Radio Australia Today Editorial

Opening the Borders

28 May 2008

We seem to be in a time when everyone wants to be inside of everyone else’s borders.

Think about it. We have governments tripping over each other to set up Free trade Agreements. We have international radio stations (like ours and the BBC) setting up shop inside of countries far removed from our own. We have aid organisations with permanent bases inside countries to help people who should be looked after by that country’s own government.

It wasn’t like this a century ago. Free trade didn’t exist. Countries kept to themselves, even the USA, which intervened only in countries close to its own borders, and when it did so, it was for immediate national security. Of course Britain, Holland, Italy and France spread their tentacles back then, but when they went into a country, they took that country over completely. It was a domination, not the backdoor or short-term methods being used today.

Then we have Burma, a country run by a tough military junta, elected by no-one except themselves, a junta that feigns to show what they would consider a nationalism by refusing the entry of foreigners. Never mind that these foreigners are not military; they are helpers there to save the lives of Burmese after a cyclone.

After weeks of suffering by people who have no food or safe water, at last the regime appears to be letting the helpers in. But it is slow.

As I said at the beginning, borders are becoming things that people want to climb over, like Mount Everest without the height.

One of the world’s most famous borders is between North and South Korea.

This is a cold war if ever there is one, this remnant of the 1950s. When I was there, it appeared that even the soldiers manning the security towers looked bored. But check out the scenery that is the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone):

Yes, these soldiers come to work every day to guard against intruders from the north. Presumably the guards on the north look equally bored. Bizarrely, in the central post in the middle of the DMZ, where negotiations happen, there is a line painted across the room. The negotiators from the north sit on the north side of the table. Their opponents sit on the south side only centimetres away, and behind both sets of talkers stand guards who grimace at each other with strict orders that posturing and grimacing is as far as they are allowed to go. It’s a comedy that has has the very unfunny side of being capable of starting a world war.

Makes you wonder what would happen if you took the border away. Would there be a mass egress to the north from the south. Doubt it. The south has all the facilities, health care and wealth. Perhaps it’s just a case that some borders are solely for leaders, a huge example of just how far people will go to protect their job.

There are Doctors who can be Without Borders. Nice idea if we spread it to a few intractables.

- Phil