Premature triumphalism is second nature to American leaders, tech billionaires and geopolitical sages. Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, wants us to believe that his decision to buy Twitter was about “the future of civilization.” He wants to ensure that Twitter, the digital time square, becomes a “trusted platform for democracy.” He is not the first to invoke civilization. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the conservative British weekly Economist claimed that capitalism’s health will (now) “determine the future of civilization.” 

The civilizing mission of the west is alive and kicking. It remains to be seen if the world accepts Musk as a piece of information curating pope or Twitter becomes a glittering bubble of freedom. 

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Philosophers and geopolitical sages visualized a borderless world. Socrates considered himself not just an Athenian but “a citizen of the cosmos.” English writer HG Wells envisioned borders eventually disappearing. 

What happened to the neo-liberal fantasies of the borderless world promised by the protagonists of globalisation? We were told that economic decisions would be made without reference to national boundaries. Japanese scholar Kenichi Ohmae went to the extent of asserting that “national borders have effectively disappeared.” 

Far from a borderless world, new walls have been erected to keep migrants and refugees out. Our world is fast becoming what Oxford Professor Ruben Anders- son calls a ‘No Go World.’ 

The signs of the emerging new world are big and bleak ~ No Go, Stay Away! Fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics. Remote zones of insecurity are becoming central to the new world disorder. We see geopolitical battles raging all around. Europe itself has become a dangerous theatre of war. 

This is not what we expected from the 21st century. It is the result of a failure of our imagination, opportunity and responsibility. We are witnessing the emergence of global geography of fear. Rich countries are reinforcing their borders and severing contact points with the zones of insecurity. What is also emerging is what journalist Todd Miller calls the ‘Empire of Borders’. 

What is worse, big powers are now exporting their borders around the world. They are extending their zones of security beyond their physical borders. To them, borders are the last line of defence, not the first line of defence. It is a massive paradigm change. 

Danger and distance are deeply intertwined. Our world is wired but only in terms of risks. Ours may be an age of anger but it is also an age of fear. Fear, anger and raw power travel together. As far as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is concerned, we can’t miss the Russian display of raw power which is at the heart of the widening crisis. 

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid hardening of international borders. Security, surveillance, and militarization are widening the brutal divide between those who travel where they please and those whose movements are restricted. Big powers have discovered a new strategy to keep their countries safe from the unwanted and the unwashed. 

The nature of borders has changed. The Russian intervention in Syria was to outmanoeuvre the Islamic forces and maybe to get some experiences for future wars. Better to fight them in other’s territories. The US has been doing this for decades in Afghanistan, Iraq, East Asia, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. Boundaries have shifted where your resource and strategic interests are located. 

Whether through food aid, development assistance or vaccine diplomacy, big powers are expanding their sovereignty far beyond their national frontiers. Despite the bitter feud between US and Mexico over Trump’s wall, Mexico continued to help the US by apprehending Central American refugees and climate migrants. As Observer columnist Kenan Malik says, the EU pays millions of euros to Africa/s autocrats and warlords “to act as immigration police.” 

A border is not a neutral demarcation line. It is a symbol of power that imposes inclusion and exclusion. People on the Nepalese, Bangladeshi and Myanmar borders know how borders fuel local economies but also starve them. Borders are to distinct countries what fences are to neighbours. 

Clearly delineated borders and their enforcement either by walls or fences won’t go away because they go to the heart of the human condition. 

It is also a social construct that is political in origin. Across a border, power is exercised, as in the political border between two nations. Even a cultural border connotes a barrier that a more powerful side constructs to guard its own political power, cultural knowledge and privileges. 

Border fascinates us. But it also intrigues and frightens. In Syria, Central America, Kenya, Palestine, Mexico and elsewhere, borders aren’t making the world safe ~ they are the frontline in a global war against the poor. Some borders invoke nostalgia. There was a time when you could cross the border effortlessly including the Wagah border. The customs agents knew your name and waved to you with a smile. Life was better. On the India-Myanmar border, there are houses and schools that fall in both territories. Perhaps the most illuminating example is the Haskell Library which sits on the border between Vermont in the 

US and Quebec in Canada. There is also an Opera House whose stage is in Canada while most of the seats are in the US. The library is more than a geographic curiosity. The library is by design, not accident. The Haskell family purposely built the library and opera house along the border more than a century ago to promote cross-border friendship. The history of a border is often non-existent, imaginary, disputed, negotiated, drawn and unfindable. But the border of time divides the developed world from the developing world deep down. The migrants may carry the homeland in their souls, but for the developed north, the other side will always be the proverbial ‘other.’

Today borders have become virtual and the border system is an oppressive structure. Algorithms classify people as per their race, class, and political affiliations. Who will cross the border and who will be stopped is decided far away from the national border. 

The US border has expanded thousands of kilometres away from US territory. US border patrol now works alongside local agents to block migrants, terrorists, drug runners, and smugglers from ever approaching the US Europe is doing the same in Africa though the rationale given by the EU is that this will prevent the deaths of refugees. Far from preventing violence, the border is in fact the reason it occurs. 

(The writer is director of, the Institute of Social Sciences)