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Q. What was Japan's role in the Cold War?A.Japan always seems invisible within Cold War politics, what role did she play?? by m3ltd0wn02The Myth of the 'Pacifist' Japanese Constitution | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan FocusJapan–United States relations - WikipediaThe United States Marines in the Occupation of JapanDomestic sources of Japanese foreign policyDon't Weaken the U.S.-Japan Alliance, Strengthen It5 Things You May Not Know About the End of World War IIJapan always seems invisible within Cold War politics, what role did she play?? by m3ltd0wn02Certificate of Surrender as a unit of the Third Fleet off Yokohama, Japan for the signing of the agreement. Occupation of Japan - WikipediaInvisibility is not an accident. Japanese involvement within the Cold War was often oblique, even though it was firmly in the US camp. This was in no small measure because of the nature of the US-Japan security relationship. The postwar US-Japan security relationship is one that emerged very quickly in the immediate postwar period, but also quite unexpectedly. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), the American occupation government, initially saw the end game for Japan was a demilitarized polity that would delegate security issues to the US. For its part, the emerging Japanese civilian government under the conservative LDP politician PM Yoshida Shigeru pursued its own agenda which intersected with American strategic thought in the evolving Cold War. This partnership though was not entirely free of complications and neither side truly got what they wanted out of their ally.The Dai-Ichi Seimei Building which served as SCAP headquarters, c. 1950"Formless" is the best word to describe American strategic thought with regards to Japan's immediate geopolitical future in the Autumn of 1945. SCAP generally did not envision reforming Japan with an eye to meet American needs. Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution outlawed war as a policy and there was a good deal of SCAP directives aimed at the demilitarization of Japanese society and culture. This was in keeping with much of the wartime planning for East Asia was predicated on both having a Nationalist China as well as Commonwealth forces form a bulwark for US interests, especially as the Cold War started to shape up. Events in China with the resumption of the Civil War as well as the general draw down of the British East of Suez almost immediately meant that the US was lacking a regional power partner in East Asia. This did not mean that American planners immediately considered Japan as the nation that could fill this vacuum. As late March 1949, SCAP chief MacArthur claimed in a newspaper interview that:Japan should be the Switzerland of the Far East and neutral for the same reasons Switzerland is neutral - no matter which side she might join, she would inevitably be destroyed.Pace MacArthur's public statements, both the State Department and the Pentagon were considering rearming Japan and having it as the central regional partner.It took the twin shocks of the victory of the Communists in China and the Korean War to transform these thoughts into action. The latter conflict opened up the frightening possibility that Japan could be invaded and the overstretched US forces would be unable to defend the islands. The Korean invasion alarmed the Japanese government as well and it led to the expansion of the National Police Reserve (NPR), a sort of ersatz military that the US armed with a variety of weapons.The NPR laid the foundations for the later Self-Defense Forces (SDF), but it was not a straight line. Yoshida pursued what later be known as the Yoshida Doctrine, in which the Japanese government would prioritize economic growth while relying upon US power for security. The role Yoshida envisioned for the SDF was one that would supplement the American defense network in Japan. Yoshida had both domestic and international motives for this limited commitment. Domestically, an open move against Article 9 would provide fuel for his left-wing opponents in the Diet. Moreover, Yoshida also recognized that economic growth was also more important for immediate domestic needs. And like his German counterpart Adenauer, Yoshida was adamant that civilian control over the military was essential. As one of the sidelined bureaucrats from the wartime government, Yoshida came from a political milieu that looked askance at militarist rule, especially given the scale of the defeat in 1945. Internationally, Yoshida also recognized that the US arguably needed Japanese bases and its geographic position far more than the US needed Japan to make a costly outlay for rearmament. This was one of the key differences between Yoshida and Adenauer as the German Chancellor and a number of his CDU-CSU allies were more leery of American commitments to West German defense.Thus although the common metaphor of the US-Japanese relationship was spear and shield- with the US able to strike out offensively while the SDF guarded US bases-the reality was often more complicated than such a symbiotic metaphor. Pentagon estimates in the late 1950s and early 1950s evaluated the SDF as a credible deterrence to the Soviets, but not a force that could neither project power abroad or be able to stop a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido if the Soviets pressed them. For these reasons, Washington often considered Japanese rearmament tardy and never as thorough to meet the needs of the Cold War in East Asia, despite the US signing Mutual Cooperation Treaties with Japan in 1952, 1960, and 1970. The escalation of the Vietnam War put a further strain on the US-Japanese relationship as both the Johnson and Nixon administrations expected Japan to act as a regional ally and send troops to South Vietnam as its other allies, South Korea and Australia. This was an issue which Tokyo would not budge on, and earned Japan a good deal of resentment in the US during the 1970s. Kissinger in particular was quite vocal in private with his deriding of the Japanese, at one point calling his Tokyo counterparts "small and petty bookkeepers." Such opprobrium was not limited to the corridors of power in the US as the declining American economy of the 1970s fueled resentment that Japan was profiting off of US defenses by not maintaining an army and instead investing the monies it would have used on defense into automobile and consumer electronics industries.Japan–United States relations - WikipediaThe United States Marines in the Occupation of JapanSuch complaints, which only grew during the Japan-bashing of the 1980s, were more than a tad unfair. Japan, despite its foot-dragging, was rearming and building up