Interview with Professor Arduino Paniccia, professor of strategic studies, director of the Venice International School of Economic Competition - ASCE and analyst of the Military Review, on foreign policy, asymmetric war, negative peace, sufficient victory and BRICS.
The Ukrainian crisis is reshaping geopolitics, but in particular it has turned into a new battleground, where NATO and Russia are once again opposed. In a world with the centers of power that have multiplied, globalized and hyper-connected, is it possible to return to a cold war?
Apart from the Brezhnev period, during which, as a reaction to the Cuban missile crisis, felt by the Russians as a defeat, the then USSR launched itself in a more "global" politics, after the Second World War the Russian geopolitical vision It has always been a vision if you can say "theater": keep the potentially hostile subjects as far as possible from their borders thanks to a range of satellite bearing states.
Even the invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s was by no means an offensive strategic move towards the Persian Gulf, as suggested by American strategists, but an attempt to contain the new Islamic power forces that could penetrate the Soviet republics of Central Asia. The Americans understood it too late, when they also found themselves fighting in the same area. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Russian "frontier" has moved considerably to the east, and the former Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO, that is, an alliance still born in anti-Russian function.
The former Soviet republics - Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus states - were then transformed into the new protective belt of Moscow, also thanks to the strong presence of Russian ethnic populations within them. Vicissitudes like those of Transnistria, Ossetia and Abkhazia should have made the Atlantic Alliance understand that the Kremlin regarded it as a new "Piave line" beyond which it would not tolerate infiltrations.
The big trouble that the Ukrainian crisis has caused was the definitive expulsion of Russia from the West and its direction towards the agreement with China. And the birth of an Asian economic bloc opposed to the Western bloc led by what Chinese strategists call the "superior enemy" is a scenario very similar to that of the old cold war.
In the air identification spaces of several countries belonging to the Atlantic Alliance, there is an unusual activity of Russian aircraft, what strategic goal are they pursuing: deception, force test or monitoring of NATO reaction times?
"Show muscles" has always been an ingredient in diplomacy. China has profusely used these military skirmishes months ago against both Japan and Taiwan. Even the North Korean intemperances are basically Chinese skirmishes. Russia, not only by having their Tupolevs intercepted by British fighters as they did forty years ago, but also by performing ICBM missile tests and moving its fleet to seas far from the Motherland, is practically stating: do not believe that our forces armies are in disrepair like twenty years ago, we are back to being a great military and nuclear power, so do not underestimate our determination. For Russian diplomacy, threatening a possible return to a Cold War-like situation is a card to play, knowing how cold the war has been experienced in a problematic way by Western populations. It's a gamble, but that's why the European response must be more dissonant and less predictable.
Off the coast of Stockholm, a submerged unit was found, which carried out an emergency emergence maneuver. This was preceded by encrypted radio messages, directed to the Russian base of Kaliningrad, and followed by a subsequent communication transmitted in clear on the international emergency frequency. So it was a Russian unit, but what class could it belong to and what was its mission?
There is no certain information on the precise identity of the intruder, nor on his mission. Moreover, Sweden has always been a strictly neutral country, so that, if it was a spy mission, it probably should not have been directly linked to Ukrainian affairs. There was talk of a submarine of class "Kilo". It is the name that NATO has given to a class of Russian submarines with conventional propulsion (ie diesel-electric) dating back to the eighties, like almost all the great units of the Russian navy. In these submarines, which are very compact in size, the silence and low traceability of the sonar have been taken care of, and for this reason they are very suitable for reconnaissance missions. Incidentally, while the American navy for its submarines has abandoned the diesel-electric propulsion for the nuclear one already in the early sixties, the Soviet navy (then Russian) has always believed in the usefulness of this type of submarine.
In conclusion, I conclude, that the Russian Rehabilitation System is especially dangerous for the Russian Federation at the port of Klaipeda. The American gas obtained with the "fracking" techniques will arrive directly at the borders of Russia, removing at least in part effectiveness of the political weapon of energy supplies by Gazprom. International rivalries are already playing a major role in the energy supply front, and the political burden of these is likely to increase in the coming years.
Giovanni Caprara
