Giulio Sapelli Những thách thức toàn cầu và trật tự thế giới mới nổi Giulio Sapelli Global Challenges and the Emerging World Order

Giulio Sapelli Những thách thức toàn cầu và trật tự thế giới mới nổi Giulio Sapelli Global Challenges and the Emerging World Order

Global Challenges and the Emerging World Order

Giulio Sapelli

University of Milan and Fondazione Eni

Enrico Mattei (FEEM)

Milan

Italy

Translated from Italian language edition Published by Guerrini e Associati: “Dove va il m ondo?1’

© 2014 Translation by Juliet Haydock.

Footnotes by Barbara Racah.

ISBN 978-3-319-15623-1 ISBN 978-3-319-15624-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15624-8

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Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere.

This perhaps som ew hat over-am bitious reflection owes much to a think tank that has grow n up in a cultural and spiritual setting that is extrem ely unusual in Italy: the F ondazione Eni E nrico M attei It naturally reflects my own thoughts and not those o f the Foundation, though w ithout the decision taken by the Foundation Board o f D irectors to begin work on a new research program m e (“Econom y and society”), w hich I led for a few months during its start-up, this book would never have seen the light o f day I am therefore grateful to Paolo Scaroni, President of the Foundation and G iuseppe Sam m arco, its D irector, who have given me their unflagging trust and encouragem ent 1 would nevertheless certainly not have w rit­ten these pages had it not been for the decisive encouragem ent that Joaquin N av­arro Vails, who read the first draft o f the program m e, gave me to expand it into a

m uch longer essay Luca Farinola was the first to read the work and gave me ines­tim able advice, as did D aniele A tzori with his great scientific experience, not only

in the w orld o f Islam F ilippo Tessari never stopped encouraging me and sharing

my view o f the pro g ram m e’s direction

Som e short articles exploring these ideas have already appeared in the col­

um ns o f “C redito P opolare”, revealing how much these reflections also ow e to my friendship w ith G iuseppe D e Lucia Lum eno I know that Lodovico Festa, friend and unequalled m aster o f social and political analysis will, in his infinite wisdom, beam dow n benevolently on the developm ent of thoughts that owe so m uch to our interm inable life-long debates

The Terrible August o f 2 0 1 3 1

Start o f the M editerranean C r isis 19

World Economic C risis 21

The Chickens Have Come Home to R o o s t 23

The Old and the New C onvergence 37

Responding to Strategic D iv erg e n c es 43

The Challenge to Fossil Fuels and the Crushing o f Convergent G r o w th 51

The Future Will Be A fr ic a n 57

Emerge from the Crisis in Europe: Change E u r o p e 69

The Terrible August of 2013

The end o f August 2013 will go down in the annals o f history as an exceptional period, m arking as it did a shift in the relationship between great world powers For the first tim e in two centuries, the United Kingdom split from the United States over o n e o f the crucial points o f the great cultural dow nw ard spiral that has taken place in international relations over the last 20 years I refer to the 20 years that fol­lowed in the wake o f the K issinger era after the fall o f the USSR General evidence

o f the theoretical and practical change cam e in the shape o f the Balkan wars, which

m arked the transition from theory to practice o f the end o f the W estphalian period, when in salient areas o f geostrategic interests, each nation was free to choose the political system it w anted, though the choosing was done by a handful o f blood­thirsty dictators, and any sacrifices could be ruthlessly made Only areas o f the

w orld deem ed irrelevant to the world balance could deploy their not-so-secret

W estphalian troops in local and intelligence struggles to m aintain the balance of terror: C he G uevara in the C ongo and Colonel Taylor in Sierra Leone behaved like the fictional characters in Le C arry’s novels

Then cam e the unhappy period o f hum anitarian intervention, the way was paved for this back during the W estphalian period A rm ing the M ujahideen and the Taliban against the U SSR and, once the U SSR was defeated, not w orrying about w h eth er the M ujahideen and the Taliban dom inated the country or w hether the Pakistani secret services (ISI) becam e the true arbiters o f relations between the U SA and India: all this could only lay the foundations for long-term instabil­ity in extrem ely sensitive areas o f the world balance, w hich w ere thus alw ays in danger

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

G Sapelli, G lobal Challenges and the Emerging World Order,

D O M 0.1007/978-3-319-15624-8 1

2 The Terrible August of 2013

The real m om ent o f change cam e with the Balkan wars between the Southern Slavs D uring the early years o f the tw entieth century, they lit the fuse for World War I, and 20 years ago, during the break-up o f Yugoslavia, they again brought hum anity face to face with the terrible problem o f genocide Then, the genocide turned into an intra-ethnic struggle w ithin a geographical entity that was no longer a state that spaw ned nations w hose idea o f defining their mutual state boundaries was to m assacre one another and wipe one another out This m eant that the nation-building was also a hum anitarian action against the genocide, perform ed by different stakeholders: NATO, the USA, Italy, as an agent o f the

U SA (D ’A lem a governm ent1) w ithout the united Europe showing the slightest flicker o f life The link betw een the U nited K ingdom and the USA was forged again from that tim e around the theory that united w est and east Coast follow ers

o f Leo Strauss (the N eo-Cons), Blairite theorists o f the London School of E co ­nom ics and follow ers o f the great French international legal and constitutional expert A lfred Dumas K issinger becam e an anachronism , W estphalia, a word to forget and the ju st w ar was entrusted as and when deem ed necessary to the pre­vailing balance of pow er in order to justify the divvying up o f the world as well

as the struggle against international terrorism

The link betw een the UK and USA becam e necessary in order to maintain a transatlantic relationship betw een Europe and the USA at a tim e when G erm any and Spain were refusing to shed the blood o f their soldiers in A fghanistan and Iraq France recently attem pted a rapprochem ent with the USA during the wars

in North A frica This is w hat the A rab S pring uprisings really are: wars between the fault lines created by divisions betw een Sunnis and Shiites and deep internal rifts in the Sunni world that, due to clum sy US intervention, have consolidated as

G ulf and North African wars that refer back to state authorities, namely Iraq and Iran for the Shiites and Saudi A rabia for the Sunnis Egypt, the Germany o f North

A frica, has never needed states o f reference

This is clear from the age o f the M am luks during the Ottom an Empire, it is clear from the N apoleonic cam paigns that— and this is no coincidence— took place in Egypt and now here else and it is clear from the Suez crisis o f 1956 at the tim e o f Nasser T he only one person to w hom it was not clear was President

O bam a, w ho m istook the M uslim B rotherhood, cosm opolitan by definition, ju st like the form er Caliphate, for guardians capable o f leading a secular nation like Egypt (A bdel-M alik and his sem inal book o f the 1960s has a lot to teach us on this subject)

1 Following the collapse o f Romano Prodi’s governm ent, M assimo D ’Alema became Italian prem ier from 1998 until 2000.

The Terrible August of 2013 3

And so it w as that all the chickens finally cam e hom e to roost that August, and everyone seem ed to lose the plot The French forgot that the Sykes-Picot agree­ment o f 1916 gave rise to what was, along with Egypt, the m ost powerful point

o f balance in those areas after World War I In other w ords, Syria and its relation­ship with L ebanon and after 1917 with Israel, which despite all the terrible con­flicts and w ars from Yom Kippur on, clung on m iraculously due to the role that the A law ites (A ssad ’s fam ily is Alaw ite) guaranteed to Syria for approxim ately

100 years

T he very term “A law ite”, denoting an ethnic and religious group with arcane roots w hose origin is still the subject of debate, was coined by the French The French them selves, acting according to the principle o f divide and rule, encour­aged A law ite aspirations after World War I w ith the aim o f underm ining the

A rab nationalist plan o f the Sunni M uslim s Now France has forgotten its own glorious colonial past and in its desire to take over the U K ’s relationship with the U SA — H ollande is continuing the work o f Sarkozy— w ishes to wage war on the historical allies that France itself helped to create The three-w ay relationship that has com e about betw een Russia (which supports Syria and Iran), Israel and Saudi A rabia, enem y o f the Shiites and A law ites, which challenges the age-old enm ity against the Shiiites to benefit the stability o f the region, guaranteed by the Alaw ites (S hiites), is therefore at risk o f shattering O nly the w eight o f A m erican and British soldiers and intelligence, along with the French and Italians o f course, could halt the intervention in Syria

Instead, R u ssia turned the tables on everyone by m aking an exceptional dip­lom atic g am b it that m arked its irreversible return to the M editerranean W ith an agreem ent w orthy o f the great school o f Ponom arev and G rom yko, the Russian Foreign M inister Lavrov persuaded the UN to issue R esolution 2118 o f 27 Sep­tem ber 2013, providing a w atertight legal fram ew ork for a R ussian-N orth A m eri­can plan to dism antle Syrian chem ical w eapons This plan effectively prevented any m ilitary intervention, saved Syria from foreign invasion and allow ed A ssad to rem ain in power

But this m eant risking leaving the USA dram atically isolated w ithin the inter­national aren a at a tim e when C hina was becom ing increasingly aggressive The French, n aturally unaw are o f the im m ense dangers o f this isolation, w ent on

to apply even m ore pressure on A frica as well as a w orld on the brink o f chaos through its p ro p o sal— form ulated in unorthodox fashion by the French Foreign

M inister L au ren t Fabius in an article published in Le M onde on 5 O ctober 2013—

to effectively d ism an tle the Security C ou n cil’s pow er o f veto am idst the storm s triggered by hum anitarian problem s, transferring decision-m aking pow ers to the

4 The Terrible August of 2013

G eneral Assembly In this way, the principle o f the m ajority would be applied to international order and it would result in chaos, which is w hat typically happens when dem ocracy is applied on an international scale through a roll-call o f states The principle o f pow er would no longer apply

