Foreign
Policy
Fall 1999
Bad Fences
As if cartographers did not have enough to worry about with the
proliferation of new states, even the existing borders among established
states are constantly subject to change.
The precise number of border disputes varies depending on
definitions. According to boundaries expert Paul Huth of the University
of Michigan, there have been a total of 131 territorial disputes
worldwide since 1945. Of the world’s 309 existing land boundaries,
52 (17 percent) were in dispute in 1998. Approximately 40 border and
territorial disputes may exist among the states of the former Soviet
Union alone.
Although not all boundary disputes erupt into fighting, two recent
high-profile cases have been cause for concern in their respective
regions:
- Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993, but the border
between the two countries has never been worked out, leading to an
outbreak of hostilities in May 1998. Claims by both countries are based
on administrative borders dating back to the nineteenth century that
fluctuated depending on who controlled the area—the British, the
Italians, or Ethiopian provincial governors.
- Recently, India and Pakistan once again clashed over Kashmir,
whose borders have been in dispute since the partition of India in 1947.
Britain originally planned to divide Kashmir into Muslim and Hindu
sections, leaving Hindus in India and Muslims in Pakistan, but concerns
about administrative control of water supplies won out, and a large
Muslim population came under Indian authority. The current Line of
Control dividing the region was agreed upon in the aftermath of a 1971
conflict over Kashmir, and was drawn where troops were positioned at the
time of the ceasefire.
On the high seas, borders are even more uncertain. As of 1998,
approximately 160 (38 percent) of the 425 existing maritime boundaries
had been officially delimited. Islands are also a significant source of
conflict. In 1998, 39 countries were involved in disputes over 33
islands and archipelagos. Disagreements can erupt anywhere—whether
the countries are allies or adversaries:
- For hundreds of years, both the United States and Canada have
claimed the small Machias Seal Island, home to the largest population of
Atlantic puffins in the Gulf of Maine. Ironically, the two different
borders claimed by each country not only change the island’s
ownership but also leave a stretch of the Gulf completely unclaimed by
either nation.
- In a more serious case, during a period of escalating military
and political tensions, North and South Korea engaged in a brief naval
battle this June that was triggered by a dispute over fishing waters in
the UN–designated buffer zone between the two countries—the
closest North and South Korea have come to breaking the armed truce they
signed in 1953.
“Good fences make good neighbors,” observed the American
poet Robert Frost. But in light of the many boundary disputes that
remain unresolved, it is likely that bad neighbors will keep
cartographers busy well into the next century.
Return to article
