The word to 4 readers: Italy a former regional power? (next week: "Italexit")

Last weekend for the first time we invited readers to "tell their own" on a specific topic of Geopolitics¹: with great pleasure, we can say that the answers were, in terms of quantity and quality, superior to our expectations. For this reason, we were sorry, almost, having to "select": your ideas on the role of IRI, the energy supply and the lack of a serious geopolitical culture in Italy deserve, each one, a much longer discussion that 250 words. The writer has chosen four different articles, to offer readers as many points of view on the situation in this country that has the potential to be a regional power, but that - as said by one of you - "does not apply" .

The Sergio Pession reader offers us an analysis of the State of the Peninsula, when he states that "in reality we have always been a land of easy conquests by foreign forces" facilitated (indeed, often invited) by internal factions. It seems to read the chronicles of the Belpaese from the times of Renaissance seigniories to the present day: between two opposing Italian "papabili", we often see the "foreign pope" ...

To be a power you do not need to be just big, populous, rich or hyper-technological. A real power must be cohesive in front of foreign actors ... all. Internal wastes, dirty clothes and skeletons in the wardrobes have all the powers, but knowing how to put aside internal issues and make a united and solid front is the basis of being a power. The evidence of my personal thinking is provided by Russia and China in the ascendant, and Uses more and more shaky and broken by struggles and internal conflicts. Italy, understood as a Republic born of very little, it has never been a power, as it has never been able to cope with internal splits, not just policies, the result of millennia of instability and non-cohesion. For better or for worse, Italy is made by individuals: illiterate patriots or turncoat opportunists US / USSR / Empire / Papacy. What changes? We deluded ourselves to be a power at the time of the Duce, as at the time of the face-to-face Craxi-US on the question of Libya. But actually we have always been a land of easy conquests by facilitated foreign forces (no, invited) by myopic factions within the collective good. We still wonder what an army is for? Is the Italian mechanical industry almost in the hands of France? Does Eni have to go it alone while our government still struggles with itself? And you have the audacity to ask if we have been a power and if we ever will be again? "Franza or Spain as long as it does not matter." Here is the answer.

The reader Gabriele Cerrato identifies in 1992 - with the change of the ruling class and the end of the Soviet danger - the historical caesura that led our country to suffer from what acutely calls a "decadence syndrome", which by dint of being feared and feared, in the end it arrived. The current leaders seem too distracted by contingent electoral issues to stem the involution of the country.

Starting from the 60 years Italy, although anchored to NATO and the American ally, knew how to carve out spaces of autonomy, implementing a smart foreign policy is contributed strongly to the return on the international scene of the Belpaese in a role that, if it was certainly not that of the absolute protagonist, certainly came close to that of an inescapable supporting actor. This could happen thanks to a historical phase, completed in 1992, that if inside it has been experienced as a succession of shaky governments, in foreign policy, it has been able to carry out long-term plans throughout decades. since, and except for very few acute, Italian foreign policy has been involved, or perhaps it would be better to say that Italy itself has been involved, falling victim to a decadence syndrome.

Langue del tutto, or rather can be said to be virtually non-existent, any debate that can seriously be called relevant to "strategic" issues. The decadence so feared, has unfortunately arrived and is plastically verifiable in the not sure titanic level of the current ruling classwho is unable to express level leaders or, if by chance succeeds, immediately destroys them.

In short, therefore, Italy, despite all the limits, thanks to an intelligent political class for decades has played a role of power in the international arena, even higher than its real possibilities.

Today instead, with a ruling class unable to look a little further than the next election result, we hold a virtually irrelevant position, despite having so much potential.

Things will change again, if men change.

The reader Ugo Vercellio sees in the Atlantic Alliance a structural limit to the protection of the geopolitical interests of Italy and identifies in a new and different relationship with Moscow and Washington the only way to remain competitive towards the France of Emanuel Macron, perceived as the our main geostrategic and geoeconomic competitor.

Surely Italy has been and is a regional power. Rather, the problem lies in the limitation of the role induced by NATO membership (See for example the absolutely counterproductive bombings, forcibly requested and regularly executed on Yugoslavia and Libya). I think that from this point of view the 2011 crisis has been irrelevant. Excluding the possibility of implementing full-bodied and completely autonomous initiatives (we are too weak for this, let us also remember the outcome of the Craxi / Sigonella affair), we can undertake a policy of the "two furnaces" US / Russia taking advantage of the current favorable situation in this sense (the interests of the two powers and their relationships are not so conflicting, at least in some scenarios); all to try at least to scratch the dominant position of theFrance, currently and for who knows how long, our main competitor. At this moment we have the ruling class suitable for the purpose both for good relations with America and Russia, and because the Macron administration is in a state of apparent hostility and / or opposition, especially towards the Americans. It must however be stressed that any consideration on this subject always risks leaving the time it finds: international and therefore important geopolitical issues are usually dealt with by underground diplomacy, of which we know little or nothing.