This sign o f w eakness by the USA had an im m ediate im pact in Asia These effects w ere com pounded by the ongoing division in the USA betw een Demo­crats and Republicans over the problem o f the ceiling to be applied to public debt and the struggle to prevent the application o f the new health laws The fed­eral state is always on the brink o f breaking down w henever such events occur

O bam a had to forego the Asian trips that w ould have laid the ground for the Trans-Pacific Pact This has already had dram atic effects, particularly on coun­tries that are still unsure o f their strategic stance (exam ples include Indonesia and

M yanm ar): C hina opened a bank for financing infrastructures in Jakarta, a bank that com petes directly with the Asian D evelopm ent Bank, traditionally dominated

by Japan and the USA In Asia, the only possible solution to the threatening and bellicose C hinese dom inion is firstly to rearm Japan and then surround that coun­try with a crown o f arm ed and developed states This set-up is naturally bound

to challenge China, which is responding aggressively on the basis o f the age-old disputes at its borders and spheres o f influence of the South C hina Sea, leading to inevitable dissuasive action by N orth A m erica

In N orth and Central A frica, there does not appear to be any solution: Europe

is divided and the French only huff and puff about the im perial culture without the m eans o f doing anything about it It therefore was and is essential that the USA should continue to m aintain its relationship with the U nited Kingdom,

w hich sym bolically as well as m ilitarily represents the only ally that it i; able

to bring to the table in the chaotic system o f international relations Again-,t this backdrop, the intelligence com m unities o f the U nited K ingdom and the United States, and particularly the m ilitary Elites, are extrem ely opposed to any interven­tion in Syria because they are aware that the dom ino effect o f such action would reach throughout N orth and Central A frica as well as R ussia and even Pakistan and India, w here the S hiite-S unni rifts and also rifts w ithin the Sunni world are

m ore active than ever before

in this situation, Prim e M inister C am eron proved to be less stupid than many believe him to be: he confirm ed his will to be powerful by strongly and vocifer­ously supporting O bam a and his desire to take action Then inexplicably, espe­cially for those who are fam iliar with the pow er o f the w hips in W estminste-— the

M Ps responsible for seeing through party business in the H ouse o f Commons—

he lost the Parliam entary m otion by a handful o f votes T he honour o f tie flag

The Terrible August of 2013 5

was intact, and intervention alongside the USA was avoided The m ilitary m isgiv­ings w ere declared sacrosanct and the m adness was m erely put down to the many

M acbeths in pow er throughout the world: incapable and cow ardly politicians, an unclean caste to be held up for m ockery by patriots All in all, a fine piece of work

T he sum m er could not have ended in a w orse manner, and with a gam e of

sm oke and m irrors at international level Stooping to these gam es o f illusion rem inds me o f w hat Britain did in the face of C ham berlain’s cow ardice and the

N a/.i-sym pathising view s o f a king who was rem oved from the scene when he abdicated as a result o f a fabricated marriage But even we Italians can play the gam e of sm oke and m irrors It is no mere chance that the m eltdow n is advancing apace even in Italy The m agistrature, an order that has taken over power, shows that it is unable to govern the country as it would like: it is only able to impose vetoes, triggering fear and cow ardice, but it cannot give rise to a new stable politi­cal and institutional balance, given the situation

T he situation in question is the one created by Silvio B erlusconi2 and the ju d i­cial hounding directed against him that has now reached im probable levels The latest dem iurge to govern poor old Italy, G iorgio N apolitano,3 is well aware o f this Everything he has done recently has been aim ed at containing this order that has becom e a pow er in its ow n right and is also backed by pow erful international supporters A s far as these supporters are concerned, however, it seem s that the USA, which rem ains Ita ly ’s last chance o f stability, has really abandoned us this time Apart from anything else, they are in a m ess sim ilar to the one they found them selves in 1974 In my book “ Southern E urope since 1945, Portugal, Spain, Italy, G reece and T urkey” (which the G erm an H istorical Institute o f Rom e did me the honour o f com m em orating, 20 years after its publication), I explained that the Portuguese m ilitary coup, w hich becam e known as the C arnation Revolution, cam e about in the nation w here the United States had its A zores base because at

2Silvio Berlusconi, Italian ex prime Minister, has been involved in a num ber o f legal battles In particular, he has been (i) convicted o f paying for sex with an underage prostitute and o f abuse o f pow er for asking police to release her when she was arrested for theft, and subsequently cleared o f all charges; (ii) convicted o f tax fraud in case focusing on the pur­ chase o f the T V rights to US films by his company, M ediaset; and (iii) acquitted in several other cases; also convicted in several, only to be cleared on appeal; others expired under statute o f limitations.

3G iorgio N apolitano is the current President o f the Italian Republic He was elected for the first time in M ay 2006 and re-elected in April 2013.

6 The Terrible August o f 2013

that tim e the USA w ere fleeing Saigon and they were afflicted by a terrible inter­national decadence sim ilar to the one we are experiencing today

Italy is m uch more isolated than I w ould personally like to believe The Quiri- nale4 is therefore an ivory tower, w here a great political leader o f the Italian

C om m unist Party, as G iorgio N apolitano was, can only exercise his ability for long-term m anoeuvres Let me explain C am eron lost a vote in parliam ent because this was the only way o f not leaving the USA isolated yet abandoning them militarily Now, in Septem ber 2013 N apolitano confounded all the adm irers

o f his balance by appointing four life senators5 who are looked on benevolently but can in no way be said to be politically independent Q uite the opposite: all these senators have joined their voices against those o f Berlusconi and Cardinal Ruini.6 O ne false step by an extrem ely able diplom at? I do not think so Rather this is a gam bit sim ilar to that o f Cam eron To put it bluntly, after pleasing the left, he w as then able to please the right W ho could at this point blam e the latest dem iurge from gazing down benevolently on the fate o f Silvio Berlusconi?

Sm oke and m irrors in a disintegrating Italy that are reflected in a disintegrating world

4The Q uirinale, a historic building in Rome, is the current official residence of the Presi­

dent o f the Italian Republic It is located on the Quirinal Hill, the highest of the seven hills

o f Rome.

5On 30 A ugust 2013, the President o f the Italian Republic G iorgio Napolitano nominated four new life senators The Italian Senate is made o f about 95 % popularly elected sena­ tors on a five-year mandate, and a rem aining minority o f life appointed peers The four latest life senators are architect Renzo Piano, Nobel laureate particle physicist Carlo Rub- bia, world-renowned music conductor Claudio Abbado and pharm acology professor and stem -cell research expert Elena Cattaneo These four personalities would, according to

N apolitano, act in “absolute independence” and bring their contributions to highly signifi­ cant areas in institutional life B erlusconi’s party The People o f Freedom harshly criticised the appointm ent o f these four senators One o f the reasons was that all four new senators had been critical towards Berlusconi in the past, even though they never openly aligned them selves with the centre-left If the four o f them had voted in favour of the Democratic Party in the Senate, this would have changed the num bers in the upper cham ber in quite a significant way: now the leftist D emocratic Party needed merely 7 votes in order to have

a majority that did not include Berlusconi’s party 7 votes were likely to be obtained from

7 “dissidents” from Beppe G rillo’s 5 Star M ovement, w illing to vote with the Democratic Party.

6Cam illo Ruini is an Italian cardinal o f the Catholic Church On 14 February 2006, he was confirmed as president o f the Italian Episcopal Conference by Pope Benedict XVI a post at which he served until March 2007.

The Terrible August o f 2013 7

The publication o f a book by Tim othy G eithner “Stress test Reflections in Financial C risis” (Random House Business Books, London 2014) has now becom e clear evidence o f the depths reached, not only by the opinion o f a public that know s little about the politics it observes only through a keyhole or through the rose-tinted lenses of the ideological furore that could be applied to more noble causes, alw ays allow ing for the fact that a furore indicates any real virtue Every­one w as astounded by the publication o f the fam ous phrase or rather the small section o f the book recounting exactly what happened a few m onths before the resignation o f Silvio B erlusconi’s governm ent, which brought into being the period that I referred to as the Rom an dictatorship, after the Rom an senatorial dictatorships o f bygone tim es, w hen the choice fell upon M ario M onti7— who

w ent on to offer innum erable exam ples o f his unparalleled hum an and civic worth

to the Italian people and everyone who appointed him — through a process of coopting that was as extraordinary as it was unusual The econom ic truth sur­faced T h e conflict was intra-European, betw een G erm any and France and the

S candinavian countries on the one hand and Italy governed by Silvio Berlusconi and G iu lio T rem onti8 on the other The dom inant nations had no desire to help Italy to overcom e a crisis that was m uch less severe than the Teutonic deflationist liberal o rd er believed (Italy was a patient with a m ild fever), but did wish to save the French and G erm an banks, w hich were patients with a dangerously high fever, due to their com m itm ents to G reece, which was hanging perilously close to the brink o f an im posed default

I have said m ore than once that the international financial oligarchy and its direct political representatives, in other words the cusps o f G erm an and French pow er ably supported by G erm an deflation and the Bundesbank, saw the true enem y not as B erlusconi but as Trem onti He persisted w ith a struggle against the

G erm an deflationary superpow er that may have been solitary and dissim ulating,

7President G iorgio N apolitano appointed Professor M ario Monti life senator on 9 November

2 0 1 1 On 12 N ovem ber 2011, following Berlusconi’s resignation, Napolitano asked Monti

to form a new governm ent Monti accepted and held talks with the leaders o f the main Italian political parties, declaring that he wanted to form a government that would remain

in office until the next scheduled general elections in 2013 On 16 November 2011, Monti was sw orn in as Prim e M inister o f Italy, with a technocratic cabinet composed entirely of unelected professionals.

8G iulio Trem onti served in the governm ent o f Italy as M inister o f Economy and Finances under Prim e M inister Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 1995, from 2001 to 2004, from 2005

to 2006, and from 2008 to 2011.

