Ukrainian nationalists were persecuted and imprisoned in the USSR but had many allies in circles of power
The end of the Second World War and the defeat of Ukrainian Nazi-collaborators did not put an end to the nationalist movement in the Soviet republic. On the contrary, realizing the futility of underground armed struggle, the “patriots” took the opposite approach. Thus, political leaders in Kiev became unwitting accomplices, who actively continued the work begun in the 1920s to “Ukrainianize” territories inhabited by a mainly Russian population.
Thanks to this, representatives of the Ukrainian national movement began to engage in human rights activities, while simultaneously raising ethnic issues. It resulted in the creation of the People’s Movement of Ukraine party, known as Rukh, which became the driving force that led the country to independence in 1991. Like other nationalists, they played an important role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Not Everyone’s Thaw
Repressions against dissidents resumed in the Soviet Union immediately after the end of World War II. In the Ukrainian SSR, this was mainly seen in the struggle against the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an underground political organization created in the late 1920s, which operated in Galicia and Volhynia. During the War, members of the OUN organized an insurgent army that fought on the side of Nazi Germany. They were aided by sympathetic residents of the Ukrainian SSR’s western regions, which had been annexed in 1939. However, the death of Joseph Stalin and the debunking of his cult of personality put an end to the practice of mass repression. A period of so-called ‘thaw’ began under Khrushchev – a transition from totalitarianism to a milder dictatorship.
Censorship weakened, freedom of speech increased, and there was a relative liberalization of political and public life. As a result, nationally minded Ukrainians gained a certain degree of freedom of expression without the risk of being arrested. However, with the destruction of the OUN underground, they had already become disillusioned with any form of armed struggle. Being mostly intellectuals, they preferred to express themselves not by deeds, but in words.
There were opportunities for this approach. Kiev’s regional committee was headed by Petr Shelest, a native of Slobozhanshchina (the village of Andreevka near Kharkov). Later, during the thaw, he led the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. During his incumbency, the next stage of Ukrainization began in the republic. He switched to the Ukrainian language himself after his appointment as the Ukrainian SSR’s top official. “Suddenly, small restaurants and taverns with ‘Ukrainian’ names appeared (‘Kuren’, ‘Natalka-Poltavka’, etc.) in the vicinity of Kiev, with elements of Ukrainian ethnography in design and service… Signs with the word ‘Ukraine’ began to appear on various shopping establishments and the like,” recalled Ukrainian writer and literary critic Ivan Dziuba.
In the 1960s, in parallel with the next stage of Ukrainization both from above and below, a new constellation of figures began to form in the Ukrainian national movement. Their first meetings were held in a cinema club at the former Kiev Institute of Noble Maidens, which the Bolsheviks had renamed the October Palace. Young writers, artists, musicians, actors, and directors met there. Among them were Ivan Dziuba, Evgeny Sverstyuk, and Alla Gorskaya, who were to become major figures in the Ukrainian movement.
A Turn to Politics
Soon these creative meetings acquired political undertones. In 1962, artist Alla Gorskaya and poet Vasily Simonenko discovered Bykovnya (now the ‘Bykovnyanskie Graves’ National Historical Memorial) in Kiev and its environs, as well as Vasilkov, which was the killing grounds of the NKVD [the country’s central state agency security, which was replaced by the MSS, and then the KGB – RT], where at least 7,000 victims of Stalin’s repressions were shot and buried from 1937 to 1941.
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They sent a letter to Kiev’s City Council demanding that the existence of these mass graves be made public and turned into a memorial to the victims of Stalin’s terror. At the same time, Ukrainian intellectuals began to oppose what they considered to be the excessive presence of the Russian language in the Ukrainian SSR’s public life, while condemning ideological restrictions on creativity, and so forth. There was no talk about independence yet, but the movement for civil and national rights was constantly strengthening.
1965 became a landmark year. In September, the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by dissident director Sergey Parajanov premiered in Kiev. It tells the story of two young lovers from warring Western Ukrainian families. Before the screening, the director made a speech, and then literary critic Ivan Dziuba, graduate student Vasily Stus, and journalist Vyacheslav Chornovol took the stage.
