THE DISADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL BOUNDARIES

As I have said many times in the past, our present world is a fragmented place, consisting of a vast array of independent self-interested national entities.  It is composed of a conglomeration of nation-states, many of which having been formed arbitrarily, geometrically, and illogically from a sociological standpoint.  As a mere casual reading of history to date readily illustrates, a great many national boundaries have come into being via discussions and decisions among diplomats and officials having little or no knowledge about, or relationship to, the territories involved or the peoples affected thereby.  Subsequent to much of this foolish map-drawing, there has frequently arisen strife, conflict, and even bloodshed within, and between the "citizens" of, these various "nations" thus concocted.  Most foolish of all are instances of resort to violence in attempts to maintain the sacred status of these actually meaningless boundaries against violation or intrusion by neighbors.

Many North African states were created by European rulers to suit their own administrative and economic purposes, and based upon no other criteria.  The net result has been the creation of unwieldy shapes, and post-colonial friction.  One example among many is the set of lines arbitrarily decided upon by delegates from Britain and Italy as the boundaries of Somalia.  We are told that said delineation has never been accepted by the people living there; and has resulted in much conflict, six million refugees, and loss of countless lives.  In fact, many of Africa's nations were conceived via
processes of European colonial partitioning.  Tribal, cultural, and religious aspects were ignored; and  boundaries are  described as running "like fault-lines" through a great many regions.  This has caused numerous border and civil wars, with their attendant carnage, and creation of large refugee groups as well, on many occasions.

The same can be said of the Middle East.  In August, 1903, Theodore Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, declared Palestine to be the best site for a Jewish state in a speech before the sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.  Parenthetically, during the same period, Britain had offered a tract of land in Uganda for the same purpose, which was declined.  (This is not to say that Jewish people ought not be permitted to live, work, worship, and so vastly improve physical conditions, as they have done in that part of the world--or anywhere on earth for that matter.  But the concept of "nation"--the impression that the right to occupation and use of a giant parcel of real estate was  exclusively granted to a particular group or organization--and the resultant boundaries, division, and separation--seem to have become the actual cause of much of the objection, conflict, and struggle that has taken place there subsequently.

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