8 The Terrible August o f 2013

but was no less dangerous for this: he predicted a m eltdow n and denounced the inefficacy o f the E C B ’s restrictive policies

All these things may be clearly read in the docum ents set o u t in the appendi­ces to his penultim ate book “Exit Strategy” O f course, w e are entitled to won­der who benefits, who benefited, from G e ith n e r’s statem ents, but it is clear It is clear not if we think o f Italian policy but o f the Libyan tragedy w here an attem pt

is being m ade to reconstruct a m ilitary backbone against the fanatical, m urder­ous M uslim superpower It is clear if we think of N igeria, w here fundam entalist forces m ove directly to perform actions o f sym bolic challenge to the West; Alge­ria, im m ovable and safe but sitting on a social volcano; and the Crim ea, which risks escalating a failure to reach a diplom atic agreem ent after the collapse o f the

U SSR into a radical crisis that could overturn all o f Europe

But E urope continues to play the violin as the Titanic sinks and reveals a lack

o f any strategic will to face up to the dangers that em erge from these crises We need only consider that Italy risks perm anent decline due to closure o f the Suez Canal and that we Italians do not even have any naval potential to speak o f at all,

a potential that w ould do us a lot m ore good than any F35: if o u r ships cannot pass through the Suez Canal, we can w ave goodbye to Italy! The U SA m ust con­clude an im perial design with two horns: an A tlantic horn em bodied by the under­standing betw een the U SA and Europe, to counterbalance the other very difficult horn that m ust take shape in the Pacific to contain an increasingly aggressive China T his is the reason why books like G eith n er’s are being published: to give Italian politicians a short, sharp shock so that they realise the threat they pose

to the entire Western w orld, with the U S A at its head— w ith their blandness, their indecisiveness and their failure to give successive governm ents dem ocratic legitimacy

T he U SA could not withstand a M editerranean crisis w ith the waves o f

m igrants and political refugees w ho are already pouring into Italy and from there into Europe One way that the U SA is conducting an indirect battle against the deflationary M erkel is by intervening directly in Italian politics A nd they believe that the stakes are so high that G rillo ’s party9 is worthy o f support for setting the

9G iuseppe Piero “Beppe” G rillo is an Italian com edian, actor, blogger and political activ­ ist He has been involved in political activity since 2009 as founder o f the Italian political Five Star M ovement, in order to bring together, via the Internet, people w ho share his ide­ als about honesty and direct democracy, and saying that politicians are the servants o f the people and that they should work for the country only for a short time, that they should not have crim inal records and that they should focus their attention on the problems o f the country w ithout any conflict o f interest.

The Terrible August of 2013 9

entire system o f Italian power and subsequently European pow er into motion onee again If the “B erlusconi-T rem onti” scandal can be used for this purpose, then we have nothing to lose

This gam bit is certainly not without risk, but possibly less risky than one would believe 1 am old enough to rem em ber the days when we had to sleep away from home in a different bed every night due to the threat o f the Red B rigades10 and the assassinations that took place in my own city of Turin, with the infamous masters who now feature in the headlines and hold positions o f power All Grillo is doing is telling his followers to becom e elected within dem ocratic institutions and behind his colourful language I fail to see guns or cold-blooded m urderers but often a lot

of w ell-m eaning, civic-minded people who want to im prove things for themselves and make the world a better place Yet again the USA is giving a hand to a country that is struggling to becom e a nation, in this case Italy, which is struggling to redis­cover its spirit because it has lost its s o u l It is nevertheless worth saying at this point that Italy is revealing an unexpected gift for political revival

M any people are w ondering what is happening in Italy after a special Senate com m ittee m et on 4 O ctober to vote that Silvio Berlusconi should be declared unlit for public office after his sentence and excluded from politics At the same time, the L e tta-A lfan o 11 governm ent did not lose a vote o f confidence by Ber­lusconi’s follow ers but was voted in by them: the m ajority o f them show ing a political desire to separate their fate from that o f the dem iurge and the tycoon, the

m inority using last m inute tactics P arliam entarians from a large personality-led parly resigned as a protest against a sentence that had obviously been com ing for years and could not in any way have been avoided M achiavelli12 said that you

,l)Rcd Brigades, Italian Brigate Rosse, m ilitant left-wing organization in Italy that gained notoriety in the 1970s for kidnappings, m urders and sabotage Its self-proclaim ed aim was

to undermine the Italian state and pave the way for a M arxist upheaval led by a “revolution­ ary proletariat” In 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed the leader o f the Christian Democratic Party, Aldo Moro.

1 'O n 24 April 2013, Italian President o f the Republic, G iorgio N apolitano, gave to the vice- secretary of the D em ocratic Party, Enrico Letta, the task o f forming a government, having determ ined that Pier Luigi Bersani, leader o f the winning coalition, could not form a gov­ ernm ent because it did not have a m ajority in the Senate A ngelino A lfano was Vice Prime Minister.

12N iccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1 46 9-15 27 ) was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, hum anist and w riter based in Florence during the Renaissance Although it is relatively short, the treatise is the m ost rem em bered o f M achiavelli’s works and the one m ost responsible for bringing the word “M achiavellian” into usage as a pejo­ rative “M achiavellianism ” is a widely used negative term to characterise unscrupulous

politicians of the sort M achiavelli described in The Prince.

10 The Terrible August o f 2013

should not leave your enem ies w ounded but kill them, otherw ise th eir bitterness will cause them to becom e more destructive than ever The prophecy turned out to

be true D espite all the calls and appeals for caution, the chickens cam e hom e to roost The paradigm atic pow er shift tow ards a judiciary that is now a pow er in its own right and no longer an order has been fully exposed as a destructive factor

O f course, Berlusconi should take a step back Everyone says so, but no one finds them selves in his situation, which is paradigm atic o f the slow and inexorable destruction o f the sym m etry o f pow ers in a m odern state and the breakdow n o f the relationship betw een justice and politics and the pow er o f politics and w ithin politics

The governm ent is faltering and no longer seeks to appease It divides and swings T he President o f the Republic is a Shakespearean character: M acbeth and Lear are both evident by turns in the torm ent, which rem ains unique and cannot

be put into words, as illustrated by the silence observed by G iorgio N apolitano during the celebrations for Bettino C ra x i,13 which by no coincidence was held during the sam e period The very occasion was poignant, with loom ing clouds and m em ories and heavy, leaden skies, sym bolic of the fate o f a state that is no longer able to find itself

M eanw hile, the D em ocratic Party is unable to find itself either: it is also

sw inging betw een personality-led parties and left-over groupings o f form er Doro-

te i14 and Forze N u o ve15 faction s in a m anner o f sp eak in g intended naturally,

as a m etaphor and w ithout any claim to historical accuracy This m eans that two very im portant historical opportunities are being w asted: the first, the end o f political unity betw een Catholics, who have changed from being a bright sun into

a sticky w eb o f pow er and the second, the end o f the Soviet com m unist culture, which has changed from being about revolutionary or reform ist socialism to a

n Bettirio Craxi, bynam e o f Benedetto Crax (1934-2000), Italian politician who becam e his nation’s first Socialist prime m inister (1983-1987) In February 1993, m ultiple charges of political corruption forced Craxi to resign his post as party leader He never denied that he had illegally solicited money for the Socialist Party but claimed that all the political parties had done so and that the Socialists were being targeted for political reasons Craxi left Italy for Tunisia later that year, ju st before being convicted for som e o f the charges He never returned to Italy.

,4Dorotei, were a leading faction o f the Italian Christian D em ocrat party (D C) which took its nam e from the convent o f Saint D orotea in which it was founded in 1959.

15Forze Nuove, leftist faction o f the Italian Christian D em ocrat party (DC) led by

Mr Carlo Donat Cattin.

We can learn from M achiavelli here too: the French w ere called in to fight Venice and becam e a fearsom e obstacle that was only w arded o ff by the astute­ness and greatness o f a m ighty Pope Now we are m issing that astuteness and that greatness— but not the little popes, unfortunately— and so the French et al co n ­tinue to bivouac at the last cam pfires, w hich are still sm oking despite the rain of judicial terror on the landlines or m obile phones that carry not only data and voice signals but that also hold together the security and legal unity of a nation: they howl into the w ind because they are uprooted The banks controlled by the foundations, in other w ords by the new invisible and personal politics o f the fra­ternities, have suddenly decided to scurry back to their accounting! Just as the arm ies appear on the battlefield: the banks and financial institutions w ithdraw to

leave room fo r the new occupants It is another form o f resignation A n a b a sis16

should be required reading in an Italy that is w ithdraw ing and losing its own identity

From the U SA to Italy, schism perennially lays the grounds for dissolution, which is extrem ely hard to escape, how ever hard we try

The difficulties are not only internal to Italy ’s culture and history but also

em erge forcefully from the European context w ithin which Italy— a nation that

is essential to the M editerranean civilisation and therefore a strategic linchpin o f the Western w orld— is forced into reckless and hasty technocratic and m onetary unification w ith disastrous consequences

The depth o f the econom ic m eltdow n that has been brew ing for centuries and now has E urope in its grip reveals certain opportunities with the pow er to over­com e not so m uch the crisis but rather the institutional and political conditions aggravated by the crisis The consequences o f this are extrem ely grim , not only

16Xcnophon, the Athenian, was bom in 431 B.C He was a pupil o f Socrates He marched with the Spartans and was exiled from Athens Sparta gave him land and property in Scil- lus, where he lived for many years before having to move once more, to settle in Corinth

H e died in 354 B.C The A nabasis is his story o f the March to Persia to aid Cyrus, who enlisted G reek help to try and take the throne from A rtaxerxes, and the ensuing return o f the Greeks, in w hich Xenophon played a leading role This occurred between 401 B.C and

M arch 399 B.C.