its own domestic arms industry, which was not only time-consuming, but expensive. The threat of a wide-scale US post-Vietnam draw-down in the region also forced a greater commitment on Tokyo's part to beef up the SDF. Although the naval and air components of the SDF had practiced joint operations with the US in the 1960s, the ground forces started to so in the 1970s. There was a fear within Tokyo that the Vietnam defeat, coupled with the domestic problems in South Korea during the Park dictatorship could have led to a domino effect in which Japan was isolated in the region. The Belenko MiG-25 defection also added urgency to defense expenditures as fears of Soviet retaliation or a commando raid to destroy the plane did concern SDF chiefs. One of the ironies of the 1980s was that despite the Japan-bashing tone of US domestic politics, the US-Japanese security arrangement was the closest it had ever been to reaching the shield-sword metaphor. The Japanese significantly expanded their air defense and ASW forces and the Japanese PM Suzuki in May 1981 actually called the bilateral relationship a military alliance.The cold war most influential defection: MIG -25 (bestchinanews.com)Suzuki's breaking of this taboo in 1981 underscores the real domestic costs of the Yoshida Doctrine and its various post-Yoshida iterations. In short, the alliance put the LDP in a very awkward position. While the Japanese nationalist right was staunchly anti-communist, ideologues like Ishihara Shintaro excoriated the mainstream LDP champions of the alliance as the lap-dogs of American power. This disgruntlement sometimes exploded into violence, such as the assassination of the left-wing politician Asanuma Inejiro by a right-wing nationalist on national tv or the seppuku of the author Mishima Yukio after his private army tried to take over a SDF military base. Such events, which were widely publicized around the world- the photo of Asanuma's assassination won a Pulitzer- created an embarrassing situation for the LDP. From the perspective of the Japanese left, this security arrangement was Japan being co-opted by American imperialism and militarism. While the extremes of left-wing disgruntlement likewise manifested itself in the terrorism like the Japanese Red Army on the extremes, there was always a danger that the Social Democratic Party could use the sotto voce US alliance as a wedge issue to unseat the LDP and unify the splinter-prone Japanese left. Adding to this, the presence of American forces and bases was incredibly unpopular within Japan. The transformation of Okinawa into a hive network of American bases, the perceived footdragging of US military justice to punish crimes committed on Japanese soil, the association of US bases with vices like prostitution and drugs, as well as the extreme unpopularity of the Vietnam conflict within a broad spectrum of the Japanese electorate also made the alliance a political liability for the ruling governments.Domestic sources of Japanese foreign policyYOSHIDA DOCTRINE (1950’S-1973)Economic Growth is Japan’s main objectiveInvolvement in international political affairs should be avoidedTo guarantee security, Japan will rely on US basesKeep military expenditures lowCOROLLARIES TO YOSHIDA DOCTRINE (OBSERVED FROM 1950’S TO 1970S)SDF will not be dispatched abroadJapan will not become a nuclear powerJapan will not export armsJapan will limit defense spending to 1% GDPWHAT IS NEW: HEISEI MILITARIZATIONHollowing out Article 9Shift from “defensive defense”/“comprehensive defense” to “threat-based defense”/”proportional defense”Upgrading and expanding military forcesWillingness to rely on military solutionsLegitimation of use of military force abroadClose operational integration with US forcesGrowing possibility of weapons of mass destruction“Great power realism”The new nationalismCOLD WAR AND US-JAPAN RELATIONSHIPSoviet Union and China take peace offensive to Japan.Indochina tail spinning caused US uneasinessPresident Eisenhower argues “domino theory”.Japan keystone in containment policy in the Far East.Japan Prepares for Soviet Attack | Cold War Era Documentary | 1954Although the mechanisms of the alliance were at their most functional in the 1980s, there were rumblings in political quarters that the alliance needed to change. Suzuki's successor, Nakasone Yasuhiro struck a more militant line versus the Soviets than his predecessors. While such a stance indicated a success for the alliance, it was also a sign that Japan was making tentative steps away from the Yoshida Doctrine's subservient position accorded to Japan. Greater stridency also indicated that Japan could toe an independent line and Gorbachev and his Foreign Ministry began to hold out the prospect of returning the Kuriles and a formal peace treaty with Japan. These feelers foundered for a number of reasons, not the least of which was still the importance of the alliance for Japan, but the fact that the Soviets made them suggests the new vulnerabilities of the alliance in the bubble economy.The alliance itself went into a form of stasis with the end of the Cold War and the bursting of the bubble in the 1990s. This has imparted a degree of inertia into 1990s and beyond; one of the cliches in news coverage of US-Japan relations is the question of whether or not the Yoshida Doctrine is still relevant. For example, contrast this 1993 NYT piece on Japan to this 2014 Japan Today opinion piece. Although over twenty years of history separates the two articles, they are still asking much the same questions.The Myth of the 'Pacifist' Japanese Constitution | The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan FocusThe US-Japanese alliance may have been born out of necessity, but its midwife was a very favorable geopolitical situation. Unlike German rearmament which had to take place amidst quite tense negotiations with Western European powers, the rebirth of the Japanese military was a bilateral affair. The Sino-Soviet split also allowed for a more quiet Cold War in the northern Pacific as the USSR and PRC were more leery of each other than Japan. At points in the 1970s and 80s, both Beijing and Tokyo could put aside wartime legacies to find common accord such as joint protests of Soviet deployments of SS-20 missiles in Siberia. Although there were persistent fears of Korean unification by the DPRK, such a scenario did not come to pass. As odd as it sounds in 2017, during the 1960s and 70s it looked to a good many outside observers in the West that Juche was a more successful model than the ROK's military dictatorship. Fear of Korean unification encouraged Tokyo to hew to the alliance, but did not provide enough of a pretext to radically modify it. Some of these conditions do still apply in post-Cold War East Asia, but others