“Bussola per un mondo in tempesta” presentazione dell’ultimo libro di Francesco Sylos Labini e Matteo Caravani. Oltre agli autori partecipano: Marco Bertorello e Lucio Valerio Padovani. Organizzata in collaborazione con: Il coraggio della pace – Disama Campagna nazionale Disarma la finanziaria
Category Archives: Geopolitics
Europe’s Technocrats Sabotage Peace Talks
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.
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The Red Thread from Ukraine to Iran
General Wesley Clark, former commander of the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War and Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 1997 to 2000, revealed a disturbing detail in a well-known 2007 interview: shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, he learned within the Pentagon of a strategic plan to launch military operations against seven countries over five years. The targeted countries were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. According to Clark, military interventions aimed at reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and other strategic regions were outlined in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Iran appears as the final target on this list: all the other countries have already experienced profound upheavals, regime changes, and devastating civil wars. The export of democracy, much like the current narrative of the Iranian nuclear threat, has proven to be a tragic rhetorical cover to legitimize, in the eyes of Western public opinion, a strategy driven by geopolitical and economic interests with a clear objective: containing China and, more broadly, the economic and political rise of the BRICS countries.
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Intervento sullo sviluppo scientifico e tecnologico della Cina
“Pianeta Cina. Appunti per il futuro” Intervento sullo sviluppo scientifico e tecnologico della Cina
From the “End of History” to the Beginning of the Current Nightmare
Introduction to Jeffrey Sachs’ lecture at the Vittorio Foundation: “Geopolitics of a changing world” published by Il Ponte
“The old world is dying, the new one is slow to appear, and in this twilight, monsters are born.” This phrase by Antonio Gramsci perfectly captures the essence of the historical moment we are experiencing. Instead of witnessing the “end of history,” we have seen the opening of Pandora’s box, from which have emerged the monsters that inhabit our present nightmare.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Jeffrey Sachs has been an essential reference for understanding its causes. He seems to embody a character from Italo Calvino’s short story All at One Point, narrating his own story—he who was there at the beginning of time and space when the Big Bang occurred. Sachs was there at the Big Bang of our era because he was in the Kremlin’s Hall when Boris Yeltsin signed the decree dissolving the Soviet Union in 1991.
That moment was a key turning point in our era: suffice it to say that in 1991, the “Doomsday Clock” was set at 17 minutes to midnight, whereas in 2024, we are only 90 seconds away from nuclear apocalypse. How and why the peace capital we inherited in 1991 was squandered is the story of the nightmare we are now living.
Continue reading From the “End of History” to the Beginning of the Current Nightmare“Geopolitics of a Changing World: how to avoid the Teucidide’s trap”
Il generale e storico ateniese Tucidide nella sua Storia della guerra del Peloponneso, scrisse che “fu l’ascesa di Atene e la paura che questa incuteva a Sparta a rendere inevitabile la guerra”. Il termine “trappola di Tucidide” è stato coniatoproprio per descrivere la tendenza alla guerra quando una potenza in ascesa sfida lo status di una potenza dominante consolidata. Già dagli inizi degli anni 2000, per effetto della globalizzazione, si poteva dedurre che la Cina e gli USA fossero in una rotta di collisione che avrebbe potuto generare importanti tensioni geopolitiche. Il conflitto in Ucraina ed il massacro di Gaza sembrano dunque essere solo pezzi di un conflitto ancora più grande che incombe su tutti noi: questa volta però una guerra mondiale potrebbe essere fatale per l’umanità. Trovare la strada per evitare la tragedia delle grandi potenze e mettere la pace al centro del dibattito politico dovrebbe essere il perno dell’agenda pubblica e politica.
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Voting against the pipers of the atomic apocalypse.
Noam Chomsky, one of the most insightful living intellectuals, gave the most striking definition of the war in Ukraine: “The reason for insisting on calling it an ‘unprovoked invasion’ is that it is well known that it was provoked. In fact, there have been extensive provocations dating back to the 1990s. This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of almost all top-level US diplomats and anyone with open eyes can see it, whether they are hawks or doves, anyone who knows something about it. Of course, the fact that it was provoked does not imply that it is justified; these are two different things.”
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C’è troppa Gaza su TikTok: per questo lo oscurano
Gli studenti di centinaia di università nel mondo occidentale chiedono una sola cosa: la fine dello sterminio a Gaza. Le immagini che arrivano dalla Palestina passano con difficoltà nei media tradizionali, ma straripano nei social media ormai accessibili in tutto il mondo in tempo reale. Il vettore di questa diffusione è lo smartphone. Come spiega Juan Carlos De Martin nel suo bel libro Contro lo smartphone – Per una tecnologia più democratica (ADD editore), mai prima d’ora un’innovazione tecnologica aveva raggiunto una portata così vasta così velocemente, diventando indispensabile per le attività quotidiane.
There is too much Gaza on TikTok: that’s why they shut it down
Students from hundreds of universities in the Western world are demanding one thing: an end to the massacre in Gaza. The images coming from Palestine face difficulties in traditional media but overflow on social media platforms accessible worldwide in real-time. The vector of this dissemination is the smartphone. As Juan Carlos De Martin explains in his insightful book “Against the Smartphone – Towards a more democratic technology” (ADD Publisher), never before has a technological innovation reached such a vast scale so rapidly, becoming indispensable for daily activities.
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The Economy is Real: This is How China Wins
THE DOUBLE MISTAKE OF EUROPE – Relying on the neoliberal creed, believing it would guarantee supremacy and lasting prosperity, and giving up the role of being a bridge between the United States and the emerging world.
In their recent trip to Beijing, both German Chancellor Scholz and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reproached Xi Jinping for China’s alleged overinvestment in sectors such as electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries, well beyond the capacity of its domestic market, in order to flood global markets with more competitive goods. They both stated that they will not accept their industries being cornered simply because Chinese products enjoy lower production costs.
According to the Chinese, these claims are unfounded. They argue that China’s rise in these sectors has been driven, among other factors, by innovation and supply chains that have made the Chinese production system more competitive. The trade war between Western countries and China seems to be escalating every day, laying the groundwork for a military confrontation in line with the well-known saying by Von Clausewitz that war is the continuation of politics by other means.
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Francesco Sylos Labini 