12 The Terrible August c f 2013

within Europe but throughout the world, first and forem ost with regard o the USA and its inevitable role The European elections o f M ay 2014 w ere an event that will have radical consequences in the future although they will not, o f course, have any repercussions— apart from extrem ely cautious and m oderate ones— on the depth o f the econom ic and moral crisis afflicting Europe It is certainly true that the European P eople’s Party will undoubtedly lose a good num ber o f seats, but under the guidance o f its A ustro-G erm an and Scandinavian m em bership, it is arguably the culture that bears the heaviest responsibility for the E C B ’s deflation­ary policy, for excessively nationalist politics and for creating a com m on ision

o f Europe as a withdrawal o f sovereignty instead o f a sharing o f sovereigrty, as

we have recently seen in G reece and every day in the policies o f the com m is­sioners; if all this is indeed true, the European P eople’s Party did not lose nit at the ballot box All the analysts are tearing their hair out due to the success )f the Eurosceptics But the real issues are different and m uch m ore com plicatec than they appear at first sight O ne thing needs to be said at the outset: the PES n issed the chance o f signing up for a form o f Euroscepticism that strongly believes that the destiny o f Europe should be firmly anchored to continental K eynesian policy,

a Euroscepticism based on the reform o f the ECB and on absolute powe* ulti­mately conferred on Parliam ent and not on the com m ittees T his E uroscepicisin would have had its own dignity and w ould have clipped the w ings o f the right- wing neo-B onapartists who have sprouted like so m any harm less m u shroons and poisonous toadstools It is no coincidence that the PES was also shunned ->y the electorate and m ore heavily than the EPP

Now w e will review the anti-European m ovem ents in order Firstly, we will take a look outside the Euro zone, in other words at the UK w here sterling rules instead o f the euro and com m on law prevails L ab o u r is the leading pary and when we think back to the pro-B lair litanies, proclaim ing him as the savour, it

is a good sign that Ed M iliband is not Blairite and has brought together the party and the trade unions, rebuilding a strong reform ist force that could be c good model for the Italian D em ocratic Party (PD ), for exam ple T he Tories ire the second party They could have stolen many votes from F arrag e’s an ti-E u o p ean

U K IP party were it not for the fact that Cam eron is such a dull leader In tie U K , the big news is the collapse o f the Liberals, w hich in any case has been expected for som e time

Now for France Here, the m ost im portant factor is o f course the extraordi­nary rise o f M arine Le Pen If you read her program m e w ith care, if you exam ­ine the profiles o f her candidates, as the French press have done, you will see that M arine has continued along the sam e trajectory that she em barked ip a n at the recent French adm inistrative elections: strong national values both in te m s of

The Terrible August of 2013 13

econom ic policy and im m igration, no more anti-Sem itism and racism Paradoxi­cally these are the same new values espoused by President H ollande when he recently confirm ed the appointm ent of Arnaud M ountebourg as M inister o f the

Econom y calling for a return to the Regie N a tio n a le, and the recent appointm ent

o f M anuel Vails as the new Prim e M inister, with his tough stance on im m igrants and crim inals The electorate naturally preferred Le Penn to Vails, particularly

on m atters o f security and im m igration The collapse o f the post-G aullists was unexpected Everything will be up for grabs again, though, at the com ing political elections with the tw o-round system , which will bring new hope to the Socialists, the neo-G aul lists and m aybe even the neo-centrists In any case, Le Pen’s victory

is the most significant event This can be explained by the w ide-ranging, strong and solid roots that the French right-w ing has been able to bring to bear at crucial

m om ents o f French history, unlike the socialist and subsequently the com m unist tradition The problem today in France is that only the right-w ing is m aking cul­ture and this, as not m any people seem to realise, is im portant because there has alw ays been a relationship betw een high and low culture and people, the com m on people have alw ays been influenced by this relationship U nim aginative TV co m ­

m entators use Le P en ’s trium ph as an excuse for claim ing that the F ren ch -G er­man axis no longer exists In actual fact, another F rench-G erm an axis, which is much more im portant fo r the fate o f the world, is form ing down on the banks of the upper N iger R iver in the heart o f black A frica, w here Prance and G erm any continue with im placable conviction to fight o ff the C hinese presence

Spain notched up only one win for its “indignant” m ovem ent, with the down- scaling o f the p eo p le’s and socialist parties In C atalonia, I w ould point to the

victory of the left-over Convergencia y U nion, a nationalist centre-right party,

which suggests an independentist approach very different from the one originally predicted

In the rest o f Europe, right-w ing parties did very well in H olland, A ustria and Hungary, in the latter case w ith a self-avowedly anti-Sem itic and Nazi party The sam e thing happened in the Scandinavian countries T hose w ho are aw are of the history o f the E uropean right-w ing w ere not surprised by this, because they are aw are that in countries where there is no history o f a strong and w ell-estab­lished socialist and com m unist left-wing, the right-w ing has alw ays roam ed the range, giving those w ho believe in the individual and in liberty sleepless nights

Im portantly, the only country w here this did not happen is Sw eden, w here the social dem ocrats returned to pow er with a socialist program m e that can only be described as old school, in other words based on a w elfare state, deficit spending, neo-com m unitarian but also neo-statist, anti-deflationist and antiliberal, which only goes to show that when socialism goes back to representing the com m on

14 The Terrible August o f 2013

people, it not only wins but also m eans that the com m on people do not show their

w orst side, exem plified by the neo-N azis and neo-fascists, but their best side, as is

em bodied by popular Christian and socialist values

The real new Europe is, however, em erging in its cultural birthplace, Grecce Here, Syriza has becom e the leading party with the centre-right in second place, the Socialists in third place and, bringing up the rear w ith 9 % o f the vote G olden Dawn, in other words a party like the neo-N azi, anti-Sem itic H ungarian party

H ere in G reece, poor Papandreou w as forced to resign a couple o f years ago when, as a socialist prim e m inister, he announced that he w ished to hold a refer­endum on the m easures introduced by the Troika and since then has disappeared

w ithout trace— the PASOK was destroyed at the tim e when B erlusconi and Trem - onti w ere forced out of office, with M erkel w ailing, O bam a acting like a boss, but unable to achieve anything, stating, “We can n o t have his blood on our hands”, as

G eithner revealed in his book o f m em oirs D espite this, nobody got the blood o f the G reek politicians on their hands and the people were able to vote This now means that the only real rational alternative to the European P eople’s Party and its disastrous econom ic and political strategies has won a resounding victory and is the leading party It is entirely another m atter in Italy In my opinion, the crux o f the Italian European political elections w as the com ing together o f the following strands T he first strand was the fact that the people w ere able to go back to the

ballot boxes after the coup d 'e ta t against B erlusconi and Trem onti led Thai style

by the President o f the Republic w ith the artificial, Faustian creation o f the little man M onti, fortunately w ithout the arm y being involved And look what the result was: M atteo R en z i,17 “a fast-talking perform er” , as he was described by the Financial Tim es, was then able to take 40 % o f the vote, in other w ords B ersani’s

30 % plus M onti’s 10 %, as happened in the political elections o f February 2013:

elections that not even a King o f T hailand could have opposed B ut let us exam ­ine the second strand, which is that R en z i’s PD, with its 40 % o f the vote, beats all records: it is the leading E uropean political party; it is the leading European Socialist party and can therefore lay claim to a high num ber o f seats in the E u ro ­pean Parliam ent, which will really allow it to stand in the way o f the PP E ’s p o li­cies; it is the only party able to stand up to M erkel and gather around itself a true

K eynesian and anti-B lairite socialist alternative in order to rebuild a new Europe The problem we face is w hether M atteo R enzi and his com panions will really be able to achieve all this, in other w ords free them selves o f the neo-liberal, fir.ancial

l7M atteo Renzi, present leader o f the D em ocratic Party and Prim e M inister o f the Italian Governm ent since 22 February 2014.

The Terrible A ugust of 2013 15

order and neo-B onapartist dross that arc appearing in the ranks o f their middle

m anagers and leaders One thing is w ithout doubt, however, Ren/.i m arks a vic­tory for Italian D em ocratic C atholicism O n many fronts, as I have em phasised on other occasions, it is em blem atic that a C atholic took the PD into the PES, and this is a mark o f infinite freedom for w hich all Italians should be grateful: the parly unity of the Catholics is dead and buried at last The second victory is again that o f dem ocratic Catholicism over w hat rem ained o f the glorious Catholic com ­

m unist tradition, in other words nothing is left o f it T his very transform ation saw the political disappearance o f M ario M onti and his incredible follow ers and deliv­

ered an extrem ely hard blow to Forza Italia and B erlusconi The consequence

was that this unprecedented victory by dem ocratic C atholicism cut the claw s of Beppe G rillo and his nice boys and girls, who are divided betw een rabble-rousers and m en and wom en o f good faith Let us keep a sense o f perspective, however,

G rillo has definitely changed from a m ovem ent to a party and this m eans that the

m om ent of truth has also arrived for his Five Star M ovem ent Will it rem ain a

B onapartist protest party or will it becom e a left-w ing party, to the left o f the PD?

