>Political borders remain among the most fundamental obstacles to human progress around the world.
citation?
There has been many examples where throwing unrelated groups into the same country can causes serious strife. Why would it be different on a global scale? You still have to allocate resources, provide security, make laws etc...
The author makes this very point further down:
>A more stable and peaceful arrangement for Sudan would be to focus on independence for Darfur and South Sudan sooner rather than later, allowing them to rebuild themselves as smaller states at peace with their neighbors instead of facing Khartoum's persistent and nefarious undermining from within.
So it's not the borders that are an obstacle to 'human progress', it's the arbitrary way in which they were drawn by colonial powers.
I'm not sure if it's valid to draw conclusions that the peace of the E.U. is due to its relaxing of border controls, and that we can apply this method to places like the Middle East. I do agree that infrastructure is a key part of peace for Palestine-Israel, but Israel seems hell-bent on dismantling all of Palestine's infrastructure and isolating its communities with corridors for its transport etc. So, good luck convincing Israel to reverse those policies.
The EU is at a turning point. A single currency without a single fiscal policy looks to be unworkable. The EU has either to take on more of the characteristics of a single country or retreat from the current level of integration.
Yugoslavia was a previous experiment to have no borders between 6/7 small countries in Europe.
The Soviet Union was another, also Czechoslovakia.
The USA fought a very nasty civil war despite being a country with very little historical baggage by European standards.
I'm far from certain that a US of Europe is the way forward for the EU
Sometimes an essay, like a good movie, requires a suspension of disbelief. The writer paints a picture of a future world and the reader is expected to "play along" with him in order for him to complete and state his vision.
I found I could not suspend disbelief enough to follow along with this writer. While he means well, using examples like the Sudan or the Kurds is cherry-picking at the extreme. After all, his thesis is "maps without borders" It's one thing to look at a government that's been around for 20 years (or, in the Kurd example, not really existing yet) and make some generalization. It's another thing entirely to apply such generalizations to the rest of the world. He failed with this.
He also meandered quite a bit around resources: pipelines, roads, and such. I'm sure there was a point there, but heck if I could grasp it.
This is just not such a good article. I'd like to see these ideas explored in a more cogent fashion though. I think there's an interesting concept in there.
Part of the problem is that he isn't even internally consistent.
Sudan is too large, and should be split up. But also: "Africa can become economically viable only if its plethora of puny economies merge from more than 50 into just a few."
So what needs to happen? Merging Africa into a few gigantic balkanized states with no shared interests (like Sudan), or splitting it up into many small city states, a few of which will be well run?
A few of which will serve as an example for the rest.
But this: "Merging Africa into a few gigantic balkanized states [...] or splitting it up" is part of the reason they're doing badly. Being a battleground for foreign intervention has not allowed much in the way of economic development.
It's a nice idea but it's naive to believe everyone is going to adopt similar ideologies simply because we remove borders. Will everyone be happy to compromise? People have different ideas about how things should be run, even the assumption that deep down everyone really wants western style democracy seems a little arrogant.
Europe succeeded in the relaxation of its borders because this was preceded by cultural/ideological homogenisation that took a very long time. This can not be imposed by policy.
I guess the author realises this to an extent and by the end of the article much more modest goals are being set. Still it all sounds very vague like it's kind of meant to somehow take care of itself.
>why do we lazily accept the continuing existence of Sudan, a >British colonial construct joining Arab Muslims and African >Christians in Africa's second largest country
If you're going to divide political borders into "real" ones maybe you should start with those within the united states instead of mucking around in Africa. There is always Cascadia.
and then you could consider making a state out of New York City since the culture, religion and ethinic mix is radically different than upstate New York (That is the kind of criteria the author cites).
and realistically, you could look at most of the big states in the US and split them up if we're going to start remaking political borders just because they're old or ineffective. I nominate South Jersey as "Snookiandia". Wow this could be fun!
Some foreigner (ie, not from either region) starts pontificating about how political borders should be redrawn in Africa and the Middle East. It must be Wednesday.
(Not removed - that's just the mind-numbing pitch that he steps back to just redrawing borders.)
Meh. I wish I could still flag articles, as this is one of those I-feel-stupider-for-having-read-it essays.
"One obstacle to the realization of a Palestinian state is the fact that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not connected."
Yet if they were then Israel wouldn't be connected and there would be a war between Fatah (West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza).
Political borders were created for a reason. Removing borders will make those reasons apparent again, and instigate the same violent strife which created them.
citation?
There has been many examples where throwing unrelated groups into the same country can causes serious strife. Why would it be different on a global scale? You still have to allocate resources, provide security, make laws etc...
The author makes this very point further down:
>A more stable and peaceful arrangement for Sudan would be to focus on independence for Darfur and South Sudan sooner rather than later, allowing them to rebuild themselves as smaller states at peace with their neighbors instead of facing Khartoum's persistent and nefarious undermining from within.
So it's not the borders that are an obstacle to 'human progress', it's the arbitrary way in which they were drawn by colonial powers.