do not. US-Japanese relations now operate in a much more multilateral and interconnected world than the one that birthed it in the late-1940s. While current permutations of the Yoshida Doctrine are still alive, the endurance of the alliance itself should not be taken as a given.Japan record-high budget plan approved for 2018, defense spending swellsFor the first time in 70 years, the Japanese parliament has approved the use of its Military Forces, most notably its Navy and Air Forces, through re-interpretation of its pacifist constitution’s article 9, to allow for ‘pre-emptive’ strikes in the collective defense of its allies like the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet. It is interesting to note that the majority of the Japanese public oppose such a move, and as in the U.S., have no real say in the sway of its political power elite spear headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the powerful LDP government.On the surface, the re-engagement of Japan with the world’s most advanced Aegis-class destroyers and F-22 raptors, will raise eyebrows of its Asian neighbors who were victimized by Imperial Japan’s WWII aggressions, and will understandably question what Japan’s true intent is in its sudden rush to loosen the self-imposed military restrictions since the end of WWII. Behind closed doors, this is but one part of the United States’ Asian Pivot strategy in using Japan’s advanced military forces as a proxy for the American containment plan of the rapidly accelerating ‘blue water’ PLA Navy plans for the rise of China and Russia in the Pacific theater. With the tight integration and coordination of similar war fighting ships and equipment, Japan’s Navy is in effect, the U.S. Navy’s 11th Fleet, and supporting the Japanese to allow the potential for foreign conflict involvement increases the containment capacity of the U.S. Naval Command, while allowing Japan to carry the cost of this additional fleet.While the U.S. is delicately balancing allowing its closest Asian ally to restore its full standing military to deploy overseas, after 70 years of suppression from being allowed to be a ‘normal’ country with a standing military, the cooperation and exercises between Japan and its Non-Chinese Asian neighbors should be closely monitored. Most ASEAN and smaller military budget countries in the Pacific and Southeast Asia welcome the counter weight of a U.S.-Australian-Japanese lead Pacific Asian Treaty Organization (PATO), an Asian equivalent of NATO, to form to come to the collective defense of smaller countries like the Philippines or Vietnam from unilateral Chinese Military moves to claim the entire South China Sea and eventually the straight of Malaca, which resource poor Japan finds unacceptable for safe Japanese oil and trade shipment passage.While fiery rhetoric will fly, and exhibits of naval and air military exercises and posturing will increase over the coming quarters, it is in the best interest of both Japan and China to continue to build trust, and grow their economic inter dependence for each’s own future prosperity. With the recent stock market crash in China from mid-June this year, we are seeing signs of economic weakness and correction in the mighty growth engine of China, and the overtures by top diplomats from both countries meeting, and announcing a potential ‘high level’ meeting later this year between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Abe, are more signs these complex military posturings may also have more than just an American mastermind dimension to them behind closed doors. Keeping America’s military planners appeased, while building on the strengths and trusts between old Asian rivals to pave way for a TPP busting East Asian Union (an Asian version of the EU), with China/Japan as the French/German equivalent on the European continent, will be an interesting development as the U.S. continues to show signs of empire fatigue.Watch for signs of detente in Japanese and Chinese cooperation, especially any form of military exercise cooperation, as critical signs of a move away from the uni-polar U.S. dominated geopolitical sphere we have enjoyed for the past 70 years.Related Article:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/world/asia/japans-lower-house-passes-bills-giving-military-freer-hand-to-fight.htmlRelated Article:http://news.yahoo.com/top-chinese-japanese-diplomats-meet-beijing-100842916.htmlDon't Weaken the U.S.-Japan Alliance, Strengthen ItCOMMENTARY (The National Interest) August 14, 2017The RAND Blog by Scott W. Harold Photo by Viktorcvetkovic/Getty ImagesThe threat environment in Northeast Asia has been shifting in recent years as China's military modernization and assertiveness, North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations, and Russia's turn towards hostility against the United States are fueling a rise in the risk of armed conflict between major powers. Confronting threats as varied as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Iran, and Ebola, some might wonder if the United States has the resources and will to stay engaged and shape the future of security in the Asia-Pacific, including offering extended deterrent guarantees to its Japanese, South Korean, Filipino, Australian, and Thai allies. Others are asking whether U.S. allies are even worth defending. Are they?I believe that the answer is yes, the United States has the resources to shape the future of the Asia-Pacific, and yes, its allies are worth defending. To abandon U.S. alliances would not only be more costly but also ultimately make America less safe at home. While U.S. defense budgets will remain constrained for some years to come, the U.S. military still retains very substantial hardware, training, doctrinal, operational experience, and human capital advantages. In addition, the United States enjoys the support of major allies who provide basing and access, logistical support, and critical enabling capabilities that ultimately make them important force multipliers for the defense of the U.S. homeland as well as its overseas interests and core values.To abandon U.S. alliances would not only be more costly but also make America less safe at home.As the largest status quo power allied with the United States in East Asia, no country plays a more important role than Japan in supporting the rule of law-based international order. If the United States wants to meet the challenges posed by increasingly well-armed, hostile and autocratic governments bent on intimidating the free world, it needs to continue to broaden and deepen its defense cooperation with Japan and states like it. Below I suggest four urgent priority areas for continued improvements: planning and joint training for a variety of contingencies; additional