The Irony of Hungary's Border Wall

Hungary's preparations to build a 13-foot-tall fence along the Serbian border are part of a trend. Such barriers have multiplied, not dwindled, since the end of the Cold War, but their purpose is the opposite of what it was when the Berlin Wall still stood: They are meant to keep poor people out.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is considered the official end of the Cold War, but it was the Hungarians who first breached the Iron Curtain. In May of that year, they started tearing down the 150-mile wall that separated their country from Austria. So it seems ironic that Hungary should now want to build a new border barrier. Nor would it be the first former Eastern bloc country to do so: Bulgaria is restoring the wall that once separated it from capitalist Turkey.