WASHINGTON: A country’s borders should not be confused with those familiar dotted lines drawn on some musty old map of nation-states. In an era of mass migration, globalisation and instant communication, a map reflecting the world’s true boundaries would be a crosscutting, high-tech and multidimensional affair. Where is the real US border, for example, when US customs agents check containers in the port of Amsterdam? Where should national borders be marked when drug traffickers launder money through illegal financial transactions that crisscross the globe electronically, violating multiple jurisdictions?

How would border checkpoints help record companies that discover pirated copies of their latest offering for sale in cyberspace — long before the legitimate product even reaches stores? And when US health officials fan out across Asia seeking to contain a disease outbreak, where do national lines truly lie?

Governments and citizens are used to thinking of a border as a real, physical place: a fence, a shoreline, a desert or a mountain pass. But while geography still matters, 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. They are also increasingly intangible, living in a virtual and electronic space.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service