Walls have a very important place in our world today. They delineate boundaries, establish physical barriers, and protect people and their property. But, strategically speaking, relying solely on a wall as a policy seems to have inherent problems that have recently brought to light by world events.
In Israel, a policy of disengagement was enacted with one major defense initiative: a wall. Israel’s security barrier was to be set in place, withdrawn behind, and the nation of Israel would live happily ever after, forever separated from the chaos on the other side of the fence.
America, via its forward deployed assets around Japan and South Korea, started down a path of a “virtual wall” of missile defense technology in 1998. This wall America was building would protect the continental United States from a ballistic missile launched from Asia eastward, hopefully negating the threat of North Korea acquiring WMD and the means to deliver it.
In America, domestically, there have been roiling debates over the nature of how to fight terrorism: as a criminal/law enforcement issue, or a war. Some of the arguments (from both sides) have advocated the establishment of our own walls at home –be they persistent surveillance of our ports, actual walls on our borders, or a wall of disengagement and isolation from the world.
Two of these three issues are relying on walls as the centerpiece of a policy. The emerging problem with that is that a wall cannot stop a determined enemy. Walls have their purposes in the world, but a wall alone is not a solution to a foreign policy quandary.
The problem with walls is that there is usually a way around them –therefore relying on a wall to solve all of your problems is inherently an incomplete way of addressing an issue. In order to actually solve a problem (not manage one) a wall must be incorporated into a holistic strategy for accomplishing a foreign policy goal. What do I mean? -I’ll explain:
In Israel, the security fence was supposed to be the end-all strategy for the seemingly eternal conflict with the Palestinians. Hamas, duly elected, carried out their campaign promises to their constituents and waged jihad against Israel. How –you may ask, with the wall in place? They found a way around it, by firing Qassam rockets over the wall (from now-controlled Gaza) and tunneling under the wall, raiding a military outpost, kidnapping a soldier, and effectively ransoming him for the release of more terrorists from Israeli jails. Now Israel, again, is embroiled in the Gaza strip in a military operation (the first of many to come) despite the wall –which was supposed to solve all of these problems once and for all. The root cause of the issues –the fact that there are irreconcilable differences between Hamas and Israel which make them eternal enemies –was not addressed by the wall. The wall was used as a method (or excuse) for complete disengagement from the issue. Boiling down this issue even further, two sides are at war, and one side decided to pack it up and leave, and the other side wanted to press the fight. A wall didn’t solve the problem because the wall (in itself as an object, a barrier, or whatever) can’t.
On Korea, the root problem of the current missile crisis –the fact that NK has flaunted treaties, exploited past good-faith deals from the United States, and continued down a relentless path of WMD acquisition and the means to deliver it –is not addressed by a missile defense shield. Yes (as I have said before) this wall is good, but it is not good enough. A missile defense shield is great, but it is inherently a reactive system, not a part of a proactive policy that will keep NK from ever pulling a July 4th missile test again. A wall (while useful in this case) cannot be the sole thing we rely on in our strategy.
Finally, America in the war on terrorism -after 9/11, America faced a choice: change our society and build walls up around our nation to keep terrorists out, or go abroad and kill them where they sleep and save our society at home. We made the choice not to rely on a wall as our sole method of defense. Obviously, that was a controversial and still-debated strategy to this day.
The way forward for all of this is to somehow view walls as a part of a greater whole in addressing the great issues of our time. You can go under, go over, go around, or sometimes break through walls, but the root problem of the issues: Palestinian reliance on terrorism to further political goals, American “management” of the North Korean ballistic missile threat instead of an American solution to it, remain unaddressed.
To paraphrase: we live in a world that has walls, and they have to be guarded by men with guns, but unless we try to solve the problems on the other side of our walls, those problems will eventually find their way inside
Yep. Walls are not the be-all, end-all of security.
But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t a necessary part of it though. Walls do a very good job of stopping those you wish to stop, or at least making it significantly more difficult for them to make it through.
It’s all part of a package. Like spam, you’ll probably never stop it all. But I’m very happy I don’t get the 89+% my ISP rejects before it ever hits my inbox.
(Mindy) If it weren’t for this wall, we’d be sleeping in the same bed.
(Homer) Yeah. Walls are a necessity in today’s society.
Wasn’t it Patton who said – Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.
In none of the instances you mentioned, walls were supposed to be the solution, but merely to make it more difficult than say simply walking across a border with drugs or explosives.
I don’t know if it is fair to say the Israel’s policy regarding the wall is to hunker down behind it and live happily ever after.
They’ve shown no hesitation to strike deep at their enemy outside the wall (and also, via whatever diplomatic “deep strikes” it can muster itself or with Allies).
Same can be said with the US vis a vis the GWOT. We’re not waiting for the next attack at home (behind our “wall”). We’re reaching out to where the bad guys are and fixing the problem there.
Ironically, the Left would have us practice the wall in reverse with certain threats, using terms like “keeping (him) in (his) box” and “containment”. This sort of thing practically inviting these ne’er-do-wells to misbehave.
I still think the wall along the Southern Border is a good idea.
I always opted for napalm over cement but nobody listens to me these days
It’s so interesting that you wrote an article about this, because I’m writing an MA seminar paper precisely on why Israel’s Barrier, as Olmert wishes it to be (which is exactly as you said: completed, we close the doors, make our borders, and secure ourselves behind it), is a strategic mistake and potentially lethal decision for Israel. The difference is that the wall (the one in the West Bank), as it is being used now, works. It’s a last line of defense in a total support arsenal that the IDF uses to combat terrorism. And, it’s working. The wall/barrier is simply an addition to the on the ground, in the field work that the soldiers are doing on a day to day basis to stop terrorist attacks. The Barrier was never meant or intended to be a permanent defensive structure, nor was it ever intended to be used as static defense. As history has shown, e.g. with the Maginot Line and the Bar-Lev Line, when something is meant for one purpose and then used for another, it fails and becomes totally useless. Olmert is intending to use the Wall for something it was never created to become. He wants to remove all the special security installations that are being used to fight terrorists on the ground, just build the wall in those areas and completely shut Israel out, and make the Barrier the first line of defense instead of the last line of defense it was created to be. In essense, he wants to replicated Gaza, twenty fold. Of course, he would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind if he even remotely thinks that the wall and what has happened in Gaza since the Disengagement is working.
In Gaza, as you’ve said, Israel disengaged completely. Civilians as well as militarilly, and locked itself behing the wall created. Now, the IDF no longer has the excellent intelligence gathering capabilities that it once did. It can’t perform raids, interrogations, or arrests on terrorists like they used since they can no longer just go into Palestinian towns. They are basically stuck on the side, only able to technically go into action when the fence is breached. And, as we have seen, not even then. Even more so, as last Sunday’s events and the events (over 1,000 rockets into Israeli territory) over the past year since the Disengagement have shown, the terrorists have become innovative, the Israelis have lost the initiative, and the soldiers and the country has relied on the wall/fence to do the work for them (as in human nature to do). Because of this, Israel is facing what is going on today. It never followed through or developed a clear cut strategy or policy on how to deal with terrorism once they left Gaza, and they have been left severely handicapped. After all this “success”, Olmert plans to committ national suicide and barricade Israel behind a Fence, shut us off from the other side, and actually proclaim that now we have “peace in our time”.
Great article! I just figured that since I’m doing research right now on this very topic, I might just add my two cents.
-OC
Abject fear has always worked better than fences and walls.
That requires getting their abject attention first.
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ionolsen21 Your home page its great