T his w ould be a shocking twist for those w ho have alw ays believed that Italy is

by nature a m oderate country But in the w ords o f a great P o p e18: “we must not

be afraid” We m ust indeed never forget that M atteo R en zi’s extraordinary victory

is first and forem ost a European victory N ot merely because the elections were

E uropean but because fidelity to E urope w as the m essage that the Italian Prim e

M inister w ished to give to his country and because the w orking policies reported

to the governm ent staff and the m edia at the very outset w ere European

C ontinuing in order, the PD is the strongest party in E urope with 40.8 % of

the vote, follow ed by the Germ an C D U w ith 35.3 % Lagging behind this lead­ing pair com e the Spanish and D anish P eo p le’s Parties with 26 % The funda­

m ental m atter that we cannot overlook is that a European Socialist party is being led by a young C atholic who has put paid to the m yth o f party unity am ongst

C atholics and has, follow ing in the footsteps o f Jacques D elors, breathed new life into a virtuous tradition that we hope is not destined to rem ain a minority In any case, the developm ent will bear fruit because it will m ake it possible to operate not only in opposition to the C D U and o th er p eo p le’s parties but also through asym m etrical cooperation with the sam e parties over certain crucial m atters that are bound to crop up as the crisis progresses On the other hand M arine Le P en ’s

nationalist trium ph in France with 25 % o f the vote undoubtedly dow ngraded

l8Pope John Paul II was Pope o f the C atholic C hurch from 16 O ctober 1978 until his death

on 2 April 2005

16 The Terrible August o f 2013

the F rench-G erm an axis with the disastrous defeat of H o llan d e’s Socialists, w ho only achieved 14 % There is therefore room to pursue a new policy together w ith Spain, w here the Socialists achieved 26 %, and G reece, w here Syriza leapt in to first place with 26.6 % and policies that are much m ore reasonable and sen sib le than an overhasty press would have us believe

U ltim ately we will no longer operate in accordance with national blocks, or rather, we should no longer reason in terms o f national blocks but in term s o f a lli­ances w hose geom etry is determ ined by problem s as they arise, based on so cia list

or people’s political fam ilies instead o f on nationalist discrim inating factors

This w ould still make it possible to represent national interests, but w ith m ore room for m anoeuvre and a form o f bargaining that is not a w in -lo se gam e but o n e involving a system o f w eights and counterw eights and interest co m p en satio n I will give an exam ple We will certainly be able to find agreem ent betw een so c ia l­ist parties, including Syriza, over the revolutionary K eynesian policy o f m acro - investm ent in public works that M atteo Renzi im m ediately and boldly an n o u n ced that he will present in Europe during Italy’s six m onth EU presidency, but it m ay also be supported by more than a few European p eo p le’s parties, not m erely the Spanish, fo r exam ple, but possibly even the G erm ans and A ustrians The G e r­

m ans will be conditioned not only by their ow n culture but also by the allian ce

in progress within G erm any with the SPD, w hich can n o t be ignored in E urope It will be m ore difficult to achieve a virtuous crosscutting effect over the inevitable reform o f the ECB, where nationalist claim s m ay prevail am ongst the G erm an s and Scandinavians, and where the hope o f turning M ario D raghi from a dilig en t spokesperson with m agical qualities into a genuine Federal Reserve style central banker will require much tougher battles and the rediscovery of the great fo rc e represented by ideology in politics, which has been forgotten and overlooked for too long

To sum up, we will return to m aking great politics and this is the g re ate st virtue o f R en z i’s victory W hen he says that he w ishes to restore Ita ly ’s digmity within Europe, we are bound to back him because it is in Europe itself that we

m ust overcom e the cliched thinking that m ade the Italians inept and cow ardly, when they fell for the infam ous theory that the Italians had to be saved fro m them selves through an external shock in the form o f Europe This victory by Renzi may really see the start o f a new Europe, beginning with Italy stren g th ­ening the adm irable qualities that Italians can still be proud of in the men and wom en in pow er and thus dam ping down the rebelliousness and subversivemess

o f G rillo and his com panions W ho knows, his m ovem ent could even chainge into a force that is gradually able to make the m ost o f his best fresh and cilean

The Terrible August o f 2013 17

young energies, overcom ing its obscure B onapartist and Caesarean origins As

we are rem inded by great European constitutionalists such as Benjam in Constant, the greatest o f them all institutions are set up to create in men those virtues that they are unable to express by them selves: w hilst m oderating their defects, they

em phasise their attributes and transform them This is w hat we need, as Italians and as Europeans: to becom e institutionalised We can do this in the first place

by changing the European institutions in accordance with the beliefs o f Constant: full pow ers o f enforcem ent to Parliam ent and only the pow er o f guarantee to the com m ittees; a return to the healthy concept o f a mixed econom y, overcom ing the liberalist order that led to pro-cyclicality in the crisis with overw helm ing unem ­ploym ent; foregrounding in Europe and in Italy o f the duties— above all— as well

as the rights o f citizens T his is the deep European significance o f the victory scored by M atteo R en z i’s D em ocratic Party It has been a victory for great catho­lic and socialist reform ist ideas that can now achieve fusion only if they can be deployed from a continental perspective, thus helping to restore to Europe w hat it deserves, in other w ords an international role in the alliance with the USA

Start of the Mediterranean Crisis

Yet the plight o f the M editerranean area rem ains extrem ely serious Everything began with events that appeared— to m ost people— to be auspicious for reconstruction

The wave o f collective m obilisation that struck North A frica is like a huge flock o f birds blotting out the sky From afar, their solid m ass is strikingly oppres­sive: they look like the grey sky in a Perm eke painting But as soon as we see the flock from closer up, our perspective changes

T he solid mass resolves to reveal the scales o f a com plex and continually asym m etrical fractal Let me explain: this has com e about because North A frica

is one o f the m ost diversified hum an ecosystem s in the world with very clear fault lines if w e im m ediately exam ine m atters from a state perspective This is the case

in m ost o f the areas affected by revolts, albeit with unequal intensity and m ulti­faceted institutional configurations Events in Egypt and Tunisia have neverthe­less show n us that the state is what it is and its existence does not depend on the physical person holding power Its physical o r sym bolic disappearance (oust­ing from power) does not culm inate in the death o f the institution, which goes

on to replicate itself This is essential tor the continuity o f business In all cases, the arm y guarantees this continuity, constituting the very backbone o f the state, but with two variants The arm ies in this post-colonial and post-A rabian culture fall into one o f the follow ing two moulds: revolutionary (A lgeria and Egypt) or

m onarchical-sacred (the Royal fam ily in M orocco and in Jordan are hereditary lineages that claim their descendancy from the Prophet and the arm y ’s loyalty is thus tw ofold: to the m onarch and to the Prophet) Both the arm ies, A lgerian and

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20 Start of th e Mediterranean Crisis

Egyptian, are o f revolutionary origin, hut now they have little national independ­ence and are highly dependent on the West (prim arily the U SA and Franco The greater the Western influence on the army, the more state continuity meam busi­ness continuity: we have learnt this from Egypt The moral o f this story s that any transition to dem ocracy (?) and any continuity in econom ic relations is round

to com e to grips with the army, in other words the relationship betw een tht busi­ness com m unity and the army must be considered

A nother im portant issue is the clear inability o f these countries to achieve eco­nom ic developm ent and therefore growth that is even only m oderately urequal and only m oderately im balanced, despite their great national resources: nainly fossil hydrocarbons and certain m ineral resources (M oroccan phosphates, for exam ple) O ne contributing cause is not the econom y but social stratificatkn and

the outcom e o f the post-colonial political struggle T his has given rise to a rentier

and bourgeois class w ho act as brokers betw een national resources and theii inter­national exploitation, hence the fam ily and clan trappings that parasiticalh cling

to the state arm ies and bureaucracy Egypt is a textbook exam ple o f this sitiation, with its spraw ling state-fam ily -p atro n ag e-b ased bureaucracy

Lastly, w e are left with the m ost explosive problem , w hich is the fuse tlat has been lit in Tunisia and lies at the basis o f the revolt: the form ation throighout

N orth A frica o f an intellectual sub-proletariat that has led to a genuinel/ new inter-class aspect o f the revolt and is at the sam e tim e the untapped resoirce of the area: know ledge com bined with youth m ay give rise to a passion for devel­opm ent if it is given an outlet in the dignity o f em ploym ent The danger s that this may occur with devastating consequences for the instability o f those socie­ties Em ploym ent m ust be the first com m itm ent for those acting in these coun­tries; otherw ise, all their plans are doom ed to failure We are then left with Libya, which is a case in its own right: tribalism , archaic social relationships, absence

o f the state o f w estern origin and the personalistic continuity o f a pow er tlat has changed from revolutionary to a presence so brooding that it is at the point of

sw allow ing up the tribal children o f the revolution T he first task shoulc be to prevent the “Som alisation” o f Libya and seek to fully understand the speciic fea­tures o f the case and in other words to change from econom y to anthropology

World Economic Crisis

The living anthropology o f the M editerranean crisis is w ritten into the world econom ic crisis But the w orld econom y is hovering on the brink o f m adness The financial crisis is nothing m ore than a snow ball that causes an avalanche to thun­der dow n on the houses o f the national states huddled in the valley bottom Even the U SA , despite dom inating the valley, is subject to unprecedented internal ten­sions over public debt For anyone w ho thinks with their head, the spectacle o f the proposals im plem ented or announced to cope w ith what am ounts to a radical restructuring o f w orld capitalism based on very high-risk financial dom inion is devastating Faced w ith this restructuring, the thousands o f highly paid econo­mists beavering away in international institutions are unable to do anything but trot out recipes that we all know o ff by heart by now: liberalise and privatise, especially the labour m arket; cut political costs (listen to w h o ’s talking about costs!); cut public spending; set no lim its to the transferability o f capital; do not attack the incestuous structure o f the great world banks that apply excessive lev­erage using the m oney o f their account holders, continually causing the slaughter

o f innocents, but instead regulate them from the top-dow n in a new version o f the

none o f these rem edies have had any im pact at all on the grow th that we need to restructure public debt

T his doubt becom es even m ore pertinent when w e hear about ideas such as that o f prohibiting short selling, when everyone know s that m ost im m ediate share transfer deals take p lace in m illionths o f a second through “dark pools”, in other words the unregulated electronic circuits that business banks update through ultra-fine tuning T h is plethora of “ex p erts” is divided into tw o great cohorts

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Those who orchestrated the G erm an takeover o f Europe through the raising o f rates and the out-and-out mad people w ho say that the d anger lies not in inter­national deflation but in inflation, w hilst the G reek chorus o f the ECB fans the flames o f the crisis instead o f putting them out