types of military hardware to bolster deterrence; addressing the basing of U.S. forces in Okinawa; and closer cooperation on innovative thinking about deterrence and war-fighting concepts.Forward, TogetherTo date, the two allies have taken a number of important steps both separately and together, but much more work remains to be done. Japan, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has reinterpreted Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution to engage in collective self-defense. The Abe administration has also established a National Security Secrets Act; set up a National Security Secretariat to assist with decisionmaking; lifted restrictions on defense exports; shifted the focus of defense planning scenarios from a ground invasion from the north to an air and naval threat from the southwest; and increased the country's defense budget to approximately $40 billion. It has added critical hardware to the inventory of its Self-Defense Forces, including RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and advanced F-35 Lightning II fighters. Tokyo has also inducted helicopter carriers into the Maritime Self-Defense Forces, brought on-line new P1 maritime patrol aircraft, and expanded its submarine fleet from 16 to 22 boats, all while developing a 4,000-man rapid reaction amphibious capability and emplacing radar and anti-ship cruise missiles along the coasts of remote islands in the country's southwest. In November 2015, it announced plans to send 500 Ground Self Defense Force troops to one of these islands, Ishigaki, and in March it activated a radar station on another, Yonaguni Island, to be staffed by 160 Ground Self-Defense soldiers. Both islands are close to the Senkakus that China claims and is seeking to undermine Japanese control over. Ultimately, Tokyo plans to station approximately 10,000 troops across the southwest islands chain to meet this threat.For its part, in 2011 the Obama administration announced that it would “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific region (PDF), a policy whose military component aims to create a more geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable force posture across the region. The United States is also improving the capabilities it forward deploys in Japan, and has moved up many of its most advanced capabilities, including the F-22 Raptor, MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to replace the more dated CH-46 Seaknight, an additional AN/TPY-2 radar, Global Hawk UAVs, and P-8maritime patrol aircraft for submarine tracking. In late 2015, the 7th Fleet replaced the aging USS George Washington with the much newer USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier.Bilaterally the allies have also taken important steps together. During his 2014 trip to Japan, President Obama noted that the United States would regard an attack on the Senkakus as triggering Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty. Following this, in April 2015, the United States and Japan signed new defense guidelines (PDF) that establish the basis for more effective coordination between the allies, including by establishing a new bilateral planning mechanism, an alliance coordination mechanism, and beginning discussions about cooperation in gray zones at sea, in outer space, and in cyberspace. And in December 2015, Tokyo agreed to increase its annual contributions in support of U.S. forces stationed in Japan, promising up to $8 billion over the next five years. The Department of Defense has calculated that this makes Japan the cheapest nation in the world in which to station U.S. forces, cheaper even than bringing them back to the United States…The remainder of this commentary is available at nationalinterest.org.Scott W. Harold is associate director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy, a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.5 Things You May Not Know About the End of World War IIWorld War II, fought from 1939 to 1945, was the deadliest war in history and involved more than 30 countries around the globe. More than 50 million people lost their lives during the war.TOKYO, Japan- Sept. 2, 1945- Allied sailorsand officers watch Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur sign documents during the surrender ceremony aboard USS Missouri. U.S Army photoHere are five things you may not know about Sept. 2, 1945:1. The Instrument of Surrender was signed in Tokyo Bay, Japan.The Instrument of Surrender was actually signed off the coast of Tokyo, Japan. On the morning of Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese representatives signed the surrender document during a ceremony on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri. This day marked the end of World War II.Japanese representatives on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay to participate in formal surrender ceremonies on Sept. 2, 1945. U.S. Air Force photo2. The document was signed one month after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.On Aug. 6, 1945, a U.S. Boeing B-29 aircraft dropped the atomic bomb known as Little Boy on Hiroshima. Three days later, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. This was the first time atomic bombs were used in military operations.3. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur signed the Instrument of Surrender for the United Nations, and Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz signed for the United States.The rank of five-star, or OF-10, was first established in 1944 and is held during wartime. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz were two of the nine five-star officers in U.S. military history.4. Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s original flag was present during the signing.On the USS Missouri that day was the original American flag flown in 1853 on the USS Powhatan by Commodore Matthew C. Perry (see in the background of the photo below). Perry flew the flag on the first of his two expeditions to Japan. Perry’s expeditions had resulted in the Convention of Kanagawa, which forced the Japanese to open the country to American trade.Surrender of Japan, Tokyo Bay, Sept. 2, 1945. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied commander, reads his speech to open the surrender ceremonies onboard the USS Missouri. Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s original 1853 American flag can be seen in the background. Photo from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives5. World War II did not officially end in 1945.Although Sept. 2, 1945, is known as the end of World War II, the state of war formally ended when the treaty of San Francisco came into force on April 20, 1952. It was a peace treaty with Japan.Source:Department of Defense BlogJapanese Military Power | Japan Self-Defense Forces 2017 - 2018SDFSDF: GroundJapan and Germany military expansionWhy China fears Japan’s military