They announced to the audience that mass repressions were returning, and members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were being arrested on political grounds. After their performance, 140 viewers signed a petition demanding an end to political persecution. This act led to few consequences, except for the expulsion of students from universities and the dismissal of some young people from work, but it constituted the first public protest staged by the new nationally oriented intelligentsia.
For Our and Your Freedom
The protest of Dzyuba, Stus and Chornovol signified that the Ukrainian intelligentsia’s struggle had moved to a qualitatively new stage. Whereas, earlier, everything had been limited to muted discontent voiced in kitchens and creative circles, in 1965, dissidents began instigating acts of public protest. Three months after the scandalous premiere, Dziuba wrote Internationalism or Russification?
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In his book, the author accuses the Soviet leadership of forcibly Russifying Ukrainians, asserting that the party had adhered to the ideology of great-power chauvinism since Stalin’s time. In his opinion, the only way to end the oppression of the Ukrainian people was to return to the Leninist national policy.
The book was mainly distributed in samizdat (banned literature copied and disseminated by readers – RT), but in 1968, it was published in the emigrant magazine Modernity in Munich. This magazine was supported by the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, which was associated with the OUN and its one-time leader, the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Dziuba’s book found wide resonance in society and provoked a reaction from the authorities – the author was expelled from the Writers’ Union.
However, Petr Shelest, being the de facto head of the Ukrainian SSR and a Politburo member, allowed the book to be published for official use and sent copies to regional party committees for review.
Attempt to Stop the Nationalists
After Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Ukrainian intelligentsia feared a new tightening of the screws and prepared a letter of protest against political persecution addressed to the leaders of the USSR – Leonid Brezhnev, Alexey Kosygin, and Nikolay Podgorny, two of whom (Brezhnev and Podgorny) were Ukrainian themselves.
It was signed by 139 figures in culture and the arts. The first among the signatories was director Parajanov.
It is not surprising that rumors concerning an underground terrorist Bandera organization spread in the Ukrainian SSR soon thereafter. Subsequently, some of the most active signatories were arrested. One of the letter’s organizers, Alla Gorskaya, who had discovered secret NKVD execution sites back in 1962, died under strange circumstances. Her father-in-law allegedly struck her with an axe out of personal spite, and then repented and immediately committed suicide. It remains a mystery how an elderly man who walked with a cane after suffering a heart attack could have cut a person down with one blow. One of the unofficial versions attributes the murder to the KGB, which allegedly repeatedly summoned the artist, demanding that she remove her signature from the protest letter.
Despite the murder of Alla Gorskaya, the Ukrainian national movement did not cease its activities. Firstly, an underground culture developed – especially in avant-garde art circles in Kiev, Kharkov, Lvov, and Uzhgorod. Secondly, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which was established in 1976, intensified its human rights activities, while simultaneously raising national issues.
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Responding to attempts to publicize violations of the Ukrainian intelligentsia’s rights, the Soviet government promptly suppressed the activities of human rights defenders. From 1977 to 1979, dozens of people were arrested and sent to camps under anti-Soviet laws, primarily Article 62, part 1, of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR on ‘Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda’. Among them were Viacheslav Chornovol, Levko Lukyanenko, and Vasily Stus. The latter’s guilt was acknowledged in court by his own lawyer, Viktor Medvedchuk (later chairman of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma’s administration and co-chairman of the ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ party – TSFT). In the end, the poet was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 5 years’ exile, which turned out to be a death sentence for him.
While well aware of the possible consequences, the dissidents did not stop fighting for civil and national rights. Not all chose this path, however. Some, having supported the intelligentsia at first, later not only distanced themselves from it, but even actively supported their persecutors. For example, USSR State Prize laureate Ivan Drach criticized Ukrainian nationalists who “come mainly from the western edge of our land.” However, his break with the dissidents did not prevent him from later becoming a figure in the national movement or from participating in the preparation of Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence in 1991.
His colleague in the creative workshop, Dmitriy Pavlichko, was at one time suspected of participating in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the combat wing of the OUN). It is not surprising that he is considered one of the patriarchs of the Ukrainian national movement in today’s Ukraine, as he began advocating for war with Russia in 1991. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, he actively supported Western Ukraine’s annexation by the USSR. For example, he is the author of the following verse: “I am the son of a simple logger, Hutsul from the Carpathian Mountains. Fate smiled sweetly on me, In the glow of the Kremlin stars!”