Follow ers of the FED have an o th er plan in mind: to support growth by inflat­ing debt to the point that it is possible to exploit beyond all reason the true co m ­petitive edge o f the USA: their w orld pow er (in this the R epublicans are stupid

to force a default even if they do free them selves of O bam a) Through this world power they will then be able to dissem in ate growth internationally by expanding liquidity and ensuring a gradual retu rn to the only thing that can save us: inflation (B ernanke’s targeting o f inflation)

G reenspan’s m em oir makes in sp irin g reading in this regard and reveals that continued dom inion o f the West as w ell as N orth A m erican grow th is central to his thinking This continuity should be o u r com m on goal, but it can be achieved only by laying the grounds for new grow th at world level and therefore also in

E urope and Italy World trade figures are not encouraging in this respect: abso­lute levels are slowly declining and the BR IC S countries are no longer the driving force they once were

A fast and drastic reduction o f tax on em ploym ent and capital is therefore an indispensable counterpart to the increase in the taxation on luxury goods instead

o f on people Only in this way w ill grow th be possible, and we will be able to slowly turn the world cycle tow ards m anufacturing instead o f towards finance Short-term speculative investm ents m ust be taxed transparently and im m edi­ately With regard to debt in the strict sense o f the word, the w elfare reform must

be based on raising the age at w hich both men and w om en leave work to after

65 years o f age as well as relaunching m utualism and fam ily saving

And now we com e to the crux o f the m atter that divides all o f us I believe that the euro should be subject to a serious appraisal with regard to its sustainability

w ithin Europe as a w hole and also w ithin the countries that have alw ays been outside its French and G erm an heartland: in other w ords southern Europe and all o f Italy This is an inevitable exam ination o f conscience now that a period o f very slow growth or a decline in grow th is opening up before us A stateless sin­gle currency may lead the patient tow ards his final death-throes and not towards recovery

The Chickens Have Come Home

to Roost

M any chickens have com e home to roost throughout the world, in a day of reckoning that began on an international scale and ended up as national crisis, confirm ing the accuracy o f theories that suggest the bond betw een nation and internationalisation is crucial to understanding the guiding them es o f history.Firstly, if we take a look at the world through the eyes o f an econom y hard­

w ired into the loop o f international politics, we can see two m ain effects The first is the turn taken by globalisation The sustained grow th rate o f the BRICS countries has not reached its end but the end o f the first grow th phase, as we learn from K aldor’s grow th laws and M y rd a l’s theories Rapid grow th based on capital goods and the creation of urban w orking and m iddle classes is over In non-com m unist countries this has brought into being a peasant and agricultural bourgeois class that m akes it possible to pass from grow th based on the accum u­lation o f capital goods to grow th based also on consum ption arising as a result

o f the agricultural reform s typical o f nations such as Brazil and India, albeit to

a lesser extent and m uch less organised in term s o f private ow nership T his is particularly true o f India, w hich is still dom inated by a very strong com m unity culture

Indian backw ardness in relation to the internal m arket and in the field o f m on­etary circulation has recently exploded and taken by surprise all w ho those who believe that it is possible to understand econom y by reading statistics and not by studying history and anthropology M ost Indians do not trade m oney but goods and even money is not norm ally hoarded in banks T he recent victory by N aren- dra M odi, leader o f the B haratiya Janata Party— the H indu N ationalist Party— on

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 23

G Sapelli, G lobal C hallenges and the Emerging World Order,

DOl 10.1007/978-3-319-15624-8 4

24 Th e Chickens Have Com e Home to Roost

a ticket o f liberalisation, opening up o f the internal m arket and new foreign investm ents, coupled with the collapse o f the historical C ongress Party dom i­nated for decades by the G andhi family, is a particularly significant event because

it assum es im portant strategic relevance: will som ething sim ilar happen in B ra­zil and South A frica? For now, the econom ic transform ation has only had radical political consequences in India In South A frica, the party that is heir to M andela held firmly onto pow er in the latest elections and it is difficult to im agine that the tables will be turned in the great South A m erican power, even after the relative decline o f the PT, the dom inant party, due to the urban m iddle-class uprisings The new approach that Modi im m ediately im posed on Indian foreign policy cam e

as a surprise though, with initiatives designed to encourage good neighbourliness,

in other w ords a reduction in the decades-old tensions betw een India and Paki­stan, w hich is a nerve centre for the control o f m ilitary operations in Central A sia, and Bengal These m ovem ents w ere undoubtedly aim ed at reducing the recent rapprochem ent with the USA as a bulwark against the C hinese and Russians that had been so typical o f recent Indian foreign policy It is difficult to say w hether the Hindu nationalist electoral victory will m ark a true step forw ard by India.The grow ing level o f interrelationship in the world econom y reveals all the lim itations o f backw ardness in the field o f m onetary circulation The very fact o f growth itself highlights the problem and this situation brings about the deprecia­tion o f a currency that is hardly ever hoarded Those o f us w ho do not believe that everything is always in balance, from the USA , to India and Papua New G uinea, were expecting it

China, on the other hand, has ended up in a real dead-end because no agricul­tural bourgeoisie has grown up and her cities are filling w ith illegal non-citizens who cannot consum e as the urban m asses should T his m eans that China is falling into all the traps o f countries that have bureaucratic econom ies and state cap i­talism and are led by terrorist dictatorships: initial decadence due to production overcapacity o f capital goods m agnified by the disastrous revolution in finance, which destabilised an age-old balance w hilst creating w orld asym m etries when the M iddle Kingdom joined the W TO in 2001 T his led to the collapse o f the unequal post-B retton W oods ratio betw een w orld m etropolitan econom ies and peripheral world econom ies T he asym m etrical com petition has now becom e an obstacle to the grow th o f China itself, w hich is unable to create an internal m ar­ket, w hilst— paradoxically— it is exporting forced labour throughout the w orld in

a quest for the energy and cultivable land that it is unable to produce at hom e due

to its ow n bureaucratic/terrorist-led econom y

The chaos afflicting R ussia is different: this country is suffering from the iso­lation o f a great and solitary prisoner nation stuck betw een a hostile Europe that

The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost 25

w ants its energy resources hut prevents it from expanding as a result o f crazy rules against com petition (all o f European industry being in decline due to fall­ing m argins and failure to consolidate due to fear of being accused o f the sin of

m onopoly, having forgotten Sylos L abini’s holy text on oligopoly and technical

p ro g re ss ) and China, with which it is forced to bargain due to refusal by the USA and Europe to reshape the face o f the world in the wake o f the Cold War They in fact believed that it was possible to continue to produce growth whilst excluding R ussia from Europe and the world market: R ussia was not adm itted to the W T O until 2011 ratifying the U S A s tragic inability to understand the new world order after Reagan and Gorbachev In this way, by not pursuing the G aullist aim o f a E urope stretching from the Atlantic to the U rals— a device for prevent­ing European decadence— this great Eurasian nation was forced into a disastrous

em brace with China

But we need to think m ore about the matter The origins o f the R ussian-C hi- nese rapprochem ent lie com pletely in European policy, as is dem onstrated by the

U kraine crisis and R ussia’s de facto occupation o f the C rim ea through a form of hybrid w arfare; in other w ords, one based on the establishm ent and defence o f a

R ussian com m unity in the Ukraine, which is in turn devastated by the street battle triggered by the argum ent over w hether a gigantic country w ith deep Russian

O rthodox roots and divided into age-old national factions, as we saw in World

W ar II, should or should not join the European Union In any case the G erm an -

Russian energy and m anufacturing Kom binat fortuitously exercises on Putin and

Lavrov, the great Russian foreign minister, a pressure that is m uch greater than that o f any European diplom acy and acts alongside the w eight o f EU diplomacy The incredible Baroness Ashton, Foreign M inister o f K akania,1 could have pre­vented the annexing o f the Crim ea and the struggles in the U kraine by sim ply tak­ing action at the first inkling o f crisis to assure Putin and his econom ic and

m ilitary pow er bloc that the EU would com m it itself to preserving the use o f the Sebastopol base in the Crim ea for the Russians irrespective o f the political situa­tion in the U kraine Russia has in any case hung onto the base by paying a colos­sal rent, as it does with the nuclear base in Kazakhstan T he Cold War clim ate that is m aking itself felt throughout Europe cannot fail to have extrem ely heavy consequences on the financial situation

'K akania is the ironic name w riter Robert Musil gave to w hat was known as the Austro-

H ungarian Em pire o f Franz Joseph Empire o f many ethnic groups, in contrast with each other, driven by a corrupt government, collapsed with the First World War The deri­ sion, due to the image evoked by the sound o f the word Kakania, is clear in all European languages.

