It took a community blog in Madison, Wisconsin in the US to remind me that 20 July was a significant date in history for at least two reasons. Humanity’s first foot on the moon in 1969 – it would have been hard to miss that one in the news yesterday – but it was also the day, in 1954, when an armistice was signed in Geneva, Switzerland ending the war in Vietnam. That’s right: the first war, the one that divided the country into North and South Vietnam along the 17th parallel, leaving a soon-to-be-bloody trail for Vietnam, France and the US. It divided the last country along a less easily measured line, but one that was equally firm.

It may have seemed a good idea at the time, but with hindsight, it was a bandaid solution over a festering wound.

I’m trying to think of a single incidence of dividing a country, in the recent past, that has succeeded. So far, no luck.

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