Independence Movement
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and initiated Perestroika. During the wave of democratization of social and political life, the ‘People’s Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika’, better known as Rukh (from Ukrainian ‘movement’), was created in February of 1989. This was an extremely motley coalition including both moderate communists and radical nationalists, first headed by Ivan Drach, and later shortened its name to simply ‘People’s Movement of Ukraine’.
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After some time, leadership of Rukh fell to Viacheslav Chornovol, who enjoyed great authority among Ukrainian dissidents thanks to his ten-year struggle with the Soviet regime. However, there were also sincere communists like Drach and Pavlychko in the party. Many well-known Ukrainian nationalist leaders who played a huge role in the 2014 Maidan coup and the subsequent war in the Donbass launched their political careers in Rukh, including Oleg Tyagnibok, leader of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist Svoboda party, and Andrey Parubiy, former speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
In the parliamentary elections of March 1990, the Democratic Bloc, which included Rukh, received 111 out of 450 seats, becoming the second largest party in the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. The parliament was controlled by the Communist majority, the so-called ‘Group of 239’, led by Aleksandr Moroz. Nationalists demanding that Ukraine separate from the USSR were supported mainly by residents of Western Ukraine and, partly, Kiev. However, it was Rukh that became the driving force that led Ukraine to independence in 1991.
Events developed at lightning speed. In July of 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, but it had no practical consequences. However, in the wake of rumors about the signing of an updated Union Treaty that would fix the Ukrainian SSR as part of the USSR, students from universities in Kiev and Lviv demanded a new parliamentary election and went on hunger strike, dubbed the ‘Revolution on Granite’.
At the height of events on October Revolution Square (now Independence Square), 150 people were taking part in the hunger strike. After two weeks, the head of the Ukrainian SSR’s Council of Ministers, Vitaly Masol, resigned. But despite some opposition successes, by the summer of 1991, prospects for real Ukrainian independence appeared illusory. In a March referendum, more than 70% of the inhabitants of the Ukrainian SSR voted for the preservation of the USSR.
A Logical Outcome
At a festival on August 17, 1991, Rukh’s leader, Chornovol, acknowledged that the probability of independence was extremely slim. However, just two days later, a coup took place in Moscow, when the State Committee for Emergency Situations (GKChP) emerged to prevent the signing of a new Union Treaty, which would have turned the USSR into a confederation. As a result, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the ‘Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine’ on August 24. The activities of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR were subsequently suspended, and then banned.
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The collaboration of Ukrainian nationalists, Communist directors, and Soviet-Party nomenclature, amplified by the administrative resources of the Ukrainian SSR’s vertical power structure, made it possible to rally public support. On December 1, 1991, a new referendum was held, in which more than 90 percent of residents voted for an independent Ukraine. Ironically, in Ukraine’s first presidential elections, which were held simultaneously, residents voted, in essence, for the preservation of the Ukrainian SSR by electing party apparatchik Leonid Kravchuk, while nationalist candidates Viacheslav Chornovol and Levko Lukianenko couldn’t garner even a third of the votes between them.
Moreover, in 1992, Chornovol and Rukh had already begun to actively promote the federalization of Ukraine “on the principles of nationalism and national unity.” Vladimir Cherniak, a member of Rukh’s Central Committee, stated that the transition to federalism “will accelerate the process of state-building, as it will free the central authorities from solving regional problems, making it possible to focus their attention on global issues.”
However, such initiatives received no response from the population, and disagreements between party members almost resulted in a split. The old constellation of nationalists that had led Ukraine to independence began to exit the political scene. In their place, more radical organizations emerged that demanded total Ukrainization and war with Russia. Among them were the Ukrainian National Assembly, which had its own armed subdivision dubbed the Ukrainian Nationalist Self-Defense, as well as the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, which was renamed Svoboda in 2004.
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The former premier’s Taiwan trip is nothing but a provocation for Beijing to lash out at London, sinking any constructive dialogue
Liz Truss will always be remembered as a disastrous prime minister who spent only a month in office and was outlasted by a head of lettuce.
Her disastrous budget plans sent shudders through the UK economy, eliciting criticism from the British people, MPs and foreign leaders alike. Her ideology-driven political decisions found little sympathy with the public, which repaid her with abysmal approval ratings.
