Klaus Dodds
Guerre di confine

Once upon a time, in the modernity that once was, there was a simpler world. Not better, mind you: just more primitive. Borders were lines drawn with a ruler by men in uniform holding giant maps. Technology was more basic, the population manageable, and no one had yet invented those supranational institutions that produce millions of tons of paper filled with endless and beautiful protections, rights, interpretations and, above all, contradictions and an awful lot of smoke.

Back then, the great powers drew straight lines on sand and land, utterly disregarding peoples, cultures, and millennia-old traditions. And so what if those lines sparked wars lasting decades, centuries, and will probably outlast us all. Details.

The truth is that borders, seen from a distance, are reassuring. They're clean, sharp, geometric. They simplify. And after two decades of globalization, here we are: walls are back in style, now with designer barbed wire, thermal cameras and drones—at least let's make dystopia fashionable. From Finland to Mexico, the world is going back to the old ways.

To complete the picture, we have the classic set of contemporary war: standard refugees, soon to be joined by hundreds of millions of climate refugees, as we march steadily toward 10 billion inhabitants. How sweet.

At this point, allow me a bit of a tangent, peeing wildly out of bounds. Do you remember the 14th-century crisis? The one that halved Europe's population? Sure, the Renaissance eventually came, but I doubt seven waves of plague were a walk in the park. And yes, it was caused by a number of factors. But the main one was overpopulation.

And now let’s get back to Klaus Dodds. "Border Wars" is an enjoyable book that doesn't pretend to be a biblical treatise—for that there's an endless bibliography, like the unending quarrels between neighboring states—but it's honest enough, useful, just a tad biased, and shows us how convoluted borders are in today’s world. Every country can spin its own yarn to claim a piece of land—usually for economic reasons disguised as patriotism—and with the end of unilateralism, no alliance is sacred: everything is negotiable, everything is revocable, everything is precarious.

Besides the badly-drawn borders of the past (yes, Middle East, I’m talking to you), the book gives us basic tools to understand the disputes of yesterday and, especially, those of tomorrow. Melting glaciers, for example, are already changing the European borders of Italy and Austria; and in the coming decades, it will affect even more dangerous ones, like India–Pakistan and China (all three countries have The Bomb). Control over fresh water will become one of the crucial issues, and as luck would have it, many borders follow rivers, insignificant islets, or lakes that are not so insignificant after all.

In Africa, the stage is already set for epochal clashes over the Nile, access to the sea, and any resource that can be exploited. The examples are so numerous that listing them here would be like reading a 100-course menu: by the third, you've lost your appetite.

Much more intriguing is the part about islands destined to disappear with rising sea levels. Tiny villages, sure, but with gigantic exclusive economic zones, fundamental for fishing and extraction. The American empire, for example, is a surreal entity: their cartoonish maps leave out Alaska and Hawaii, but in return, they have bases on every little Pacific island: Guam, Marianas, Marshall, Midway, Samoa… If even one of these vanished, the ensuing dispute would be worthy of a political-military reality show. And that future isn’t even that far away.

Then there’s the issue of exploiting the seabed. Dodds discusses it far too little, and that’s a shame, but all you need to know is that phytoplankton is essential to counteract ocean acidification. But don't worry: Drill Baby Drill, Xi, Putin, and Modi are all incredibly green thumbs. They’ll consider everything carefully, for sure. Also, the high seas are supposed to be the heritage of humanity. Just like Antarctica. Rest easy.

In about a dozen years, the fishing ban in the Ross Sea will expire, and of course, countries with large fishing fleets are already licking their chops. But of course they’ll reach an agreement to protect the reserve. Just as sure as I am that Castel di Sangro will win Serie A in 2025.

Then you have the North Pole, the future Ice Silk Roads, the disputes over orbital space now so crowded with satellites it looks like an illegal parking garage, and the vertical arms race. The war in Ukraine has turned the spotlight upward, and now everyone is drawing up blueprints for space weapons. Next up is the Moon, also supposedly the heritage of humanity, and who knows – one day, a president of the Moon or Mars might decide to declare war on Earth. Physics, for what it’s worth, doesn’t help: it’s much easier to launch a missile towards planet Earth than from it. Rather than these pipe dreams, I would have preferred if he dug deeper into the environmental issues and short-term consequences. I don't want to sound like too much of a jerk, but the truth is—even if I’m not proud of it—I’m selfish.

Anyway, it's at this point that I close the book, sigh and say vaffanculo. I put on the real Star Wars from the ‘70s. We’ll all become Jedi anyway, and with a lightsaber we’ll fix the problems in this little book.

Woommmm… wooooommmm.