The president’s proposal has a decadeslong history. After the 1986 “amnesty,” when President Ronald Reagan traded increased border security for the legalization of 3 million unauthorized immigrants, the San Diego Border Patrol constructed a 10-foot welded steel fence along the 14-mile section of the border closest to the Pacific. In 1996, a new law provided funds for a second layer. Despite repeated requests from the Border Patrol for more, by the year 2000 just 60 miles of the southern border had fencing, almost all of which was in urban areas. Only San Diego had a second layer.After 9/11, border hawks launched another push for fences, with little success. Most immigration enforcement funds were going to a surge in border agents. But President George W. Bush’s push for comprehensive immigration reform, which would have legalized the unauthorized immigrants in the United States, gave the hawks their opportunity. In 2006, Congress approved the Secure Fence Act mandating nearly 700 miles of fencing on the border.The president signed on to the bill hoping to placate the secure-the-border-first crowd and obtain the humane immigration changes that he wanted. This sales job enabled it to pass with bipartisan support from the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The immigration reform never materialized, but fence construction was nearly complete by 2009, and there are now 617 total miles of physical barriers, 36 miles of which have two layers.Yet the hawks were not placated. They complained that there was no second layer in most places. They stewed that half the fence was just “vehicle barriers”-concrete posts that provide obstacles for drivers but not pedestrians. Moreover, the 317 miles of real pedestrian fences dramatically vary in height and quality. The Border Patrol uses half a dozen types of fencing materials-wire mesh, landing mats, chain-link, bollard, aesthetic, and sheet piling-just to control on-foot crossings. These barriers are mainly a combination of steel posts and bars supplemented in places with wire, ranging in height from 6 to 18 feet.Trump has been adamant that his wall will be built “ahead of schedule.” For that to happen, he’ll need to avoid the various legal issues that plagued earlier efforts. Entities other than the federal government-states, Indian tribes, private individuals-control over two-thirds of borderland property. Private parties own the vast majority of the border in Texas, and for this reason, roughly 70 percent of the existing border fence is located in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Almost all of it is on federally controlled land.The Bush administration bullied property owners, threatening to sue them if they did not “voluntarily” hand over the rights to their land. It offered no compensation for doing so. Thinking that they had no recourse, some people signed off, but others refused. The government then attempted to use eminent domain, a procedure Trump has long defended, to seize their property, but the lawsuits imposed serious delays-seven years in one case.In 2009, the Homeland Security inspector general concluded that the Border Patrol had “achieved [its] progress primarily in areas where environmental and real estate issues did not cause significant delay.” One intransigent resident had owned his property since before the “Roosevelt easement,” which gives the federal government a 60-foot right of way along the border. He fought the administration, so the fence had until recently a 1.2-mile gap on his land. Border residents fought more than a third of all land transfers, in fact. Because the Constitution promises just compensation for takings, Trump can do little to speed this process.Native American tribes also have the capacity to stop construction of barriers. The Tohono O’odham Nation, which has land on both sides of the border, has already pledged to fight any efforts to build a wall there. In 2007, when the tribe allowed vehicle barriers to be constructed, the Bush administration ended up desecrating Indian burial grounds and digging up human remains. The new president would need a stand-alone bill from Congress to condemn their land. Senate Democrats can (and likely would) filibuster such an effort.Even federal lands can be problematic. In 2010, two-thirds of patrol agents-in-charge told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that land management laws had delayed or limited access to portions of federal lands, for fence building or repairs and other purposes, with more than half stating they did not get a timely response when they requested permission to use the lands. In one case, it took nearly eight months for the Border Patrol to get the OK to install a single underground sensor.Water rights have also been a problem for the fence. A 1970 treaty requires that the floodplain of the Rio Grande remain open to both sides of the border. The Obama administration attempted to build fences along the river anyway, but the treaty and the river’s floods forced the barrier to be placed so far into the interior of the United States that it has many holes to allow U.S. residents access to their property. These also provide an opportunity for border crossers.At the same time, the fence can cause Mexico to receive too much water. Even when a fence has holes, which a wall would not, debris can turn the fence into a dam. Thanks to the barrier, some floods have fully covered the doors of Mexican buildings in Los Ebanos, across the Rio Grande, while producing little more than deep puddling on the U.S. side. The International Boundary and Water Commission that administers the treaty has rebuffed the Border Patrol’s attempts to replicate this disaster in other areas of the Rio Grande Valley.Fences or walls obstruct crossers’ paths, cutting off a straight shot into the interior of the country. But a barrier is not the permanent object that some people imagine. Natural events can knock down parts of a border fence. One storm in Texas left a hole for months. Fences and walls can also erode near rivers or beaches, as the one in San Diego did. And they can be penetrated: Some fencing can be cut in minutes, and the Border Patrol reported repairing more than 4,000 holes in one year alone. They neglected to mention whether that number equaled that year’s number of breaches.Much of the current fencing can be easily mounted with a ladder or from the roof of a truck. In some cases, border crossers can scale the fence without any additional equipment. One viral video from 2010 shows two women easily climbing an 18-foot steel bollard-style pedestrian fence