You’d think someone like that would have little credibility as a political adviser, but that apparently isn’t the case. Taiwan, which frequently pays washed-up Western right-wing fanatics to come and visit them as a political stunt, invited Liz Truss to Taipei on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Truss then gave a hawkish speech where she called for an end to all cooperation and dialogue with Beijing and the preparation of Russia-style sanctions in the event of a Taiwan conflict. She also repeated her suggestion of an “Economic NATO” – despite a track record that makes her the last person you’d want to listen to for economic advice.
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Since her brief stay in Downing Street, she has rebranded herself as a full-time anti-China hawk, and now uses her party position and credentials as a former prime minister to try to undermine her successor’s attempts to carefully edge back towards engagement with China. Truss was always a fantasist, a pro-Brexit zealot who embraced a confrontational stance during her time as foreign secretary.
However, as you can imagine, all you need to do to reinvent yourself these days is to become a China basher. It doesn’t matter how much of a joke you otherwise might be. Hence, the UK media made sure that her stay and words in Taiwan were given widespread coverage without the context of her political failures. The UK government has already distanced itself from her trip – a fact that Beijing should take careful notice of (and no doubt has).
The British Conservative Party has always been rife with that sort of factionalism. While the opposition Labour Party tends to hard-line suppress the more ideological wing of its MPs (hence the purge of the left-wing Corbynite faction), Tory ideologues have long held power as a “disruptive” force on the government itself, undermining its foreign policy. It’s a fracture which emerged during the Margaret Thatcher era, where following the breakdown of the “post-war consensus” of economic pragmatism, ideology gained ascendency in the party and soon manifested into Euroscepticism.
This tug of war lasted 30 years, making it harder for Conservative prime ministers to maintain a working relationship with the EU, and eventually culminating in Brexit itself. Once that was out of the way, these ideologues found a new target: China. While Truss has opportunistically jumped on this bandwagon, former arch-Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith had already made himself the UK’s Sinophobe-in-chief. Their common goal is simply to undermine stable ties with Beijing and provoke conflict by spurring on backbench rebellions, making them a challenge for the government to handle.
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Consequently, while Truss may be a national laughingstock thanks to her disastrous tenure as prime minister, this new role she is taking on enables her to cause disruption on this issue. Taiwan, of course, knows this, because its entire foreign policy is premised on trying to undermine the ties of other countries’ relationships with Beijing by spending large amounts of money on inviting figures such as Truss. The timing of the trip was deliberate, coming immediately after the British foreign secretary’s engagement with a senior Chinese official following the coronation of King Charles III.
Taipei hopes that Beijing’s backlash over the Truss visit will target the UK government as a whole and punish the country. China has a record for being abrasive like this, having done so with the Czech Republic in the past and not winning any friends there as a result. If Truss is therefore allowed to dictate the flow of UK-China relations, she wins. Besides her, the UK has never been provocative on Taiwan at a senior level such as with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit last year for the US.
Thus, rather than causing a crisis, China should wait until the upcoming Taiwan elections take place and hope that the more pro-China Kuomintang Party (KMT), which once governed the whole country, will take power and stabilize cross-strait ties again. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thrives off creating crises, as does the US with its military deployments, and amidst it all there is no intention for cool heads to prevail. While Pelosi was a blatant violation and huge provocation of the One China policy and US commitment to it, the Truss trip is an opportunistic PR stunt by a washed-up has-been who almost ran her country into the ground in a month. Ignore, move on and forget.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is looking at ways to address the most pressing global issues without being a disruptive influence
The upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit promises to be a watershed moment in the bloc’s history, coming amid unprecedented global challenges and new, emergent tensions.
While the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting, which took place on May 4 and 5, was tasked with preparing the agenda for the July 3-4 summit in New Delhi, there is still much work to do to ensure that India’s chairmanship will be a success.
The West has broken virtually all links with Russia because of the Ukraine conflict. Western sanctions against Russia are unprecedented in scope, carrying significant ramifications also for the developing world, including the economic disruptions caused by the weaponization of the US dollar. The European security architecture is in tatters. For the West to seek Russia’s strategic defeat while the country possesses formidable military and material resources makes no sense. Risking a potential nuclear conflict in particular is totally irresponsible.
