Deniz Ülke Arıboğan: “The Wall”

The Wall

by

Deniz Ülke Arıboğan

 

[IDI Member Prof. Deniz Ülke Arıboğan’s powerful new work “The Wall” is available here.  Read a summary of this important contribution below.]

 

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was accepted as a milestone that changed all fundamental discourses and concepts, and saw the construction of new paradigms in the field of international relations. With its fall, the ‘freedom’ imprisoned behind the Wall broke from its shackles, as it seemed then, a magic wand commencing to shower rights and liberties all across the globe. That was the understanding. In the same way that World War I came to be defined as the war to end all wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall was considered to be a possible ‘demolishing of each and every wall’. Following Gorbachev’s rise to power, pacts that had made their mark on half a century were unraveling in a mere few years; discourses were changing, walls everywhere seemed to be collapsing. In the eyes of the majority, there could not have been a happier ending to the 20th century.

Academia too was in thrall with these winds of freedom that swept the globe. The thesis introduced by Francis Fukuyama in his 1989 article “End of History” had the intelligentsia deeply impressed, promulgating a general contention that the world’s ultimate victory had been won by liberal democracy and capitalist economy. Contrary to his predecessors, such as Augustine, Comte, Ferguson, Herder, Spencer, Hegel and Marx, who had claimed that history was progressive and molded in time to a particular aim, Fukuyama believed that the ultimate stage would be founded upon ‘the victory of liberal democracy and free market economy.’

The three separate triumphs of the USA in three global wars in just the last century meant that no obstacles remained in the way of such progress. Having defeated the decrepit monarchies of Europe in WWI, fascists in WW2, and socialists in the Cold War, they had made their mark on the 20th century as ‘guardians of the epoch’. In Fukuyama’s opinion, this was a triumph not only for the USA but also for Western thought and liberalism. The Berlin Wall, which fell two months after his acclaimed article was published, could be defined as the conquest of the final castle. There remained no more obstacles in the way of building a liberated world.

The ‘End of History’ was not, naturally, meant to refer to the end of humanity or of civilization. In his thesis, Fukuyama referred to a level of maturity reached by economic, societal and political establishments and to an ideal form. According to him, liberal democracy was fated to humankind, rendering unavoidable the products of scientific and technologic progress: uniformity as well as economic and technological liberalism. Indeed the world had amalgamated within several decades at an unprecedented speed, the process of globalization swiftly enveloping the entire world, bolstered by the expansion of the capitalist market on the one hand and technological prospects and permeable borders on the other.

Initially erected in 1961 as a simple barbed wire fence between East and West Berlin and later consolidated with steel and bricks, the fall of the 46-km-long “Wall of Shame” constituted the beginning of a new era in world history. It is estimated that during the years it stood, over 200 people lost their lives by taking the risk to cross to the west side of the city, while novels and films based on this trope were read and watched all over the world, eliciting torrents of tears. The Berlin Wall came to represent a chasm, not only cleaving apart Berliners or Germans but the entire world as well. For as long as it stood, it was the single greatest monument to discrimination, marginalization and antagonism: a stony signifier. On the day it fell, all it had come to symbolize seemed to have been torn down. Borders would blur, the oppressed would become liberated, and peoples unite. When the Wall fell, it wasn’t merely Germany that had united, but the whole of humanity. 

As for how long the new era would last, that remained ambiguous. Just like anything that begins, eras eventually end. The process of globalization, for all its apparent irreplaceability and eminence as the one true destination to prosperity, peace and stability, also had to come to an end. After being molded by the 1980’s logic of free trade and open capital markets, the global economy began crumbling in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Countries of the Western world rejected compromise; they no longer wanted to sacrifice in order to support the sustainability of global economic growth.  The global crisis expanded, and the system cracked dangerously. It was the end of history’s end; history was back.

Just as the ‘Wall’ as a symbol came to the forefront in the final quarter of the 20th century, during a time when the discourse of globalization and liberal propensities were at an all-time high, the ‘Wall’ once again emerged on the main agenda during the 2010’s. This time, however, the walls referred to were not being torn down but built or gearing up to be built. While at the turn of the century our topics of conversation had been the global village, the permeability of borders, or the demise of the nation-state, in just a few short years we found ourselves discussing the fortification of borders with concrete barriers, electric fences and security cameras, all in the service of banning unrestricted passage. The spirit of the world had changed.

Ronald Reagan’s command, “Tear down this wall”, as he addressed Berlin in 1987, has presently been replaced by Trump’s “A wall protects” spiel. The notion of a ‘world without borders’ has long sunk into history. In the time that has passed between the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day, over 70 countries have surrounded their borders with walls or fences, whereas during the years of tyrannical rule and ideological polarization, when the Berlin Wall was still standing, they barely amounted to a dozen. The ‘Cold War’ gave humankind the gift of a Berlin Wall that cast a shadow larger than itself. The ‘Cold Peace’ on the other hand, opened the gates upon a ‘century of walls’ liable to divide the world so severely it can be seen from space. The world is now on its way to becoming a gigantic prison.

Unless otherwise noted, IDI Blog Posts represent the opinions and/or work of individual IDI members working independently and do not necessarily represent the opinions and/or work of the IDI as a whole.