in less than 20 seconds. Smugglers can even drive over the fence using ramps, a fact that was discovered only when a couple of foolish drug entrepreneurs managed to get their SUV stuck on top. (They took the dope and split.)A wall would probably be less easily damaged by man or nature. But in at least some areas, its impassibility could also become a maintenance liability. Border Patrol agents have told Fox News that a border wall would still “have to allow water to pass through, or the sheer force of raging water could damage its integrity, not to mention the legal rights of both the U.S. and Mexico to seasonal rains.” In 2011, for example, a flood in Arizona washed away 40 feet of steel fence.While not “impenetrable,” a concrete wall would impede efforts to cut through it. Trump has also claimed that no one would ever use a ladder to go over his wall because “there’s no way to get down.” After pondering the question for a second, he then conceded, “maybe a rope.” Nonetheless, the height might discourage some people from attempting to climb it, and it would certainly take them longer to do so, giving Border Patrol agents additional time to reach them.If not over or through, some crossers may opt to go under. Tunnels are typically used more for drug smuggling, but they still create a significant vulnerability in any kind of physical barrier. From 2007 to 2010, the Border Patrol found more than one tunnel per month, on average. “For every tunnel we find, we feel they’re building another one somewhere,” Kevin Hecht, a Border Patrol tunnel expert, told The New York Times last year. A wall would likely increase the rewards for successful tunneling as other modes of transit grow more expensive.Trump is unconcerned, asserting that “tunnel technology” will rule out any such subterfuge. Effective tunnel detection equipment is seen as the Holy Grail of Border Patrol enforcement, but the Homeland Security Department’s Science and Technology Directorate has so far concluded that no current technology for detecting tunnels beneath the border is “suited to Border Patrol agents’ operational needs.”But the biggest practical problem with a wall is its opacity. In fact, many Border Patrol agents oppose a concrete wall for precisely this reason (albeit quietly, given that they were also some of Trump’s biggest supporters during the election). “A cinder block or rock wall, in the traditional sense, isn’t necessarily the most effective or desirable choice,” Border Patrol agents told Fox News. “Seeing through a fence allows agents to anticipate and mobilize, prior to illegal immigrants actually climbing or cutting through the fence.”The agency is already desperate to switch out the nontransparent landing-mat fences in use in some places. These metal sheets were adapted from helicopter landing pads left over from Vietnam, and while inexpensive, they are ill-suited to their purpose. Popular Mechanics described these parts of the fence as “obsolete, in need of replacement,” noting that they “can be easy to foil since Border Patrol agents can’t see what’s going on on the other side.” If a wall slows down agents as much as it does smugglers and migrants, it provides no advantage on balance.To put it most simply, border barriers will never stop illegal immigration, because a wall or fence cannot apprehend crossers. The agents that Fox News spoke to called a wall “meaningless” without agents and technology to back it up. Mayor Michael Gomez of Douglas, Arizona, labeled the fence a failure in 2010, saying “they jump right over it.” Former Border Patrol spokesperson Mike Scioli has called the fence little more than “a speed bump in the desert.”The efficaciy of a wallTrump speaks with absolute certainty of a wall’s ability to repel entries, yet the efficacy of the existing barriers has gone largely unstudied. The president is proposing a project likely to cost tens of billions of dollars and to suck up many other resources, and he is doing so without a single evaluation of the barrier. Obviously, any obstacle to passage will reduce entries at the margin. But would other options work better?Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) of the House Homeland Security Committee failed to obtain an answer to this exact question from the Obama administration. Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) concluded in 2013 that “it would be an inefficient use of taxpayer money to complete the fence,” but he gave no indication of how he evaluated the costs and benefits. A 2016 Migration Policy Institute review of the impact of walls and fences around the world turned up no academic literature specifically on the deterrent effect of physical barriers relative to other technologies or strategies, and concluded somewhat vaguely that walls appear to be “relatively ineffective.”Fences can have strong local effects, and the case for more fencing often relies completely on these regional outcomes. Take the San Diego border sector, probably the most commonly cited success story in this debate.From 1990 to 1993, it replaced a “totally ineffective” fence with a taller, opaque landing mat fence along 14 miles of the border. This had little impact on the number of border crossers. “The primary fence, by itself, did not have a discernible impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens coming across the border in San Diego,” the Congressional Research Service concluded.From 1994 to 1996, Operation Gatekeeper doubled the number of agents in the sector to reinforce the fence, but this too had little effect on the number of apprehended migrants. (Researchers use apprehensions as a proxy for illegal immigration because they usually track closely to the number of total entries.) Instead, the apprehensions shifted dramatically away from the areas guarded by western stations at Imperial Beach and Chula Vista, where fences were built, and toward eastern stations. The net flow remained the same.From 1997 to 1999, when the San Diego sector was reinforced with nine miles of secondary fencing and even more agents were added, the numbers did finally slow. But looking at the apprehension figures, it appears that San Diego simply pushed its problem even further east, to the El Centro, Yuma, and Tucson sectors. Each agent in those places ended up apprehending more people after the fence was built than before.Ideally, we would perform the same type of before-and-after analysis of the impact of the Secure Fence Act of 2006. The problem is that those barriers were rolled out at the same time that Congress almost doubled the size of the Border Patrol, increasing it from 12,000 to 21,000 agents. Moreover, fences went up in many different sectors, making it difficult to isolate the effects. To complicate matters further, this