the politics of each country's wall-building project are unique, a common sentiment motivates them all: protectionism that's interested in keeping what's local in, and what's unwanted -- or foreign -- out. Dyer's bleak conclusion starkly contrasts the chorus of voices trumpeting globalization: 'The walls are going up all over the world, and most of them will not come down for a long time, if ever.'

Go there >> Why the World Isn't Flat

Go there, too >> Living in a World of Walls

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