26 The Chickens Have Com e Hom e to Roost

In the face o f all this, we can only be astounded by the schizophrenia of the USA H eedless o f the wise w arnings by K issinger, who was w ell aware o f what

a sophisticated intellectual like Sergei K araganov has been saying for years about its syndrom e o f encircling post-C om m unist Russia, having forgotten the healthy realism o f the W estphalian school o f diplomacy, th e U SA is sw inging from a m onocratic approach to a delegatory approach An exam ple o f the form er approach is the m eeting betw een Lavrov and Kerry that took place in R om e at the time o f the talks on Libya, w hilst on the sam e day a m eeting was held in Brussels over the U kraine affair, thus effectively sidelining the EU T his sidelining was also confirm ed by the confrontational decision to send fighter aircraft to Polish bases that already have their m issiles pointing towards R ussia At the sam e tim e, USA inability to translate the m eetings and the threats into concrete and realis­tic proposals opens the way to bargaining based entirely on currency and trade goods, w hich is orchestrated by M rs M erkel w henever she puts on her broker's hat A nyone believing that the U kraine affair can be resolved by prom ising €11 billion to the new governm ent is m aking a big mistake A nd here we again see the USA adopting a delegatory approach, since w hilst it is concerned on one hand with G erm an-style deflationary E uropean econom ic policy, it is actually delegat­ing m anoeuvres with regard to the U kraine, w ith predictably disastrous results

M aking E uropeans in the B team tighten th eir belts w hilst conducting diplom acy through charitable works can only en rag e the com m on people and those sec­tors o f the population already exasperated by the constant, tenacious and blind destruction o f the European social m odel, pursued by Frau M erkel and her lo n g ­standing voiceless cronies

A few m onths before the crisis exploded in the U kraine and C rim ea, Putin

m ade a visit to Italy The full im plications o f the possible intrinsic strategic value

o f this visit were not fully grasped at the tim e D ue to the standing o f the ch arac­ter involved and the fact that the im plications o f the event w ere not m erely eco ­nom ic, the picture that em erged looked rosy but extrem ely com plicated R ussia certainly had achieved two very im portant positive diplom atic results T h e first one was and is the agreem ent draw n up w ith A ssad’s Syria— and I m ean A ssa d ’s Syria and not the Syria o f the rebels or one o f their representatives— over the elim ination o f chem ical w eapons A lthough the agreem ent actually illustrates the decisive role played by R ussia alongside the large- and m edium -sized pow ers, the regional pow ers— in other w ords Saudi A rabia, Qatar, the U nited Arab Em irates, Turkey and above all Israel— view ed and continue to view this agreem ent in a bad light because it im plicitly frees up the Shiite factions T he growth o f Shiite pow er can now be im m ensely m ultiplied due to the new regional role that their guide state can perform Iran is a m uch m ore evolved and developed pow er than

The C hickens Have Come Home to Roost 27

any o th er G ulf state: Persia is Persia and only agreem ent betw een the great Arab, Turkish and Persian cultures can appease w hat is the most strategically im por­tant region in the world in term s o f energy and in terms o f the spiritual values that reside in the State o f Israel and the Holy Places of C hristianity and o f Islam Israel understands this better than anyone and its position, which we can decide not to share, is not farsighted, particularly in the wake o f the agreem ent with Iran over uranium enrichm ent All this w as naturally done with the USA playing a key role, as was the case in Syria: North A m erican reluctance effectively opened the way to Russian mediation Together w ith G erm any, France, the United Kingdom and Russia, the U SA played a decisive role Incidentally, Italy was still rem arka­ble by its absence at that time! But now let us com e to the geostrategic nub o f the

m atter raised by Putin’s visit in the light o f these events: the paradox before our eyes w as that w hilst the USA is effectively continuing a Cold War with Russia in Europe, as evidenced by the NATO m issiles in Poland, it is pursuing an entirely different policy in the M iddle East C ooperation with the Russians was indeed decisive for paving the way to peace in the area Recent events in the U kraine that have encouraged the Russophile tendencies w e have seen lately in that stra­tegic nation can only stand in the way o f the trend towards appeasem ent betw een the U SA and Russia This has nevertheless becom e necessary, and Europe must encourage it or otherw ise it will becom e distanced from Russia This is par­ticularly true now that Turkey has unw isely taken sides, com ing down squarely beside the E gyptian M uslim B rotherhood in an attem pt to delegitim ise the sol­diers who have so far em erged victorious from the civil w ar in the G erm any of North Africa: in other words Egypt

In this context, Europe, as I have repeatedly pointed out, has m ore need of

R ussia than ever The G aullist form ula o f a E urope that stretches from the A tlan­tic to the Urals is as tim ely as ever To achieve this, Putin must nevertheless has­ten to overcom e the top-dow n theory and practice o f a pow er that is still overcentralised, the result o f a post-despotic control system that still pervades the entire R ussian polyarchy, as evidenced by the case o f Khodorkovsky and the heavy penalties im posed on those w ho co m e out and protest against the powers- that-be The R ussian political system is com plex and slow ly evolving from the bottom up tow ards a dem ocratic version o f polyarchy, in other w ords, the inter­play betw een system s o f econom ic interest and territorial representation A radi­cal reform o f the judiciary and an expansion o f civil liberties w ould be decisive steps towards unleashing all o f R u ssia’s im m ense econom ic potential Europe needs it: Italy needs it m ore than ever R ussian interests in Italy have begun to appear on the M editerranean and could m ake a form idable contribution to our need for foreign capital We need the R ussians, not only as tourists, but above all

28 The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

as investors, as partners in the field of energy and elsew here (and here E N f2 can teach us a lot) We need to fully understand that Europe needs stronger ties with Russia to counterbalance the disproportionate weight o f G erm any and such ties are also essential for Europe both econom ically and diplom atically

The M editerranean must return to being a sea o f peace and this can be achieved by m oving aw ay from a balance o f terror and returning to a balance

o f cooperation, in a new Europe that sees North A frica and the M iddle East as essential partners Russia has a fundam ental role in this m ore evenly poised version o f the M editerranean balance T his has been borne out by recent inter­national events, fraught with risk o f course, but essential in order to further the process o f passive stabilisation W ithout strong econom ic integration and closer diplom atic cooperation with Russia, E urope will be unable to overcom e the eco­nom ic crisis and at the sam e tim e help achieve peace in N orth A frica and the

M iddle East In this sense, the sanctions advocated by the U SA against Russia are a tragic mistake if they becom e m ore than firm diplom atic protests and come

to threaten the econom ic interests of this great country, w hich will drag all of Europe down with it if it goes into m eltdow n In this sense, the energy agree­

m ent signed betw een Putin and Xi Ping is an exceptional event for many reasons Let us take a look at those reasons in order The first is geostrategic Both Russia and C hina join forces to escape the neo-im perial world view o f the USA, which

w ishes on the one hand to isolate R ussia from Europe by m eans o f the T rans­atlantic Free Trade A greem ent, which w ould create an im m ense trade area from which R ussia w ould have to be excluded both m ilitarily and econom ically, effec­tively neutralising its recent entry into the W T O in 2011

As far as China is concerned, the Trans-Pacific Pact, with the crux of the m ili­tary agreem ent betw een the U SA and A ustralia coinciding with the inclusion of Vietnam and the exclusion o f C hina from the area o f free trade betw een south­east A sia, South A m erica and the USA should pave the way, w ith the rearm ing of Japan, to a kind o f boa constrictor hold on the M iddle K ingdom It could be said that E urope has unconsciously backed this neo-im perial design o f the USA, as evidenced by the uncertainty and weak response from B russels over the U kraine crisis R ussia and C hina have responded to an exclusive neo-im perial strategy with an inclusive agreem ent over the econom y in term s o f energy This brings

us to the next aspect: it is a 30-year agreem ent with tax breaks for Russia and the provision o f 38 billion m 3 o f gas per year for an estim ated value o f approxim ately

$400 billion per year, even though the prices naturally rem ain secret It is a

2ENI, Ente Nazionale Jdrocarburi, leading Italian multinational oil and gas company.

The C hickens Have Com e Home to Roost 29

m assive agreem ent that does justice to all the catastrophic illusions that m aintain

it is possible to work with gas as though a free m arket as opposed to an oligopoly This should give the storytellers w ho have half-destroyed the European energy industry with their pig-headed liberalist ideology plenty of food for thought, all the m ore so because this is taking place against the backdrop o f a deep-seated European crisis throughout the entire sector For the first time since World War II, one o f the countries that is spearheading international econom ic grow th has been affected by the return o f som ething that is technically known as “energy poverty”,

in o th er words a grow ing num ber o f fam ilies and m icroenterprises do not have enough money to pay their electricity and gas bills

T he m ost surprising new s is that the country in question is the United K ing­dom , w hose leading T hatcherite and post-Thatcherite politicians and intellectu­als (headed by Tony Blair) have been standard bearers for energy privatisation

as w ell as liberalisation, from pow er plants through to nuclear plants and gas production and distribution The only thing left untouched is N orth Sea oil O f course, the ongoing econom ic recession m akes the w hole thing m ore sensational, though w hat is even m ore sensational is the fact that the signs o f this crisis are spreading throughout Europe My b elief is that the econom ic sustainability o f the entire continental energy sector is seriously at risk It should be stressed that we are w itnessing in E urope— m ore in som e nations and less in others— the closure

of gas distribution plants and nuclear pow er plants due to the fall in w holesale electricity prices and this is having serious repercussions on the continuity of energy supply (and this is coupled w ith the poverty I m entioned earlier) All this

is taking place at the tim e o f a boom in renew able wind and solar pow er sources that are backed by a policy o f state subsidies that have greatly contributed to the fall in prices o f fossil fuel energy sources

As I said, the econom ic crisis and the increase in poverty naturally accentuate these processes that largely arise as a result o f the huge blunders that have been com m itted for m ore than 20 years by individual states but m ainly by Europe as a

w hole I refer to the process o f hyper-regulation that has fundam entally depressed investm ents, thw arting the stream lining o f the sector due to the proliferation of brokers w ho are m ilking the revenues T his has led to an unprecedented increase

in processes o f bureaucratisation that have caused skyrocketing costs for produc­tion and distribution com panies, suffocated by a Soviet-style G osplan of unprec­edented destructiveness W hat should have been a m echanism for facilitating the low ering o f prices and allow ing them to find their own level through com peti­tive m echanism s has instead proved to be a sort o f m any-headed Leviathan The biggest o f these has grow n out of the body o f Europe and the C om m ission The others are grow ing out o f the bodies o f the individual European nations that all

30 The Chickens Have Com e Hom e tc Roost

have their own regulatory authorities as well as m inisters with responsibilities for energy (often com peting with one another) who fix the prices and riles o f

“com petition” from the top-dow n, in hierarchical fashion, creating a g ig an ic and unw ieldy adm inistrative m echanism

This conjures up a vision of the Black Paintings depicting Saturn devouring his children painted by G oya during his overw rought nightm ares and nov d is­played in the M useo del Prado T he children in this case are the energy compa­nies that are no longer able to make a profit Not to mention the househcids of the consum ers whose incom es often have to stand the burden o f cost increases as well as state subsidies for renewable energies: it is no coincidence that th^ state does not pay these itself but instead loads them directly onto our householc bills

