Borders are inevitable and necessary to national security – they’re intrinsic to human nature and ethics and without them international relations would collapse

Nevertheless, when taken collectively, these complaints perhaps overstate the case and over the past 5 years or so in particular there have been some notable attempts at acknowledging and offering theoretically reflective accounts of the concept of the border of the state. Jackson, for example, has built upon the work of Hedley Bull and emphasized the normative role that state borders play in international life: ‘‘the sanctity and stability of inherited boundaries is a fundamental building block of international society and a principle behind which the vast majority of sovereign states rally’’ (Jackson 2000:333). On his view, borders between states not only delimit the spheres of national interests, security, and law but also shape rights and duties such as those relating to non-intervention (Jackson 2000:319). As such, borders are said to perform a key normative role by distinguishing between insider groups (members of international institutions such as the UN) and outsider groups (those who enjoy no legal existence as independent states) (Jackson 2000:333). A similar line of argument is pursued by Williams who also draws on Bull to argue that borders between states perform an important ethical function in world politics (Williams 2002:739). For Williams, state borders are ‘‘ubiquitous’’ and ‘‘embedded’’ in IR because they are a necessary facet of human existence: ‘‘The durability and depth of sedimentation of territorial borders as fences suggest that division, and division on a territorial basis, speaks to a deep-seated need of human identity and also in human ethics’’ (Williams 2003:39; emphasis added). On this view, borders between states are said to act as ‘‘fences between neighbours’’ in such a way that ‘‘tolerates diversity’’ instead of stifling difference (Williams 2003:39). Without borders, Williams claims, the international juridical–political system would not be able to ensure ‘‘state independence, limits on violence, sanctity of agreement or the stability of possession’’ (Williams 2002:739–740). Hence, he argues, ‘‘to remove, or even to re-conceptualize, territorial borders would mean the end of IR… requiring a shift in the conduct of politics on the planet that is unimaginable’’ (Williams 2003:27). However, Williams’ argument might be challenged on two grounds: first, that borders between states are not necessarily limits on but rather markers and even upholders of violence in political life; and, second, in any case, as we have already seen in the case of legal arguments deployed by the UN in defence of the Human Rights of detainees in Guanta´namo, planetary shifts in the conduct of politics occasioned by (or reflected in) the disaggregation of territorial limits and limits of law appear to be already well under way.