Good Fences for Good Neighbours? States, Couples and Walls

Abstract

Since the Great Wall of China, King Gudfred of Denmark’s Danevirke, the Mede Wall built by Nebuchadnezzar II, the Antonine Wall and Hadrian’s Wall built by the Romans in Scotland, the Limes Germaniae and the Limes Rhetiae, the wall has been a central feature of international relations (Quétel, 2012). Indeed, one wall was emblematic of the international system of the second half of the 20th century, and when the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, observers thought that the world had been forever transformed; today, it appears that history is merely repeating itself (Paasi, 2009, p. 216). It was believed that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reconfiguration of international relations (Badie, 1999) would open up an age of globalization in which states would become obsolete, ushering in a world without borders (Galli, 2001; Zolo, 2004; Schroer, 2006; Brunet Jailly, 2005), a world that would have to be reconceptualized outside the territorial trap (Agnew, 1994). In the wake of 9/11, however, borders came back with a vengeance and new borders were created (Weber, 2008, p. 48). With them came border barriers and walls, symbols that were thought to have disappeared with the collapse of the bipolar international system.KeywordsInternational RelationSecurity IssueCouple RelationshipState SovereigntyMexico BorderThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.