W ith the never-ending econom ic crisis, the G iants are gobbling up as many of the poor little people as they can at an incredible rate And there is m ore The boom

in shale gas and shale oil in the U SA could kill o ff gas production and di;tribu- tion in Europe All the A m erican com panies now produce and consum e entrgy at low cost due to the boom , but this is leaving less and less space for the coci m ar­ket A solution has been found New coal m arkets are being sought in Europe and

A sia with a consequent crisis in the prices o f traditional energy production and distribution costs In Italy, these processes are having a radical im pact but so one

is saying anything about it Now the problem s are likely to becom e much worse.The repercussions o f this institutional and econom ic crisis w ere less severe for the great m anagerial capacities of the European energy com panies, includ­ing R ussian com panies— first and forem ost G A ZPR O M — which are co m n g up against the ideological hostility o f the European technocratic authorities, l^astly, the other significant aspect of the agreem ent (and it is worth repeating t with regard to my recent com m ent about coal arriving in Europe) is environmental

In other w ords, gas is better than coal! G as does not pollute and allow s irultiple forms o f safe energy efficiency

W hen that agreem ent was made, everyone heard the groans o f the President of the E uropean C om m ission, Barroso who discovered R ussia’s strategic role too late and called them to order over supplies to the U kraine and ultim ately Europe (forgetting that, in any case, the am ount provided for in the R ussian-C hinese agreem ent represented and still represents 35 % o f the annual am ount cf Rus­sian gas supplied to the w hole o f Europe, confirm ing R ussia’s split European and Asian ro le ) It was truly a pathetic picture that we did not deserve, v*e who believe and have believed in the United States o f Europe and w ho believe that

if only E urope can have both Russia and the USA as sim ultaneous allies it can becom e a world pow er again A longside the USA, o f course, w hich should radi­cally rethink its foreign policy The fate o f the world depends on this Never

The Chickens Have Com e Home to Roost 31

before have international econom y and polities been so inextricably linked as they are at the m om ent And the global recession is tightening these links all over the planet

BRICS will grow less and at a slow er pace, and this will calm growth through­out South A m erica, except in M exico and C olom bia, which have chosen a path that is not so firmly tied to the fast and furious com m odity cycle, which inciden­tally is now collapsing, taking the com m odity-dependent countries down with it.All the o th er countries will be forced to reclassify the relationships between the m ining and oil and gas industries and the world cycle, turning increasingly tow ards the dom estic m arket as w ell as tow ards new foreign markets This is basically the desire o f their m iddle classes who have becom e m obilised in recent

m onths and effectively reflect the theories put forward by Tilly, H aim son and

m yself when w e studied the phenom ena o f collective m obilisation Such phenom ­ena arise only during ascending phases o f the econom ic and political cycles and

im pose changes in the agenda o f consum ption Now the m iddle classes o f these countries w an t infrastructures and intangible assets such as culture and quality o f life T his leads them to rediscover every tradition (the political cycle) that can lay the foundations for creating their organisational solidarity

And so we have secularism in Turkey and nativism in som e South Am erican countries T h is has already taken place and will soon spread m ore widely: this

is the case not only in Bolivia but above all in Peru, the epicentre o f all South

A m erican political cultures This will have profound im plications on the exploita­tion o f m ineral resources, opening a new chapter in the history o f South Am erican energy

The w orld is now naturally dom inated by the North African conflict, which is seeing the return o f a form o f N asserism revisited and reshaped by the changes that have taken place on the international front with the fall o f the USSR, with the re-em ergence o f the m ilitary as a stabilising force, but not in the same way

as in the past In the case o f N asser and also w ith B a’athism , hence also in Syria and in Iraq, they w ere building the nation: now they are defending it from post­destruction cosm opolitanism o f the caliphate (with A taturk) that has brought the

M uslim B ro th erh o o d into being and now endangers their very relationship with the West am o n g st w hat rem ains o f that past and the new hierocratic form ations that are seek in g various ways to assum e pow er— after the fall o f the Shah in Per­sia— throughout the M iddle East and in all M uslim areas o f the world

These en joy the support o f pow erful state forces, such as Iran on the one hand and Saudi A rab ia and Q atar on the other; Saudi A rabia and Qatar, which are in turn engaged in a bitter struggle for hegem ony in the Sunni world, w hich is also reflected in the context o f pan-A rab satellite inform ation in the duel betw een A1

32 The Chickens Have Come Hom e tc Roost

Jazeera, the Q atar TV station and al-A rabiya, which expresses the interests o f Saudi A rabia and the United A rab Em irates All o f this has been brought on us by the “Arab Springs” that soon revealed them selves for w hat they really were and

on w hich I and others have w ritten at length: a revolt o f the m iddle classes, both secular and Islamic, one arm y against the other And it is still going on, encour­aged by the moral suasion o f the USA, w hich was determ ined to renew the Egyp­tian com m and block that may have been founded on saprophytic soldiers but was still effective in m aintaining law and order, against Israel first and forem ost

Lack o f understanding o f the changes in the Arab, Persian and Turkish world

by the U SA has been catastrophic, preventing them from evaluating the instabil­ity o f the institutional roots o f the M uslim Brotherhood It is not enough to have constitutionalised their behaviour, as has happened in Jordan and M orocco (lest

we forget, m onarchies by divine right, as I have already m entioned, due to their direct descendance from the Prophet!) for approxim ately 50 years: even all o f this has not been enough to govern a country like Egypt or Libya! In overcom ing their links with Islam ic roots founded on the identity of Islam ic law and state law, it has been forgotten that Salafism enjoyed strong support from Saudi A rabia w hilst

Q atar supported the M uslim Brotherhood

R eplacing the m ilitary with those w ho w ere believed to be constitutionalised was therefore not enough to transform the system of w eights and influence in the

M iddle E ast and N orth A frica The process o f deactivation o f m ilitary dictator­ships by political reform entrusted to forces such as the radical Sunnis has had the sam e effect seen in Iraq and long before that in Iran, bringing to pow er the

m ore intransigent Shiism , w hich is the factor that has now destabilised Lebanon and Syria and holds sway in Iraq The risk o f an all-out “Islam ic civil w ar” fought betw een Shiites and Sunnis and even w ithin the Sunni w orld itself is becom ing

m ore and m ore real

It is im portant to rem em ber that internal strife has characterised Islam ic civi­lisation from its very beginnings: the first Islam ic civil war, known in A rabic as

Fitna (a term that reflects concepts of divine proof and discord) that em erged fol­

lowing the death o f the third caliph U thm an betw een supporters o f the right to succession o f one o f the com panions o f the Prophet and those who claim ed the

rights o f his fam ily m em bers (the A h l a l-B a yt, “the people o f the house” ) who sided with A li ibn A bi Talib, cousin and son-in-law o f the Prophet The conflict

betw een these two groups around w hich different socio-econom ic form ations cam e into being gave rise to the rift betw een the Sunnis and Shiites w hich today constitutes the fault line that divides countries that are very different from one another such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and Pakistan

The Chickens Have Com e Home to Roost 33

A longside these ancient rifts, deep-seated conflicts are developing with par­ticular virulence w ithin the Sunni w orld, for exam ple betw een secularists and Islam ists, but also w ithin the heterogeneous and com posite Sunni Islam ist galaxy itself The clash o f civilisations betw een Islam and the West feared by Huntington has been replaced by a m olecular conflict w ithin the Islamic world that threatens

to overw helm even the nation states, as evidenced by the disintegration o f Syria: a tragedy that threatens to strike with particular ferocity the ancient Christian co m ­

m unities o f the M iddle East, a historical bridge betw een the W est and Islam

Traditionally, A rab C hristians w ere protected from the Caliphal authorities by

giving them the status o f dhim m i, w hich adm ittedly legally sanctioned their sub­

ordination to the M uslim s but at least guaranteed their lives and their property

T he current crisis am ongst the precarious A rab nation states, dubbed the “Arab

S pring” by the m edia, is instead causing a proliferation o f radical Sunni Islam ist

m ovem ents that see the C hristians but also the secularists and Shiites as a can ­cer to be w iped out at all costs T his profound and agonising crisis w ithin the Islam ic world is ram pant in the C entral A frican lands, for exam ple in Mali and

N igeria It even jeo p ard ises the stability o f the Congo, which was rebuilt so pains­takingly after the w ar o f the G reat Lakes and the genocide The latter paved the way to a territorial partition that has now unusually been entrusted to the A fri­can elites, which are negotiating directly with an increasingly intrusive C hina as well as with the ancient colonial pow ers, first and forem ost France and the United

K ingdom

The realignm ent o f pow ers in C entral A frica cannot fail to com e up against the problem o f stabilising N igeria This nation-building is fundam ental to an under­standing— and the sam e applies to the C ongo— o f what will be the fate o f these lands and these cultures M ore com plicated still is the problem o f the entire area that stretches from M orocco and the G u lf to Iran: this constitutes the new battle­ground o f the Islam ic w orld that sees the hegem onic role o f the U SA distancing itself m ore and m ore, w ith consequences that could be devastating if this vacuum

is not im m ediately filled

T he energy issue is crucial but not enough to understand the situation Even

in 1956— at the tim e o f the w ar that broke out betw een Israel, France and the

U nited K ingdom against N asser, who nationalised the Suez C anal— the USA took the opportunity to replace the decline o f British hegem ony w ith an unscrupulous struggle against S oviet influence that saved both E gypt and Israel from ruin

Now the gam e is m ore com plicated Certainly, shale oil and gas are m aking

O PE C increasingly w eak, as revealed by the Saudis w ith their ready denials and phenom enological evidence o f rifts in the Royal family: but the opposition to