I thought walled towns died not due to state authority becoming stronger, but because offensive weaponry simply became effective enough to overcome walls. Walls can protect you from men with swords, but not from heavy artillery or bombers. Today, wouldn't a fleet of cheap drones render a wall moot?
But they also protect you from more low level lawlessness and if the law situation inside and outside the wall are the same (because of stronger states) they stop being worth maintaining.<p>Think in the US, the cops wouldn’t survive against a couple of machine guns and a drone strike, but they are still useful for security purposes.
The article is more talking about landscape fortifications like trenches, ramparts, moats, and berms that slow down trucks.
I suspect people are motivated by the desire not not catch stray bullets more than dissuade a concerted attack.
Walls can not protect you from dhijadists either, the mortars take out the city- and besieging starves it out. In sudan- a "walled and ditched" city recently fell to the djandjhawid.. <a href="https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/fall-el-fasher-sudans-war-outpaces-truce-plan" rel="nofollow">https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/fall-el-fa...</a>
Of course no fortification can withstand overwhelming force indefinitely, but el-Fasher held out 1.5 years while completely surrounded, which isn't too shabby. (Here's a map from a year prior: <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/5/52/20241203103929%21War_in_Sudan_%282023%29.svg" rel="nofollow">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/5/52/...</a> It's the small pink blob of army-controlled territory labeled "Al-Fashir" within the gray mass of the RSF.) And the RSF are a formerly government-affiliated civil war faction with a lot more firepower than jihadist militias like JNIM or ISSP.<p>If some trenches and an earth wall turn a short raid into a long siege, that at least gives the army some time to send reinforcements and attack the besiegers.
Alone, no. But the fact that modern militaries still build them around bases in insecure areas should give you a moment's pause before dismissing them entirely.
They give you time though. It's certainly not perfect, but no wall ever was. You could scale the old wall with a ladder if you wanted to, but it slowed you down and that gave the defenders time to do something about that.