The European Union has lost its already limited capacity to play an independent role, especially with Germany losing clout and Brussels appropriating more power. The doors of dialogue and diplomacy are being kept closed as NATO seeks military advantage over Russia, and uses Ukraine as a proxy.
At the other end of Eurasia, US-China tensions are rising over Taiwan, regional maritime disputes, strengthening of US-centered regional alliances and NATO overtures to Japan and South Korea. The US and the EU are warning China against supplying lethal arms to Russia under pain of sanctions, even as they seek China’s support in persuading Russia to end its military intervention in Ukraine, and this in the background of the high-level dialogue between the US and China having virtually broken down.
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Both Russia and China, the principal pillars of the SCO, are at loggerheads with the West to different degrees, and the summit agenda will inevitably reflect this reality. The SCO represents a building block of multipolarity within the global system at the political, economic and security levels, a goal reiterated at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
While the other SCO members have robust links to both Russia and China, their connections with India are not as strong, despite mutual goodwill and shared interests. This is largely due to a lack of contiguity and direct access to Central Asia. With Iran and Belarus joining as full members, the SCO will achieve greater Eurasian depth. Both of these countries have been politically and economically targeted by the West. The SCO Foreign Ministers meeting also agreed on May 5 to grant dialogue partner status to Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar and the UAE, in addition to the nine existing dialogue partners. The growing interest demonstrates the appeal of the SCO as a grouping of non-Western countries that provide an alternative platform for nations to pursue their interests outside the Western-dominated international system.
Association with the SCO increases their margin to maneuver, primarily at the political and economic levels. Diplomatic support, hedging against Western sanctions, access to non-Western development banks, benefits from connectivity projects and infrastructure development, cooperation against terrorism, extremism and separatism, are obvious advantages.
India has taken its current presidency of the SCO seriously, organizing and hosting more than 100 meetings and events, including 15 ministerial level meetings. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has also stressed the great importance for India of developing multifaceted cooperation. He introduced the term ‘SECURE’ SCO on the basis of Security, Economic Development, Connectivity, Unity, Respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Environmental protection.
As SCO Chair, India initiated an unprecedented engagement with the organization’s Observers and Dialogue Partners by inviting them to participate in more than 14 socio-cultural events. Many of the events hosted by India occurred for the first time in the framework of the SCO, such as the Millet Food Festival, Film Festival, Cultural Festival, the Tourism Mart, and Conference on Shared Buddhist Heritage.
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Jaishankar noted that as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical upheavals, global supply chains had been disrupted, leading to a serious impact on delivering energy, food, and fertilizers to developing nations. He viewed these challenges as an opportunity for SCO members to address them collaboratively, noting that with more than 40% of the world’s population within the SCO, its collective decisions would surely have a global impact.
Additionally, Jaishankar highlighted the unabated menace of terrorism, and that combating it was one of the original mandates of the SCO. He drew attention to the unfolding situation in Afghanistan where the immediate priorities included providing humanitarian assistance, ensuring a truly inclusive and representative government, combating terrorism and drug trafficking and preserving the rights of women, children and minorities. This was echoed by the Chinese foreign minister.
India expressed its willingness to share its expertise and experience in the field of startups having helped cultivate over 70,000, more than 100 of which were ‘unicorns’. Last year, it proposed the creation of a Startups and Innovation working groups as well as one focused on traditional medicines, and the SCO meeting approved plans to operationalize these initiatives.
India believes that the SCO should look at reform and modernization to keep the organization relevant in a rapidly transforming world, and noted that discussions on these issues had already commenced. It also sought support for its long-standing demand to make English the SCO’s third official language, as this would enable a deeper engagement with English-speaking members and would take the SCO’s work to a global audience.
India also proposed the New Delhi Declaration as an SCO Summit Declaration at the meeting, as well as four other thematic joint statements on cooperation in de-radicalization strategies, promotion of millets, sustainable lifestyles to address climate change and digital transformation. India sought support for a timely finalization of these documents for approval at the SCO Summit.
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According to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, all participating parties considered the SCO as an important platform for joint combat against terrorism, separatism, drug trafficking, as well as cyber crimes. All favored more cooperation in such fields as transportation, energy, finance, investment, trade, the digital economy, regional connectivity, deeper cultural and people-to-people exchanges, environmental protection, climate change, sustainable development, and SCO’s strengthened cooperation with the United Nations and BRICS countries.
