The Age of Walls

Tim Marshall, a former diplomatic editor and foreign affairs correspondent, argues that despite the optimism following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the world has entered a new era of division. At least 65 countries have built barriers along their borders, and half of those erected since World War II went up between 2000 and the time of the book's publication. Marshall contends that walls are driven by mass migration, backlash against globalization, resurgent nationalism, and terrorism, and that physical barriers are mirrored by psychological ones rooted in religion, ethnicity, and ideology. He traces the impulse to build walls back to the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to settled agriculture, when humans first needed barriers to protect territory and resources.

The chapter on China examines how President Xi Jinping governs 1.4 billion people across an enormous, ethnically diverse territory. Marshall identifies the urban-rural divide as China's greatest internal fault line, noting that a 2015 Peking University report found 1 percent of households own a third of the country's wealth while the bottom 25 percent hold just 1 percent. The hukou registration system, which dates back millennia and classifies people as rural or urban, created a massive underclass of migrant workers denied access to health care and education in cities. Beyond China's ethnic-Han-majority core regions, divisions persist in Xinjiang and Tibet, where Uighur Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist populations maintain separatist movements that Beijing ruthlessly suppresses. To control information, the Communist Party erected the Great Firewall of China, blocking foreign websites and preventing information from spreading between regions. Xi, the first Chinese leader to come to power fully aware of the internet's potential, has personally overseen all cyber strategies, consolidating power to the point of earning the title "Core Leader," a designation marking his status as the Party's paramount leader.

Turning to the United States, Marshall argues that Donald Trump's proposed border wall symbolizes divisions far deeper than the US-Mexico boundary. He traces the border's history from the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848, through evolving barrier efforts, to the post-9/11 Secure Fence Act, which both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supported. Trump's wall faced enormous practical obstacles, including private land ownership along two-thirds of the border and legal challenges by Native American tribes, with cost estimates as high as $40 billion. Marshall argues the wall's true significance is symbolic, tapping into fears about shifting demographics as nonwhites, composing about 40 percent of the population, are projected to reach 53 percent by 2050. He documents racial disparities between white and Black Americans in infant mortality, incarceration, and income, growing political polarization, and a culture of identity politics on both Left and Right that he views as symptoms of a deeply divided republic.

The chapter on Israel and Palestine examines the separation barrier, which began going up during the Second Intifada, the second Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation starting in 2000, after suicide bombings killed hundreds of Israelis. Palestinians view the barrier as a land grab since its path lies inside Palestinian territory around Jewish settlements, while Israelis call it a security measure that dramatically reduced fatalities. Marshall explores deep divisions within both societies: Israeli Jews are split between Ashkenazi Jews, whose more recent origins are European, and Sephardi Jews, largely descended from communities expelled from Arab countries after 1948, and between secular and ultra-Orthodox populations that rarely interact and disagree on issues from military service to religious law. Israel's Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population, have full legal rights but live largely separate lives with poverty rates around 50 percent. Among Palestinians, the relatively secular Fatah controls the West Bank while the Islamist Hamas controls Gaza, leaving the territories politically divided and Gaza's population trapped in a humanitarian crisis.

The broader Middle East, Marshall contends, has been torn apart by the Sunni-Shia split, which dates to a seventh-century dispute over succession after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632. The 2003 invasion of Iraq contributed to regional destabilization and the growth of violent Islamist ideology, fueling wars in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria that involved sectarian dimensions and foreign intervention. In response, Saudi Arabia built a 550-mile fence along its Iraqi border, Kuwait erected a 135-mile barrier, and Turkey fortified its Syrian frontier. Marshall cites the 2002 Arab Human Development Report, which identified three deficits holding the region back: lack of freedom, failure to disseminate knowledge, and the world's lowest rates of women's participation in politics and work.

On the Indian subcontinent, Marshall traces how colonial-era borders, religious divisions, and mass migration created a web of fences and conflicts. The India-Bangladesh border fence, the longest in the world, runs along most of the 2,500-mile boundary. The subcontinent's divisions trace back to the 1947 partition that created India and Pakistan along religious lines, accompanied by mass violence in which millions died. At least 15 million Bangladeshis moved permanently to India this century, driven by poverty and religious persecution. The India-Pakistan border in Kashmir, patrolled by two nuclear-armed nations, remains one of the world's most dangerous frontiers. Marshall also examines the Rohingya crisis, in which over 600,000 Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar, fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a military crackdown. He warns that climate change could submerge a fifth of Bangladesh within 80 years, driving millions toward India's fences, and identifies the caste system as an invisible internal wall relegating the Dalits, or "broken people," to menial labor while Brahmans, the highest caste and roughly 3.5 percent of the population, dominate positions of power.

The chapter on Africa argues that colonial-era borders, drawn without regard for existing divisions among the continent's at least 3,000 ethnic groups, created nation-states plagued by secessionist movements, civil wars, and extreme inequality. Resulting conflicts include the Biafran war in Nigeria, the Rwandan genocide, and the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Though poverty rates declined between 1990 and 2012, the absolute number of Africans in poverty rose from 280 million to 330 million due to population growth. Marshall examines the rise of gated communities as a physical manifestation of this inequality, warning they threaten social cohesion by eliminating shared public spaces and creating new divisions based on wealth.

Marshall's chapter on Europe traces the continent's journey from Cold War division through post-reunification optimism to the resurgence of nationalism. German reunification in 1990 was not a merger of equals: Despite more than $2 trillion in investment, eastern regions remain poorer, with unemployment double the West's. The migrant crisis peaked in 2015 when over a million non-European refugees arrived, prompting Hungary, Slovenia, Austria, and others to erect border barriers. Far-right parties surged across the continent, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) entering the Bundestag for the first time since the early 1960s, driven by anti-immigration sentiment. Attacks on refugee shelters were more frequent in Germany's eastern states, where fewer immigrants lived, suggesting the old Iron Curtain's influence persists in contemporary attitudes.

The chapter on the United Kingdom examines how a kingdom forged from distinct nations is experiencing intensifying divisions. Northern Ireland, created in 1921 by partitioning Ireland, endured the Troubles from the late 1960s to 1998, costing more than 3,500 lives, and Belfast's roughly 100 "Peace Walls" still separate Protestant and Catholic communities. The 2016 Brexit vote exposed further fractures. Writer David Goodhart's framework, outlined in The Road to Somewhere, distinguishes mobile cosmopolitan "Anywheres" from locally rooted "Somewheres," capturing the worldview divide underlying the conflict. Marshall also notes the growth of Islam as the UK's fastest-growing religion, from an estimated 50,000 Muslims 50 years before the book's publication to nearly 3 million, and warns that parallel societies in some urban areas threaten broader social cohesion.

In his conclusion, Marshall acknowledges that walls can temporarily reduce violence but calls for a 21st-century Marshall Plan: a massive effort by the world's wealthiest nations encompassing development, infrastructure, trade, education, health, and climate action. Without such measures, he warns, Africa's population will double to 2.4 billion within 30 years, migration will intensify, and politics will grow uglier. He closes on a cautiously hopeful note: "Although at present nationalism and identity politics are once again on the rise," he writes, "the arc of history has the potential to bend back toward unity" (256).