Why is there fear of borders again?

BarcelonaThe migratory crisis experienced at the borders of Ceuta has once again strongly brought to public debate a concept that seemed to have been forgotten: territorial integrity. Understood as the inalienable principle of international law that grants a state the right to preserve its territory intact and inviolably protect its borders, this idea has once again dominated media headlines and monopolized the most passionate speeches of many politicians from the podiums. But where does this concept come from and why does its violation once again cause fear?

The historical origin of this notion is closely linked to the birth of the modern state and the "Peace of Westphalia, 1648". As detailed in conversation with ARA, Antoni Abat i Ninet, director of the Institute of European Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), one of the fundamental pillars of that treaty was precisely to safeguard the "unity and invisibility of states" that were emerging at that historical moment. Subsequently, this premise becomes an inseparable part of the concept of contemporary sovereignty which, as Oriol Costa, professor of international relations at the UAB, recounts, takes its current meaning from 1945 onwards. Since the end of World War II, "recognizing the sovereignty of others and having sovereignty recognized by others" has become "the central element of the civilization of the international system", the professor emphasizes to this newspaper.

This new paradigm based on respect "completely changes the international system", Costa highlights, as it means that in practice "you are prohibiting wars of aggression". The expert states that at the moment when "wars of conquest are prohibited", the global chessboard is transformed and "there will be many states that will stop fearing that the opposing state will wage war on them". In the Spanish case, this drive to safeguard territory is clearly and with great legal significance reflected in the magna carta, given that, as Abat warns, "the Spanish Constitution, in the first sentence of Article 2, states that it is based on the indissoluble unity of the State". Thus, when crises arise over the status of the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, the legal barrier is insurmountable for constitutionalists, who stop it with this argument: "We do not negotiate our national integrity".

The return of fear

Experts warn that, despite having been the great stabilizing pillar for decades, this principle of inviolability has been eroding "since 2010" or even, for some analysts, "in 2008 with the August Russia-Georgia war". Costa warns that this constant wear and tear takes a historic leap in scale with "Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014" and culminates in "2022 with the Russian attack on Ukraine", not to mention recent episodes such as "Trump's threats against Canada and Greenland" or geopolitical maps where "Venezuela appears as the fifty-first state of the United States".

Faced with this scenario, Abat recalls that a state can legislate on its integrity, but "if reality is a perspective of real facts that are imposed by force, constitutions become a dead letter". Furthermore, interference no longer only affects geographical territory, but today "it is also airspace or telecommunications", which turns new hybrid wars into a violation of the territorial state. It is in this way, warns Costa, that "this fear that had been relegated returns".

Thus, a false sense of security is shattered, in which, as Costa points out, "when one does not suffer for the borders, it is much easier to pretend they do not exist". The expert explains that on the Old Continent, the great master formula for pacifying historical conflicts was "to fix the borders, that no one touches them" and then try to "make them irrelevant" by creating "the maximum possible economic or institutional interdependencies of all kinds". "If borders are once again at stake, then, normally, you have incentives to defend them again", he concludes.