period saw the collapse of the housing bubble, which caused a huge exodus of unauthorized workers back to Mexico.The Unintended ConsequencesThe numbers from this period also suggest that counting “reduced crossings” as a victory may be misleading. As the amount of fencing and the number of agents grew, the share of unauthorized immigrants entering illegally fell, but the number entering legally (and then staying illegally) rose.In 2006, the Pew Research Center calculated that more than a third of all unauthorized immigrants entered lawfully and then simply overstayed their visas. People who come to the U.S. as tourists or temporary business travelers are forbidden from working, so a small number remain after their visa expires to work under the table. For every three border crossers in 1992, there was one overstay. But by 2012, visa overstays accounted for 58 percent of all new unauthorized immigrants. A wall not only will do nothing to stop these people from entering, but it may actually incentivize more people to stick around without authorization.Using reduced border crossings as the standard of success also obscures the wall’s effect on the total population of undocumented residents in the country. Until the first fence was built in 1990, workers could circulate freely across the border, coming to harvest crops during the summer and then returning home in the winter. They crossed with a goal of bettering their lives south of the border. The 1980s had more total crossings than the 1990s, but because as many people left each year as arrived, the total number of unauthorized immigrants remained roughly constant at about 3 million. The true measure of of a barrier’s efficacy should be not the gross flow but the net flow, taking into account both entries and exits.Increased enforcement in the 1990s raised the cost to cross the border, which obviously prevented some migrants from crossing at the margin. In fact, the cost of a single border crossing exploded from $500 in 1995 to $3,000 in 2009.But increasing the price of illegal activity is law enforcement’s main measurement of success. The Drug Enforcement Administration would be thrilled to claim it had driven up illicit drug prices 600 percent in a decade and a half.But this strategy backfired. The increased costs and risks disincentivized people from returning home. In 1996, just as the secondary fencing was going up in San Diego, a majority of new unauthorized entrants left within one year, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania sociologist Douglas Massey. By 2009-with three times as many agents, 650 miles of barriers, and constant surveillance along the border-an illegal immigrant’s likelihood of leaving within one year had dropped to a statistically insignificant level. Border security had essentially trapped them in.The illegal population grew in tandem with the increases in smuggling prices, which in turn paralleled the growth in the number of border officers. This process continued from 1990 to 2007, when the housing collapse finally set Mexican migration into reverse.Massey calculates that as of 2009, 5.3 million fewer immigrants would have been residing in the United States illegally had enforcement remained at the same levels as in the 1980s. He argues that a large guest worker program, similar to the one that the United States last had in the early 1960s, would reduce not just border crossings but the population of immigrants living in this country-seemingly a nationalist two-for-one.The Price TagCongress set aside $1.2 billion for the 700-mile border fence in 2006. It ended up spending $3.5 billion for construction of the current combination of pedestrian fences and vehicle impediments. In 2009, the Border Patrol estimated it would need to spend an average of $325 million per year for 20 years to maintain these barriers. The Congressional Research Service found that by 2015, Congress had already spent $7 billion on the project, more than $11.3 million per mile per decade.Of course, it hardly makes sense to look at averages, given that half the fence is inexpensive vehicle-only barriers. Of the 317 miles of true pedestrian fencing, the GAO found that construction alone for the first 70 miles cost $2.8 million per mile on average. In the more difficult, non-urban areas, costs grew dramatically: For the next 225 miles, they rose to $5 million per mile on average. In a mountainous region east of San Diego, they hit $16 million per mile. After about 290 miles, the GAO assumed the average cost for the final 26 miles would be $6.5 million.If Trump backs away from his promise or if Congress ignores his requests for new funding, he may choose to simply build out the existing pedestrian fence for the remaining 683 miles to reach his 1,000-mile goal. Using the $6.5-million-per-mile figure, Congress will still need to front at least $10 billion over 10 years. The entire fence would price out at $18 billion, accounting for inflation. Add in the costs associated with acquiring private land and building in less accessible areas and the price tag goes even higher.Trump, who still insists that his wall will be not a fence but an “impenetrable physical wall” of concrete, claims that it will cost between $10 billion and $12 billion. In early 2017, House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested that a similar amount of appropriations would be needed for the wall. Neither the president nor the speaker has revealed his methodology. But since we know that just building out the existing fence would cost at least that much, the wall will undoubtedly cost far more.Not only that, but the existing fences were relatively inexpensive to build because they were constructed from materials such as old metal from helicopter landing pads and built low to the ground in some places. Trump has criticized them for, among other things, their inability to prevent tunneling, their materials, their height, and their aesthetics. Trump’s wall would use, according to one engineer’s estimate, more than 1.5 times as much concrete as the Hoover Dam.For the full 1,000 miles, Trump’s 30-foot wall (with a 10-foot tunnel barrier) would cost $31.2 billion, or $31.2 million per mile, according to the best estimate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers. Two other estimates placed the construction cost of the wall in the $25 billion range. An internal Department of Homeland Security report from February 2017 concluded the project would cost $21.6 billion for “a series of fences and walls” along 1,250 miles of the border. And these are solely upfront construction costs. They don’t include ongoing maintenance, which has accounted for roughly half of the price of the existing barriers over a decade.The Economic DownsideDonald Trump