#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, FDCA - Il Cantiere #10: The Mediterranean from "Mare Nostrum" to "Medioceano". The new hub of globalization and militarization by Daniele Ratti (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In Taranto, last March, a conference was held organized by the Italian Navy and

the Limes magazine entitled "Italy in the disputed Mediterranean: our strategy".
The meeting attended by Admiral Caffio, the Chief of Staff of the Italian Navy E.
Credendino, the President of the Port Authority System Ionio Prete, analysts and
the Director of Limes magazine was an opportunity to make the point of Italian
interests in the Mediterranean area. The conference expressed the point of view
of the national interest on the current geopolitical and geo-economic situation
that sees the Mediterranean as one of the centers of international competition.
It is no coincidence that the chosen place was Taranto, remember that the city,
since the unification of Italy, is the historic seat of the Navy arsenal,
representing the most important operational base.
The speakers, while developing their specific topics, outlined a common and
shared path. Italy as a processing economy (it imports raw materials and
semi-finished products and then exports finished products) depends significantly
on maritime transport, especially as regards the energy sector (92% of the gas
and oil consumed annually is imported). In the White Paper Of Defense, published
in 2015, it is clearly indicated what is meant by "national interest" or: "all
that is needed to ensure the supply of raw materials and energy sources of which
Italy does not have them and all this which serves to protect our exports ". In
this perspective, the safety of maritime routes becomes a vital factor. The
Mediterranean and in the specific case Taranto, due to its strategic position,
represents a nodal point of economic and therefore geopolitical interests, not
only Italian but of European scope. It should be emphasized that Italy, with
7,500km of coastline, is essentially a maritime country, imports / exports by sea
mark shares of 81% and 74% and transport by water is three times those by road
and 12 times those on rail. Italy is the most important logistic structure in the
Mediterranean and Taranto is in fact in the center, equidistant from the two east
and west outlets, that of Suez and that of Gibraltar. We recall that 90% of world
trade takes place by sea and in the Mediterranean which, although it represents
1% of the world's seas, 20% of global goods circulate. The Mediterranean basin is
a real international hub. Ships from Asia cross Suez and unload goods for
Northern Europe by land, saving 8 days of navigation compared to landings by sea
in the ports of the north of the continent.
It is no coincidence that the EU has declared Taranto one of the 14 strategic
ports included in the connection network between the states of the European
Union. It also plays a leading role with regard to land routes, being the
terminal point of one of the most important corridors of the European commercial
axis, called "corridor number 5", or an integrated system between sea and land
routes that connects the the South North axis of the continent, the one that goes
from Helsinki to Valletta. We remind you that Ferrovie Italiane is planning to
expand the city's railway infrastructures with the construction of railway trains
with a length of 750 meters. It is good underline that Corridor no. 5 was a
choice of the European Commission as an alternative to the construction of the
bridge over the Strait of Messina. The main stretch between Helsinki and Naples
remains unchanged while the land variant Naples Bari Taranto is chosen and then
continues with the "motorway of the sea" up to Valletta. This route is part of
the planning of the great European Corridor of the TEN (Trans European Network).
Corridor no. 5 is part of the other "motorways of the sea" envisaged by the EU
affecting the national territory. The east-west corridor that from Lyon arrives
in Trieste, passing through the Frejus tunnel via Milan and Venice, and the
"corridor of the two seas" or Genoa-Rotterdam through the construction of the
Third Genoa-Milan crossing. Taranto is also at the center of the "horizontal"
European route, the Adriatic Balkan axis which already now conveys most of the
land transits between the Balkans and Northern Europe via the Adriatic.
The Adriatic Balkan axis is assuming an increasingly central role in the
international network, especially in the Silk Road.

