October 29, 2025 – Editorial
by Francesco Sylos Labini

According to Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, his European counterparts “are in a state of militarist psychosis (…) and the European Union does not seem interested in the possibility that the Budapest peace summit, proposed by Trump and Putin, could actually lead to peace. Judging by today’s speeches,” he added, “I must conclude that a significant number of European politicians will do everything — even the impossible — to prevent this summit from taking place at all.”

We have thus arrived at a paradoxical situation: European leaders are not merely opposing a specific peace plan, but even the very idea that the presidents of the world’s two leading nuclear powers could meet to seek a path toward dialogue.

Yet it wasn’t always like this. In the long and complex sequence of events that led to Russia’s illegal — albeit largely provoked — invasion, a crucial turning point was the 2008 NATO summit in Budapest. On that occasion, the U.S. administration under George W. Bush pushed for Ukraine and Georgia to be offered a clear path to NATO membership. At the time, Angela Merkel took a more cautious stance, understanding that such a promise, from Putin’s point of view, was equivalent to a real “declaration of war.” Nicolas Sarkozy, too, expressed deep reservations about that decision.

Today, the roles appear reversed: while weak but real signals of openness to dialogue are emerging from Washington, it is the European capitals that are working to block every initiative. Why? What has changed?

Since the 1990s, the European economy has undergone a profound transformation: from a production system based on manufacturing and tangible goods, it has evolved into one dominated by finance — particularly American and British finance. This financialization has also swept through politics, aligning it with the interests of the financial system, to the point of direct influence.

José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission in 2014, is now a non-executive chairman and advisor to Goldman Sachs. Mario Draghi was Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs Europe. Emmanuel Macron began his career at the investment bank Rothschild. Friedrich Merz, now Chancellor of Germany, was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BlackRock Germany.

These are some of the faces of the technocratic elite allegedly acting in the public interest. How such a narrative became so deeply rooted in public opinion is a complex issue. But there is no doubt that the progressive erosion of press freedom and the deep crisis of education and academia have played a major role. Just consider — and Italy is no exception — the widespread use in educational discourse of concepts like “debt” and “educational credit,” terms now used as early as middle school.

The ongoing reforms of the educational system are entrusted to the “technicians” of Bankitalia, who shape every detail to fit the needs of the dominant economic model — namely, the financial one. Finance, therefore, does not merely influence economic decisions: it directly selects the protagonists of politics, determining their priorities and shaping the direction of society as a whole.

Take BlackRock again: beyond investing heavily in Italian public debt by purchasing government bonds, it is also one of the main shareholders in strategic companies like Eni, Enel, and Intesa Sanpaolo. How can a prime minister ignore the interests of one of the three largest financial corporations in the world? It’s no coincidence that Giorgia Meloni, elected in opposition to Mario Draghi, has ended up replicating — or even surpassing — his policies.

The connection between debt and war is anything but metaphorical. In Western countries, both public and private debt have reached structurally unsustainable levels. In this context, the survival of the financial empire appears to rely on a logic of permanent expansion, aimed at securing new resources—following patterns that closely resemble those of ancient colonial empires. Today, Ukraine and Russia are the new theaters of this strategy.

But it is precisely the war in Ukraine that symbolically marks the end of the era of Western supremacy. And while exploitation continues in our countries—fueled by the resignation and apathy of a disoriented public opinion—elsewhere in the world, where 8 billion people live, a new awareness is emerging, slowly but inexorably: that there is an alternative to the trap of infinite, self-perpetuating debt.

Published in Il Fatto Quotidiano