Peter Gallagher

One of the cen­tral con­tentions of my book Global Trade Advo­cate is that bor­ders have grown in impor­tance as a con­se­quence of the eco­nomic processes accom­pa­ny­ing the appar­ently border-erasing process of glob­al­iza­tion. Here’s con­fir­ma­tion from the CIA

Some­thing there is that loves a wall, per­haps. But the rea­sons are not always that admirable.

“Stretch­ing over 250,000 km, the world’s 325 inter­na­tional land bound­aries sep­a­rate the 192 inde­pen­dent states and 73 depen­den­cies, areas of spe­cial sov­er­eignty, and other mis­cel­la­neous enti­ties.  Eth­nic­ity, cul­ture, race, reli­gion, and lan­guage have divided states into sep­a­rate polit­i­cal enti­ties as much as his­tory, phys­i­cal ter­rain, polit­i­cal fiat, or con­quest, result­ing in some­times arbi­trary and imposed bound­aries. Mar­itime states have claimed lim­its and have so far estab­lished over 130 mar­itime bound­aries and joint devel­op­ment zones to allo­cate ocean resources and to pro­vide for national secu­rity at sea … Other sources of con­tention include access to water and min­eral (espe­cially petro­leum) resources, fish­eries, and arable land … Regional dis­cord directly affects the sus­te­nance and wel­fare of local pop­u­la­tions, often leav­ing the world com­mu­nity to cope with resul­tant refugees, hunger, dis­ease, impov­er­ish­ment, defor­esta­tion, and deser­ti­fi­ca­tion” CIA World Factbook