World Borders Redefined

What defines a country’s border these days? Is it a physical place, or does it extend into the “virtual and electronic space”? Moisés Naím argues that it’s all three places and more in an intriguing essay in the Outlook section of Sunday’s Washington Post. “[W]hile geography still matters,” Naím writes, “today’s borders are being redefined and redrawn in unexpected ways. They are fluid, constantly remade by technology, new laws and institutions, and the realities of international commerce—illicit as well as legitimate.”

Naím’s essay is the lead piece in a package of stories about borders. Fernando Pizarro examines life on the U.S.-Mexico border; Anne Applebaum writes about Pan Michal, a man who has lived in Poland, Germany, the Soviet Union and Belarus all without leaving his village; and Edward A. Gargan talks about the wounds still remaining in Berlin more than 15 years after the wall separating the east and west fell.

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