: Tim Marshall
: Divided Why We're Living in an Age of Walls
: Elliott& Thompson
: 9781783963430
: 1
: CHF 8.00
:
: Politikwissenschaft
: English
: 272
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
OUT APRIL 2025! The iconic bestseller Prisoners of Geography, updated with brand new content to reflect the changing global geopolitical landscape since it was first published 10 years ago. THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER New from the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography Which side of the fence are you on? Every story has two sides, and so does every wall. We're in a new era of tribalism and the barricades are going up. Money, race, religion, politics: these are the things that divide us. Trump's wall says as much about America's divided past as it does its future. The Great Firewall of China separates 'us' from 'them'. In Europe, the explosive combination of politics and migration threatens liberal democracy itself. Covering China; the USA; Israel and Palestine; the Middle East; the Indian Subcontinent; Africa; Europe and the UK, in this gripping read bestselling author Tim Marshall delves into our past and our present to reveal the fault lines that will shape our world for years to come.

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than 30 years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from 40 countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. He is the author of the No. 1 Sunday Times bestsellers Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics and The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World; the illustrated edition Prisoners of Geography: Our World Explained in Twelve Simple Maps, shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year; as well as Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls; Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags; and Shadowplay: Behind the Lines and Under Fire.

INTRODUCTION


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THE BORDER WALL BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE WEST Bank is among the most forbidding and hostile in the world. Viewed from up close, whichever side you find yourself on, it rears up from the ground, overwhelming and dominating you. Faced by this blank expanse of steel and concrete, you are dwarfed not only by its size but by what it represents. You are on one side; ‘they’ are on the other.

Thirty years ago a wall came down, ushering in what looked like a new era of openness and internationalism. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate in divided Berlin and called out to his opposite number in the Soviet Union, ‘Mr Gorbachev – tear down this wall!’ Two years later it fell. Berlin, Germany and then Europe were united once more. In those heady times, some intellectuals predicted an end of history. However, history does not end.

In recent years, the cry ‘Tear down this wall’ is losing the argument against ‘fortress mentality’. It is struggling to be heard, unable to compete with the frightening heights of mass migration, the backlash against globalization, the resurgence of nationalism, the collapse of Communism and the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. These are the fault lines that will shape our world for years to come.

We tend to hear a lot about the Israeli wall, the US–Mexico border wall, and some of those in Europe, but what many people don’t realise is that walls are being built along borders everywhere. It is a worldwide phenomenon in which the cement has been mixed and the concrete laid without most of us even noticing. Thousands of miles of walls and fences have gone up around the world in the twenty-first century. At least sixty-five countries, more than a third of the world’s nation states, have built barriers along their borders; half of those erected since the Second World War sprang up between 2000 and now.

In Europe alone, within a few years there could be more miles of walls, fences and barriers than there were at the height of the Cold War. They began by separating Greece and Macedonia, Macedonia and Serbia, and Serbia and Hungary, and, as we became less shocked by each stretch of barbed wire, others followed suit – Slovenia began building on the Croatian border, the Austrians fenced off Slovenia, Sweden put up barriers to prevent illegal immigrants crossing from Denmark, while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have all started defensive fortifications on their borders with Russia.

But Europe is certainly not alone: the United Arab Emirates has built a fence along the border with Oman, Kuwait likewise with Iraq. Iraq and Iran maintain a physical divide, as do Iran and Pakistan – all 435 miles of it. In Central Asia, Uzbekistan, despite being landlocked, has closed itself off from its five neighbours, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. The border with Tajikistan is even mined. And on the story goes, through the barriers separating Brunei and Malaysia, Malaysia and Thailand, Pakistan and India, India and Bangladesh, China and North Korea, North and South Korea and so on around the world.

These walls tell us much about international politics, but the anxieties they represent transcend the nation-state boundaries on which they sit. The primary purpose of the walls appearing throughout Europe is to stop the wave of migra