Serve yes, but who?

(To Andrea Cucco)
20/02/17

It is with some concern that I open the front pages of newspapers in recent weeks. That Italy does not have an independent foreign policy - but it would be easy to say "not even vaguely autonomous" - is evident from many (very many) decades. That decisions are taken outside our national borders is therefore now "tradition". What is bewildering is unexpected foreign direction.

I'll explain. In the last decades to the west, there has been a common "front for peace". This led to unrest and death, followed by clumsy riots (and death ...) throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Countries like Libya know something about it, but we could mention others like Syria.

Behind Nobel Peace Prizes have been massacred - literally and not metaphorically - hundreds of thousands of people. What is unacceptable is the result of so much evil: no one but the chaos and rivers of blood.

A brother country like Libya is, a distance of 6 years, a corpse that is torn apart not only by those who want to protect it, but - in words - even revive it.

The despair that we live on the other side of the Mediterranean does not reach us but sporadic news. As if our "disturbance" for incoming migrants was absolutely not worthy of comparison with life amid violence, abuse, unemployment, corruption and anarchy that has been imposed on millions of Libyans.

Since the music in the USA has changed, some panels of the stage have been artfully set up for years for the easiest citizens to take for their backs, they are collapsing. Fighting ISIS, for example, means now "fighting ISIS" and not "replenishing and supporting it militarily with a Coalition created to eliminate it". "Confronting with Russia" means to speak to us directly, not to demonize it at a distance with accusations from Soviet propaganda.

When our prime minister and defense minister met last February 9, at home and away, with British counterparts showed ample willingness to "contain" an alleged Russian expansionism ...

If the British - who officially support the government of al-Sarraj's national unity in Libya - had not in the past (as reported by local high-level sources) urged the secession of Eastern Libya offering in exchange immediate military protection, perhaps we would have could believe in a good British faith.

If Eastern Libya and its leader Haftar, after refusing to dismember the country, had not ended up asking for help, among others, from Russia ... perhaps we could have believed a further good British faith.

The problem is not so much that someone tries to discredit a rival with false or indirect accusations. The problem is that Italy seems to support those who stab it (like 6 years ago) behind. And, thanks to Trump, it is now clear that directing is not American.