Beijing, as is well known, has long since acquired one of the most important
Greek maritime ports, that of Piraeus, which despite being a hub, especially for
the circulation of containers, cannot fully develop its potential due to the lack
of railway infrastructure in the Balkan region. . For this reason, the Adriatic
Balkan axis has taken on more and more consistency, the landing of which in
Taranto allows connection with the Italian and European national railway network.
In other words, the city is the center of a 360 ° crossroads of goods. The
sea-land logistical integration is therefore a decisive element for the
circulation of goods. It is no coincidence that two of the most significant
technical innovations of recent decades have been, the development of containers
(together with the construction of supercontainers ships) and the high-speed rail
network whose use is intended more for goods than for transporting people. These
innovations, together with digitization, have enabled greater interconnection of
global trade.
The strategic position of Italy in the Mediterranean and in particular that of
Taranto is supported by a new mode of circulation of goods between East and West,
especially China and the American continent. Instead of crossing the Pacific,
Chinese goods undertake the Chinese Indo oceanic route and then, through Suez,
land in the Eu ports where a partial unloading of goods takes place and at the
same time a load of goods for the American continent. In fact, the Mediterranean
becomes a link between the two great oceanic masses, the Chinese Indo and the
Atlantic one. For this reason the Mediterranean takes the name of "Medioceano", a
"middle sea". The "Mediocean" is acquiring geo-economic geopolitical and
strategic importance equal to the Pacific area, with a substantial difference. If
in the Pacific the competing actors are substantially two, China and the
Anglo-Australian-American axis, in the Mediterranean the situation is much more
complex and above all the military initiative (on the western Atlantic side)
after the US withdrawal from the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean quadrant , is
the responsibility of Europe and Italy in particular. The EU cannot be militarily
absent from the area as its economy depends on the Mediterranean through which
94% of its exports take place while 70% of freight traffic in the Mediterranean
involves European ports. For these reasons Taranto, at the center of these
commercial networks, can only be the object of a strong presence of the Navy. As
underlined by the President Prete during the conference "With the presence of the
Navy in Taranto, we control foreign investors and not vice versa". For this
reason the territory will see with the growth of commercial importance that of an
increasingly massive militarization aimed at reassuring foreign investors and
national interests. The interventions of the analysts of Limes also touched on a
fundamental point that of the Exclusive Economic Zones, the so-called EEZs. Such
maritime spaces, which include both the seabed and the surface waters, are not
only regulated by supranational agreements, the only international standard is
that which establishes the competence of a single nation at 200 nautical miles
for both seabed and surface. The actual borders of the EEZs are left to
agreements between individual states. It goes without saying that the
geographical conformation of the Mediterranean, a very narrow body of water, does
not allow a linear delimitation of these areas which inevitably overlap, creating
inevitable friction. In this context, which is already complex in itself, two
factors have entered the last decade which have further complicated the regional
stage. The greater Russian presence and above all Turkey's neo-imperial activism.
Turkey is committed to creating the Mavi Atan, in Turkish "Blue Patria" an
expression coined by the Turkish admiral Cem Gurdeniz and adopted by Erdogan. In
short, the "Blue Fatherland" is the guideline of Turkish regional imperialism and
is embodied in the control of the eastern part of the Mediterranean and in the
creation of the EEZ which goes from the Anatolian peninsula, across the
Mediterranean, to Libya. In the "Patria Blu" project, the stipulation of
commercial agreements with the major regional players is also relevant, see
Israel on the south side, Russia on the north side, the EU and in particular
Italy on the west side. As far as Russia is concerned, the expansion in the
Middle East region and above all in Africa (from the Horn of Africa to the Sahel
and Central Africa) make the Mediterranean a firm and indispensable point.

It is significant that until 2015 in the Syrian port of Tartus there was only one
Russian military ship while to date the military units of Moscow amount to 15.
The strategic understanding of the Mediterranean is completed with an
"enlargement" of the strictly geographic borders of the "Mare Nostrum".
The concept of the enlarged Mediterranean is introduced in the official documents
of the Ministry of Defense. It can be represented as an equilateral triangle with
the summit in the Italian peninsula, the west side extends to the Gulf of Guinea
the base that runs along the axis of the Sahel and then arrives, through the Horn
of Africa up to the Persian Gulf in particular the Strait of Hormuz to then
complete the east side going up through the Middle East region. It is quite
intuitive that this triangle encompasses a large part of both African and Middle
Eastern energy resources. Furthermore, if the ENI extractive presence is
superimposed with the location of the Italian international missions, an almost
perfect overlap is obtained. The presence of the Italian international missions
allows the control of the two fundamental strategic "nodes" the Strait of Hormuz
in the Arabian peninsula and Djibouti or the access to the Red Sea and the Suez
Canal.
The Mediterranean and above all its "South Flank" constitute an absolute
strategic priority for both the interests of the Atlantic Alliance and the EU.
NATO is reworking a new "Strategic Concept" for this specific area while the EU
has outlined in the "Strategic Compass" document the guidelines of the Common
Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) for the coming years.
The EU has identified CSDP as the means to be more present in global competition.
The Mediterranean with its "enlarged" appendix is its constituent part. Italy,
due to its geographical location with its Ionian species ports, becomes a
fundamental piece of it.
In this perspective we must therefore read the Italian expansionist policies, now
no longer random but which have a precise design both from an economic point of
view (see ENI and both industrial and manufacturing exports) and military with
the corollary of the immeasurable levitation of military spending ( as opposed to
cuts in social spending) and the "Mediocean" becomes a decisive part of it. The
question is always the same who pays the bill? The wage-earners, the pensioners
and the immense army of the young and not precarious workers are the main
contributors to the industrial military system, from Leonardo to Fincantieri, and
profit to capital. Socialized costs, privatized profit.
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To request a copy of the magazine, send an article or a comment you can write to
ilcantiere@autistici.org
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