Provost Lecture - Immanuel Wallerstein: Borders, Borders, Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink

This lecture kicked off a three-day conference on national borders and their cultural challenges asking the question — what historical alternatives are available? Wallerstein described the existence of national boundaries as "crucial, contested, fragile and constantly changing." He said that we are dealing with a phenomenon that "arouses enormous passions." National boundaries, said Wallerstein, are based on two principles: 1). All areas inside the interstate system are defined as being within boundaries of one state with two long-standing exceptions that a). Antarctica belongs to no state (although that may be changing) and b). that water areas are much more loosely defined than are land areas. Water areas often fall between two state boundaries and become contested, as is a river shared by Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Ocean areas, however, are even fuzzier, revolving around the definition of what "near" is. Near used to mean three miles from a land mass but now is usually defined as 12 to 200 miles. 2). Each state is sovereign. Wallerstein said that the first question asked about this topic is why people care where the lines are drawn and the answer is generally because of rich natural resources or a water supply. A current public debate over the Mekong River is being waged among Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam with Laos proclaiming the right to build a dam there and the other three nation states saying that they will suffer irreversible loss from that action. Under international law, however, the other countries are virtually powerless to stop Laos from building a dam. Historically, stronger states have the ability to force the weaker states to capitulate but are often then branded as having imperialistic motives, forcing the stronger states to justify their actions to keep from being perceived as too crass. Wallerstein said that since the French revolution sovereignty has come to reside in the notion that the people are sovereign. But he added that if there are citizens then there are noncitizens denied sovereignty, including visitors as well as immigrants both legal and illegal. When the argument of longevity wears thin, nation states often turn to the argument of divine legacy. Jews produced documents from the Old Testament to justify their land claims. Wallerstein said that the current debate about President Obama's birthplace is "phony," considering that John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone and Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona before it was granted statehood.