has insisted from the start of his campaign that Mexico will pay for the wall. When he presented a proposal to Congress to fund the wall’s construction in January, he continued to insist that Mexico would repay the United States. For his part, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has said that he would refuse to pay for any portion of the wall, and the back-and-forth became so heated in January that he canceled a meeting with Trump.The U.S. president has remained vague about how this reimbursement will happen without Mexico’s cooperation, and his total lack of understanding of basic economic concepts may be contributing to his erroneous belief. “The wall is a fraction of the kind of money…that Mexico takes in from the United States,” he told CNN in April 2016. “You’re talking about a trade deficit with Mexico of $58 billion.” In other words, he seems to be saying that if the Mexican government does not give him the $31 billion or more that it will take to build the wall, Trump will tax America’s business with Mexico. White House Spokesman Sean Spicer intimated something similar in January 2017.Even if that were to happen, it is simply inaccurate to claim that America’s southern neighbor would be paying for the wall, since the revenue would be coming from U.S. consumers. If the United States imposes a tax on Mexican imports, then people in America buying Mexican goods, from beer to cars, will cover it. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said as much to Trump during a presidential primary debate in January 2016, explaining that the Mexican government “doesn’t pay the tariff-the buyer pays the tariff.” Evidently, the lesson failed to stick.Trump has also floated the idea of cutting off remittances to Mexico of unauthorized immigrants if the Mexican government refuses to pay up. His proposed regulatory method of doing this (claiming that cash wire transfers are actually bank accounts) is legally suspect, but even if it were licit, it would not cover the cost of the wall. Although Mexican immigrants annually send $26 billion to their families in Mexico, only half of the Mexican immigrants in the United States are here illegally, and the majority of the remittances from unauthorized immigrants would likely find a way home through means other than wire transfers.The ReasonPresident Trump’s wall would be a mammoth expenditure that would have little impact on illegal immigration. But perhaps that’s not the point. The campaign’s goal was to plant an image in voters’ minds of what making America great again would look like. The president’s goal may now be to create a symbol, an illustration of a nationalism that says to the world that although people of all kinds may want to come here, America was created by and for Americans.For those who are not nationalists, the wall is a problem. The direct harms are easy to document: the spending, the taxes, the eminent domain abuse, and the decrease in immigrants’ freedom of movement.Even if the wall fails to reduce illegal entries significantly overall, one byproduct of making it harder to enter is that people will choose to cross in increasingly dangerous points along the border (the president’s “natural barriers”). This objective was a purposeful Border Patrol strategy in the 1990s, and it caused the number of deaths to skyrocket as people perished in mountains or deserts. From 1993 to 2005, the number of lives lost in crossing rose from 23 to 500 per year. Since the border fence was built, the number has declined, but the death rate per crossing had more than tripled by 2012.Wasteful security has always been the compromise that non-nationalists give to nationalists to obtain a better immigration system, one that treats people humanely and allows more of them to enter and live here legally. The most optimistic case is that the president builds some kind of barrier and takes credit for the drop in illegal immigration that began a decade ago. Seizing victory, he allows some form of immigration reform palatable to moderate Republicans to pass.But agreeing to the symbol could be seen as conceding the principle behind it. If Trump understands the costs and the limited benefits of the wall, his true purpose may be to force his opponents to give in to the nationalist viewpoint and spend the ensuing decades building and maintaining its outward sign. Many Republicans, including the president, have adopted a “border security first” philosophy that requires certain metrics to be met before other humane reforms take effect, so the wall could simply be an attempt to move the goalposts for security so far that they can never be reached (especially if Mexico’s reimbursement is a criterion).Another possibility is that the wall serves as a grand red herring, forcing Trump’s opponents to focus on the symbol while he enforces his true vision in other areas. The president’s executive order mandating the construction of a wall also requires a crackdown on asylum seekers coming to the border from Central America. His order on interior enforcement renders nearly all unauthorized immigrants priorities for removal. He has still further orders planned to undermine the legal immigration system for foreign workers. And of course, he has tried to ban all people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering at all. As his opponents focus on the wall, the Trump administration targets immigrants from every direction.In a sense, the wall merely represents the Trump administration’s worst instincts and desires. It is harmful, wasteful, and offensive, but an ineffective wall is nonetheless better than the surge of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to round up and deport people that the president also wants. No wall has ever arrested, robbed, battered, or murdered nonviolent people, as immigration enforcement has. A wall will not create an interest group to lobby for itself, endorse nationalist presidential candidates, and demand more power and funding, as the Border Patrol union does.The wall is more than a symbol. It will harm the lives of thousands of border residents and immigrants while wasting billions of tax dollars. But in a world run by nationalists, the one small source of comfort for non-nationalists over the next four years may be the knowledge that it could be worse.CREDITS:David Bier (policy analyst at the Cato Institute): “Why the Wall Won't Work”Democrats aren’t saying no to physical barriers on the border. They are saying no to Trump.A Biblical Perspective on Immigration PolicyHouse passes resolution to revoke Trump's national emergency declarationUnited States–Mexico Border - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American HistoryHere's What the U.S.-Mexico border looks like before Trump's wall