Donald Trump has proposed to build a wall on the Mexico - United States border since he first announced he was a candidate for president in 2015. In 2016 he said he would get Mexico to pay for its construction. Though Republicans controlled all the elected government in 2017 and 2018, they somehow could not approve and construct a wall along our southern border.
Mexico was quite amused by the notion that they would pay for it.
Fear of a great influx of Hispanic Americans from south of the border fleeing catastrophic economic, political, and climate change conditions (and often a combination of all three) motivates Trump and his supporters to construct such an edifice. It is ironic that the GOP/MAGA party denies climate change is real then advocates to build a physical barrier to keep out people fleeing the effects of climate change.
Ironic, but then MAGA world is the place where irony goes to die.
For some perspective it may be useful to look at three of the multitude of walls built in the past by governments or cultures, all seeking to prevent being “overrun by barbarians.”
The first wall to be examined would have to be the “Great Wall of China.”
Begun, in part, about 770 BC and added to at various times and places for roughly the next three hundred years, it is still the greatest rampart engineering feat in world history.
As with virtually all the formidable historical walls, the Great Wall was constructed as both a defensive military barrier and a way to regulate a large flow of migration from an unwelcome population of nomadic tribes to the north.
The Great Wall, unlike Trump/MAGA’s proposed southern border wall did not entirely block immigration. It was intended to manage both immigration and emigration and to regulate and tax goods moving across the border.
Eventually during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) China became more powerful militarily and expanded beyond the Great Wall, rendering it less relevant and many sections slowly fell into disrepair.
The Great Wall known to us today was mostly constructed by the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to repel another Mongolian invasion. It was assiduously maintained and garrisoned.
The era of the Manchu Dynasty (1644-1912) saw the advent of a new, enlightened attitude on China’s part. The conciliatory policies of huairou toward the Mongolians, Tibetans and others that posed threats were intended to pacify relations and they were largely successful. As a result, the Great Wall became less important and gradually fell into disrepair again.
In its ancient time the Great Wall would have to be considered to have been effective.
Walls through history have been gathering places for trade of goods and services and also for the, shall we say, romantic mixing of cultures and races, although romantic may be a too genteel way of describing it.
Like many historical walls, Hadrian’s Wall that traverses Britain in the north of England was intended to project the power of the Empire, in this case the Roman Empire, in a place far removed from the seat of power in Rome itself.
Probably one of the most successful historical walls from the standpoint of military defense and creating a barrier that was not often crossed by intermingling cultures, Hadrian’s Wall was not a physically imposing edifice such as the Great Wall, but it was garrisoned along it’s roughly 73-mile length by approximately 10,000 Roman troops.
With the demise of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Roman rule in Britain also came to an end. Though parts of Hadrian’s Wall were occupied sporadically for defense for the next few hundred years, eventually most of the wall was dismantled and re-purposed for farm walls and building construction.
After the ruinous German invasion of France in World War I, the French settled upon the concept of an impregnable line of fortifications along the 280 mile France-Germany border that would discourage any potential future German incursion into France.
Begun in the late 1920’s the Maginot Line was mostly completed by 1936. French leaders believed the sophisticated line of defenses, named after Andre Maginot, a French politician badly injured in World War I who served two terms as Defense Minister in the 1920’s would protect Fance from a future German invasion.
French military leaders made the assumption that in the future Germany would launch such an incursion from their own territory, believing the rugged Ardennes Forest in southeast Belgium would be too difficult for the German army to manage and to launch an invasion from the north they would first have to invade Belgium which had declare its neutrality in 1936.
After the Belgian declaration of neutrality, money was requested by French Defense Minister Eduoard Daladier to extend the line of fortifications along the France - Belgium border to the English Channel, but those ramparts were never completed. Had the fortifications extended an additional 390 miles along the France - Belgium border, it is possible the Maginot Line would have had some effect on the fast and agile invasion of mechanized Nazi Panzer divisions.
French and British military planners took note of the vulnerable France - Belgium border and established a formidable front along the boundary that connected to the Maginot Line. They believed the Ardennes Forest that forms the southeast corner of Belgium was too rugged for German armored divisions to pass through quickly and the Ardennes was left lightly defended.
Germany was, of course well aware of the Maginot Line and under the direction of Erich von Manstein developed a plan to go through the Ardennes with lightning-fast, mechanized Panzer divisions. Confident the task could be successful, he entrusted the job to General Heinz Guderian and eventually assigned seven armored divisions to carry out the invasion including almost half of Germany’s available tanks.
The large German offensive through the difficult terrain of the Ardennes caught the French and British military brass by surprise and the British and French forces that had been mobilized along the France - Belgium border from the Ardennes to the English Channel were essentially trapped between the German occupying forces in Belgium and General Guderian’s Panzers that had broken through the Ardennes and now occupied the territory south of the British Expeditionary Forces and French troops. Cut off from joining the significant French forces to the south guarding Paris, they were forced to retreat to Dunkirk and await evacuation across the Channel to England. Heroic as the evacuation from Dunkirk was, it was, nevertheless a retreat and it came at a heavy loss of men and weaponry.
The Maginot Line demonstrates the ineffectiveness of defensive fortifications in the modern era when technology offers so many options to work around them. The lesson is that walls that might have been effective in historic times are no longer so formidable.
A wall to prevent migrants from entering the United States from the south probably has significant emotional appeal to the slumbering, primordial part of our brains, but it is unlikely to be an effective long-term solution considering the pressure climate change will put on all the borders of the world.
Plus if white people don't want to have babies (IIRC, for women born in the US, the rate over a lifetime is 1.6 kids, well below the 2.1 rate to maintain the population), then we need those workers coming from the south. And most of them are Christian or at least culturally so. They also work hard and take jobs white kids don't want. What's not to like?
"Ironic, but then MAGA world is the place where irony goes to die" hmmmm...I thought that MAGA world was the place where Irony LIVES!
In winter we live a few miles north of the Mexican border. I've crossed the border many times; had pictures taken next to the Wall (actually a fence); and flown over it for many miles. The gaps are in mountainous terrain where it's much more expensive to construct and where most foot crossings take place! When we first moved there, I asked a friend what he thought of the fence (his wife is from Mexico) and he replied that the common expression is: "if the wall goes higher, they'll just use taller ladders".