The Borders We Share: A New Way to Fix a Broken World
Bonus Post: A Tapestry of Shared Horizons – Summing Up The Borders We Share (Sections 1–7)
The Borders We Share – Series Overview
Reflections on a Journey Across Fractured Frontiers
The wind today is gentle, carrying the memory of every frontier we have walked together.
When I began The Borders We Share in early 2025, the aim was simple yet ambitious: to reimagine over 200 real-world territorial disputes—places where history, power, and people collide—through the lens of fiction, myth, and egalitarian shared sovereignty. The series asks a single, persistent question: what if we stopped treating borders as lines that divide and began to see them as threads that can be rewoven? What if the stories we tell about land—whether drawn from Jonathan Swift, C.S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard, L. Frank Baum, or Samuel Butler—could illuminate paths toward justice in Crimea, the South China Sea, the Amazon, Western Sahara, the Golan Heights, Kashmir, the Falklands/Malvinas, the Indus, the Nile, and countless other contested places?
Over seven sections and more than forty posts, we have travelled from the foundational multiverse of early tales to the arid heart of deserts and plains. Along the way, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, King Arthur, Robin Hood, Conan, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Talking Beasts, and many others have walked beside real voices—Sahrawi refugees, Kazakh herders, Bedouin elders, Dinka cattlemen, Arrernte song-keepers, Warlpiri women, Indigenous custodians, and countless others. Each pairing has served as a mirror: fiction reflecting reality, reality refracting fiction, until the boundary between the two becomes as porous as wind-blown sand.
The series is built on four scholarly anchors:
- Sovereignty Conflicts (2017) – the triadic framework of claimant A, claimant B, and populated territory C, where C is too often treated as scenery.
- Territorial Disputes (2020) – the sociological fractures, prestige payoffs, and multilayered realities that keep disputes alive.
- Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty (2023) – the moral demand that no resident be treated as a means only.
- Territorial Disputes in the Americas (2025) – the practical success of guarantor-led zones and shared-sovereignty mechanisms that have achieved high durability in the Americas.
These works are not mere background; they are the quiet heartbeat of every council, every accord, every proposal to share rather than seize.
Section 1: Foundations of the Multiverse (Posts 1–6)
We began with the building blocks: how fiction and reality can speak to each other across time. Early posts introduced the series’ method—pairing iconic fictional territories with contemporary disputes—and laid out the core vision of egalitarian shared sovereignty. From Tintin’s Khemed echoing Crimea’s annexation to early entanglements of myth and map, Section 1 established that borders are not only lines on paper but stories we tell about belonging, exclusion, and possibility. The aim was already clear: reframe disputes not as zero-sum contests but as opportunities for creative, equitable coexistence.
Section 2: Oil and Dust Disputes (Posts 7–12)
The journey moved into the gritty terrain of resource extraction. Oil fields, dust storms, and the curse of black gold became central motifs. Posts paired fictional oil-soaked lands with real disputes over hydrocarbons and minerals. The accords here began to take shape: revenue sharing, local consultation, environmental safeguards, and residency pathways that recognize contribution over conquest. Section 2 showed how wealth beneath the ground can either poison relations or—through transparent, inclusive mechanisms—become a shared foundation.
Section 3: Tides of Claim – Six Tales of Islands and Ambition (Posts 13–18)
Islands and ambition formed the heart of Section 3. We explored insular disputes—places where land is surrounded by sea, and sovereignty is measured in square kilometres of rock and reef. Fictional islands mirrored real archipelagos and atolls. The section deepened the series’ focus on the human cost of isolation: displaced families, lost livelihoods, militarized reefs. Councils emphasized joint management, demilitarization zones, and cultural preservation—ideas drawn from successful island-sharing precedents.
Section 4: Forests and Lands (Posts 19–24)
Forests and lands brought us into lush, contested green. We paired mythic woodlands with real tropical and temperate forests under pressure from logging, agriculture, and Indigenous dispossession. The accords here focused on ecological corridors, Indigenous guardianship, and revenue sharing from sustainable use. Section 4 highlighted how forests are not just timber but living libraries of memory and biodiversity, and how their fate is tied to the rights of those who have tended them for generations.
