Adnkronos Roma, 23 mar. (Adnkronos) – "Sono gli Stati Uniti, sempre loro, il grande spartiacque della politica italiana (ed europea). Solo che oggi quello spartiacque divide in nome dell’egoismo, del ripiegarsi su se stessi, dell’unilateralismo, di una sorta di indifferenza. Laddove un tempo niente affatto lontano esso pareva invece segnato dagli eccessi di una premura che stava quasi a ridosso dell’imperialismo (e per qualcuno anche oltre).
Così, se una volta le interferenze americane si presentavano in nome della loro pretesa di primato, oggi assumono piuttosto il carattere dell’indifferenza. Restano gli interessi in campo, e tutti quei conti che nella geopolitica debbono sempre tornare. Ma il modo di farli, quei conti, è radicalmente diverso.
We have spent years and years feeling, let's say, pressured by American hegemony. Not all of us, obviously - and fortunately. For almost half a century the great democratic forces that found themselves at the helm of the country chose to keep Italy's Atlantic anchor firm. There was the shadow of the war in Vietnam, of course. And then the one in Iraq. And then the thousand suspicions about the interference, the impatience, the incursions of the star-spangled power into those more internal territories where each country should be able to do things its own way. This resulted in the great difficulty of adjusting our internal balances so that our sovereignty was guaranteed and their suspicions, their distrust did not become too cumbersome.
Anyone who has even glanced at the past political vicissitudes of our country cannot help but remember that endless swing. The American ambassador Clara Luce who in the fifties lamented the trip of the President of the Republic Gronchi to the USSR. The other ambassador Gardner who twenty and more years later tried to slow down the push that led to national solidarity. And then Craxi who responded harshly to Reagan at the time of the Achille Lauro and Sigonella. Not to mention the government decision, at the time of Cossiga, to host the Euromissiles in our territories and the virulent protests by the opposition.
All this coming and going, this constant tightening and then loosening of the bolts of our alliance occurred in the presence of an America that was the gendarme of the planet, or leader of the free world, if you will. But that very America, sometimes cumbersome, sometimes saving, was in some way the guarantee of our being in the world, and also of our being on the right side. Even some of its interferences, however questionable, served to do away with the ghost of that other America - indifferent, solitary, isolationist - that Roosevelt had done away with great (and very meritorious) effort in the early 1940s.
And now? If we look at the news of the last few weeks, it seems that American isolationism is now making a major comeback. And that Europe, all together and country by country, is about to be its first and main victim. A circumstance that at this point should induce us to do at least two things. The first. Acknowledge that in the presence of a senior partner so unstable and so detached from our fate, only the strengthening of the European bond will give us some chance of counting at least a little on the international stage. The second. That an America so withdrawn into itself as the one that the second Trump presidency is shaping no longer leaves us any room to be too accommodating or to become too quarrelsome".
"In other words, it is no longer the time for alignment, much less for subservience. Nor, however, for vilification. The first is denied by current events. The second is discouraged by the great global storm that is approaching. Finding the right balance between a bond that is breaking and a balance that must be found again will not be an easy task at all. It will be necessary to consider, above all, that this new America respects power relations almost 'religiously'. And therefore it knows how to be more generous with the strong rather than with the weak. It will be on this most savage territory, therefore, that a not small part of our Italian-European destiny will be played out". (by Marco Follini)