GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

Borders in a Borderless World

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Philip Bobbitt
Board of Contributors

Mar 9, 2016 | 08:00 GMT

A US Border Patrol vehicle drives along the fence seperating the US from Mexico near the town of Nogales, Arizona on April 23, 2010. Two Republican senators have proposed sending 3,000 more US National Guard soldiers to quell violence spilling over the border between their home state of Arizona and Mexico. In a 10-point plan for beefing up security in the area, Senators John McCain and John Kyl also called for permanently adding 3,000 US Custom and Border Protection Agents to the Arizona/Mexico border by 20

A US Border Patrol vehicle drives along the fence seperating the US from Mexico near the town of Nogales, Arizona on April 23, 2010. Two Republican senators have proposed sending 3,000 more US National Guard soldiers to quell violence spilling over the border between their home state of Arizona and Mexico. In a 10-point plan for beefing up security in the area, Senators John McCain and John Kyl also called for permanently adding 3,000 US Custom and Border Protection Agents to the Arizona/Mexico border by 2015. They also called for completing construction of 700 miles of fencing along the border and beefing up unmanned aerial vehicle patrols so that they could be run 24 hours a day.

(MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Twenty-seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years after the adoption of the Schengen Agreement and 26 years after the publication of Kenichi Ohmae's The Borderless World, borders are back. Why did so many think that borders are going away? And why should we be surprised that they have never left? The answer has to do with how we thought about and misunderstood the consequences of globalization. The reality is that globalization actually empowers locality, and intensifies the need for protecting locality. In other words, we will have more borders, not fewer, and more walls because we are building more bridges. The change that we are witnessing will exalt borders precisely because they are being rendered more vulnerable. And the task for policymakers is to realize this and to recognize that it will demand greater cross-border cooperation rather than less....

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