Section 5: Mountains and Heights (Posts 25–30)
Mountains and heights lifted us to the vertical. We climbed contested peaks, border ridges, and high plateaus. Fictional summits met real ranges where altitude becomes a strategic asset. Councils proposed shared mountaineering zones, transboundary conservation, and residency pathways for high-altitude communities. Section 5 showed how the thin air of high places can either separate people or—through joint stewardship—remind them of their common vulnerability to weather, climate, and gravity.
Section 6: Cities and Rocks (Posts 31–36)
Cities and rocks brought us into the built environment. We walked contested urban stones—from Jerusalem’s walls to Berlin’s ghosts, from Dubai’s towers to Hebron’s welded shutters. The accords here emphasized shared municipal governance, heritage protection, residency rights, and naming of workers who built the skylines. Section 6 revealed how cities, like deserts, can exclude as much as they include, and how shared sovereignty can turn concrete barriers into bridges.
Section 7: Deserts and Plains (Posts 37–42)
Deserts and plains formed the arid heart of the series so far. We traversed Laputa’s Waste and the Sahara, Cimmeria’s flats and the Eurasian steppe, Erewhon’s plateau and Sinai, Narnia’s southern desert and Sudan–South Sudan wastes, Oz’s meadows and the Australian Outback, and returned to the now-entangled dunes of Laputa and the Sahara. Councils proposed shared commissions, aquifer recharge, soil regeneration, residency pathways, and transparency rules. Section 7 showed that even in the harshest places, where life is measured in drops of water and blades of grass, shared stewardship can create sufficiency from scarcity.
The Overall Aim – A Tapestry of Shared Horizons
The Borders We Share is not about erasing borders; it is about reimagining them. The series asks: what if we treated every contested place—whether mythic island, sacred mountain, oil-rich desert, or urban stone—as a shared home rather than a prize? What if sovereignty were not a zero-sum game but a tapestry woven from equal voices, traditional knowledge, ecological care, and transparent justice?
Over seven sections we have seen that disputes are not inevitable. They are choices—choices about who counts, who speaks, who benefits, who remembers. The accords proposed so far—joint commissions, residency pathways, ecological corridors, veto rights, transparent naming—offer a different choice: one where no one is scenery, no one is ballast, and no one is erased.
The journey is not finished. Section 8: Rivers and Flows (Posts 43–48) begin soon. We will follow water—life’s most intimate border—through Sherwood’s streams and the Nile, Laputa’s falls and the Mekong, Utopia’s banks and the Indus, Ruritania’s tides and the Danube, Narnia’s run and the Euphrates, and Cimmeria’s flood and the Amur. Rivers do not respect lines drawn on maps; they carve new paths, carry memory, sustain life. They remind us that borders are not fixed—they flow, they bend, they can be shared.Until then, the ground beneath us is still listening.
I remain, as always,
Dr. Jorge
Trails to Wander:
• Sovereignty Conflicts (2017).
• Territorial Disputes (2020).
• Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty (2023).
• Territorial Disputes in the Americas (2025).
NOTE:
New posts every Tuesday.
PREVIOUS POSTS:
Section 7 Recap: Deserts and Plains (Posts 37–42)
NEXT POSTS:
Section 8: Rivers and Flows (Posts 43–48)
43, Sherwood’s Stream, Nile’s Flow: Green to Blue
44, Laputa’s Falls, Mekong’s Rush: Sky to Stream
45, Utopia’s Banks, Indus’ Bend: Perfect Waters
46, Ruritania’s Tide, Danube’s Dance: Crowns of Current
47, Narnia’s Run, Euphrates’ End: Royal Rivers
48, Cimmeria’s Flood, Amur’s Edge: Dust Washes East
AUTHOR’S SAMPLE PEER-REVIEWED ACADEMIC RESEARCH (FREE OPEN ACCESS):
State Sovereignty: Concept and Conceptions (OPEN ACCESS) (IJSL 2024)
AUTHOR’S PUBLISHED WORK AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE VIA:
Tuesday 10th March 2026
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
X (formerly, Twitter): https://x.com/DrJorge_World
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