Antonio Cortinovis is a very prepared reader. His analysis focuses not on historical phases or competitors to be stemmed, but on the weakness of the culture of planning and of the homeland of both the people and the leaders.

The European Consortium for Political Research defines regional power as a state belonging to a defined region, which dominates the economic and military, capable of exercising hegemonic influence in the region and a significant influence on a world scale, able to exert force and recognized or even accepted as a regional leader by part of its neighbors. Italy as an example of regional power? It has great potential, but it doesn't apply!

Foreign Policy is often seen as an independent factor in its own right. This meaning is reductive and inaccurate. A nation with regional leadership ambitions needs to exert influence, and to do it there are two ways: economic / industrial and military. Preliminary, therefore, is a national planning capacity that is a forge of economic and cultural development, with the consequent Internal Policy dedicated to the realization of what has been strategically set.

If the economy, politics and the projection force of influence and military deterrence are interdependent, culture and knowledge are the glue that makes the popular consensus, the true force of democracy, homogeneous.

Only by rediscovering a love for the homeland associated with a need to "serve" the ruling classes, one can think of arriving at the definition of important regional objectives. that necessarily involve a legitimacy to the use of the armed forces and international economic agreements, as instruments of foreign policy.

There would be returns of very important benefits, both economic and cultural, strengthening the sense of nation and belonging, fly by projects and results more and more ambitious.

At this point, in conclusion, even the writer reserves 250 words, before leaving, waiting to hear readers on other issues in the coming weeks.

Are we a former regional power in full decadence? It depends on the point of view of who - paraphrasing the Cortinovis reader - undergoes - or should suffer - our hegemonic influence in the Italian geopolitical region, which is not only Mediterranean but also includes central-southern and adriatic-Balkan Europe. Let's focus for a moment on Albania, to give an example: for a quarter of a century we have exercised a decisive influence, from an economic, political and strategic point of view, on the destinies of our former colony. If you ask Teheran - but also in Cairo and Nicosia -, at the margins of the above mentioned region, they will tell you that Rome is a first-rate international subject, for how it holds its position. If you look at Tunisia, Libya, Palestine and Iraq, you will notice how many steps back we have made to these international actors in recent years. In short, we have lost a good part of our best offices in North Africa and the Near East, but we have achieved - especially through ENI and almost without any political merit - a series of competitive advantages - read: energy resources at your fingertips - in the eastern Mediterranean. The fact that politicians do not give a meaningful hand in this should not surprise you: readers who believe the European treaties - from Maastricht onwards - extorted through deception or coercion, I only say that the Italian parliamentarians have never read - nor asked to do so - the texts at the time of the vote. No, nobody paid them: negligence comes spontaneously to our leaders yesterday and today.

"THE WORD TO THE READERS" OF THE NEXT WEEK:

Difesa Online offers readers the opportunity to tell them about issues of Geopolitics and International Politics, proposing a specific topic: if interested, the reader can write a research or an analysis, in good Italian (footnote: attention) to punctuation!), with a serious and well-structured language, of the minimum length of 150 and maximum of 300 words, writing to the email: geopolitica@difesaonline.it. Texts that are too short or too long, that use vulgar terminology, that contain offenses or that incite to the violation of the Law, with links to third non-institutional sites will be ignored. The selected texts, accompanied by a brief article by the writer or other member of the online Defense Geopolitics editorial board, will be published on the site in the next 7-10 days, indicating the name of the author of the individual analyzes or an alter ego of his choice .

The writer in the past has indulged in analyzing the famous Plan B of Paolo Savona², in listing concrete cases of secession from a confederation³ and, finally, in presenting the scenarios of a possible exit from Italy from the European Union⁴. Let us pause for a moment on a fact: net of the two-speed European hypothesis, since there is no recession clause from the Eurozone, anyone who wanted to do it should inevitably leave the European Union. To the reader, both a convinced Europeanist and a fierce Euro-skeptic, he is asked to illustrate the scenario of the so-called Italexit, the exit of our country from the single currency and from the Union. Beyond the propaganda or alarmist aspects - which do not interest us for our purposes - we would like the reader to try to illustrate the situation in Italy from the moment of the decision up to one year after the "crime", taking into account our Constitution, the international treaties, the (inevitable) reactions of the countries and the decisions of the institutions involved.