The sale of 30 French Rafale to Egypt is a wake-up call for Mario Draghi’s Italy. From Cairo to Beijing, from Moscow to Istanbul we need a realpolitik bathroom (which better defends human rights)
“Foreign policy is not done with good intentions”. A healthy realpolitik bathroom wouldn’t hurt Italy’s Mario Draghi, he says Formiche.net Giulio Sapelli, economist and historian of the University of Milan. From the dismay at the 30 French Rafales sold to Al-Sisi’s Egypt to the shyness towards China and Russia, there is still a long way to go.
Professor, how heavy is Mario Draghi’s Italy?
More than that of Conte, because it is presumed to have a more direct relationship with the United States. But the ground to be recovered is enormous. Italy has always remained a vassal state which, at times, managed to overcome the emperor. With its projection in the Mediterranean. With its ability to mediate between the United States and the USSR. All things disappeared.
Why?
For an episodic vision of foreign policy, devoid of any wide-ranging strategy which, unfortunately, continues even now. We did not follow France in defense of the waters of Cyprus. We have not followed Greece, which should instead be a model. Draghi has yet to prove that he is a great statesman. The gaffe with Turkey is worrying. The US manages to do both: it defends human rights, but it does not abandon a key NATO ally. We are no longer capable of this realpolitik.
France yes. And in fact he sells 30 Rafale to Al-Sisi’s Egypt.
France, which is also shaken by an internal storm, as demonstrated by the protest document of the Armed Forces, does two things. Diplomacy, which some people miss, is also the best way to defend human rights. Power projection: a mediation policy that does not renounce the use of force, under the banner of Talleyrand. Italy neither. Yet we should have learned something from the Vatican: Monsignor Casaroli did not conduct foreign policy by hanging posters. Even the agreement of the Holy See with China, shared or not, is based on criteria of the highest diplomacy.
Should Italy worry about the Paris-Cairo axis?
No, France still has to weave a lot of thread to reach us. Despite the serious Regeni case, we have solid relations with Al Sisi. Egyptian state capitalism knows that Italy, not France, has given it energy autonomy, thanks to Eni and the best of diplomats. The French overtaking is not here.
Where then?
In the African strategy. Paris moves on several fronts at the same time, has an imposing presence in the Sahel and throughout the pre-tropical belt, from Mali to Burkina Faso, from the Ivory Coast to Congo Brazzaville and the countries of the old African franc. It is this force that gives France weight in Libya.
Speaking of realpolitik, the EU has just held back the Chinese investment agreement that attracted criticism from the Biden administration in November.
There is only one reason for this awakening: the decline of Angela Merkel and the reversal of the interest groups and the cusp of German capitalism that revolve around her. After fifteen years they and a large part of the CDU have understood that it is worthwhile to have good relations with the United States, that China is a powder keg.
That is?
It is no coincidence that more than a thousand large American companies have left the country in recent years. Worrying news arrives every day. A terrifying demographic crisis, to which is added the internal conflict within the armed forces and the party. The Hong Kong squeeze is the consequence of this escalation.
Who will fill the void left by Merkel?
Nobody, that’s the problem. The Greens are too weak, the SPD has been liquidated. There is to be hoped for an advance by the conservatives to curb the extreme right. We would need a figure like the French general Pierre De Villers, who would prevent a profound crisis between the republic, the army and capitalism. As always, the fate of France and Germany are linked.
Even with Russia, the EU has begun to raise its voice. Too little?
I don’t know if they raised their voices, they certainly didn’t hear it. Borrell went to Moscow to be slapped by Lavrov, who is the heir to a great Russian diplomatic tradition, the one that dates back to Primakov and the Imeo (Moscow Institute of Middle Eastern Studies). It would take an Aznar, a Gonzalez. Leaders, not bureaucrats.
How do you explain the growing tensions between the West and Russia?
The explanation is always the same. Putin’s Russia is permeated with a desire for revanche. He believes that the Reagan-Gorbachev “gentlemen’s pact” has been violated, ie the agreement that no state bordering the former USSR would join NATO or the EU in the coming years. And he wants to redeem the “humiliation” inflicted on the country in the 1990s.
But it is Russia that provokes, with the maneuvers on the Ukrainian border, and the continuous violations of the ceasefire.
Of course, for a very specific reason. The Russians have never abandoned their vocation to have one foot in the Pacific and one foot in the warm seas, from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, to Vlodivostok and the Crimea. The enlargement of NATO and the EU to the east have awakened the “isolation syndrome” in Moscow. And this fear, if the Western elites do not notice in time, can lead to an embrace with China. It would be a grave danger to the world.