The meeting also offered the gathered foreign ministers an opportunity for intense bilateral meetings. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met his Chinese counterpart to discuss the implementation of agreements reached between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in March.
The SCO continues to enlarge its footprint, widen its agenda, and carve out a non-Western space in the international system, but some key points of friction remain between members especially China and India. The two countries are currently embroiled in a border dispute that has yet to be settled. Additionally, India stands in opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative due to India’s concerns about connected sovereignty issues.
The other, less important fault line, is India-Pakistan relations. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bhutto Zardari did not help matters by making indirect jibes at India during his speech at the SCO meeting and further criticism of New Delhi in his interviews to the media. His comments elicited a sharp response by the Indian Foreign Minister, but only after the SCO meeting was completed. Pakistan is currently in the throes of a major internal crisis, which may affect its participation in the SCO summit. However, India-Pakistan differences are not germane to the SCO’s growing stature. Far more important is the Russia-India-China triangle.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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Rome is considering leaving the Belt and Road Initiative in a move which will place virtue signaling to other Western states above its own interests
Italy’s membership of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is up for renewal at the end of this year, and Western media outlets are speculating that Rome may choose to leave the pact.
Italy became the first and only G7 nation to join China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure vision, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) just before a tidal wave of anti-China sentiment was unleashed on the world. Indeed, the country’s leadership was in a very different place then, with Italy being led by Giuseppe Conte of the Five Star Movement, whose populism faulted the Euro-Atlantic establishment for decimating the Italian economy through the 2008 debt crisis and the brutal austerity measures which followed. It is little wonder that Italy had decided to look eastwards.
Even 15 years on from the events of 2008, Italy’s economy still has not fully recovered. It was worth $2.4 trillion at the end of that year, but is only at $2.1 trillion now, and barely growing at all. New and concurrent economic crises have taken a toll. Italy’s current leadership no longer believes all roads lead to Rome, let alone to China’s modern-day Silk Road – rather, they lead to Washington. As pressure on the country has grown, its successive leaders, Mario Draghi and Giorgia Meloni, have sought to reset its foreign policy back to transatlantic-oriented goals, ending its rebellion against the establishment and thus contemplating quitting China’s grand initiative.
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Oddly enough, the truth remains that it is the EU and US that stand as the biggest threat to Italy’s prosperity, not China. While dumping the BRI will receive plaudits from the US-dominated commentary circles in these countries, the reality is that they offer no alternative, no plans, and no incentives to make Italy a wealthier country. It is the “sick man” of the G7, an advanced economy that has increasingly lost its competitiveness, but also one that has been thrust into decline by being a southern EU country and a net loser of Eurozone policies.
It is precisely because of the economic upheavals that the country has faced over the past 15 years and widespread political dissatisfaction, that radical and populist politics have gained ground. China was rightfully seen as an alternative, a country that could rapidly expand Italy’s exports and invest in crumbling public infrastructure. However, this has quickly become politically incorrect. Italy’s leaders argue that BRI participation has been a waste of time. However, the reality is that when Eurocrat Mario Draghi came to office, he sought to reset Italy’s foreign policy and began using new “golden powers” to veto and cancel Chinese investments in Italy on a large scale. In 2021 alone, he blocked three Chinese takeovers, including a seed and vegetable producer.
Following Draghi, Giorgia Meloni, despite her outward populism, has been even more prone to pledging Rome’s loyalty to the transatlantic cause, having decided to become vocal in support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and even visit Kiev. At this stage, it is very little surprise that her country is contemplating canceling participation in the BRI, something which can score political points and help dispel doubts about her loyalty to Brussels and Washington. Predictably, the mainstream media narrative readily depicts the BRI in predatory and malign terms, ignoring the obvious empirical truth that it is the EU that has saddled Italy with a national debt larger than its GDP, and not China. Of course, there is no alternative scheme or plan for Italy on offer should it leave the BRI, meaning it is cutting its nose off to spite its face.
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By forfeiting its BRI membership, Italy will undoubtedly lose the opportunity to massively enhance its trade competitiveness, namely by opting out of projects such as Chinese-owned ports and railway links. As an example of this, Greece, to the southeast, has positioned itself as a “gateway to Europe” through Chinese ownership of Pireaus port and its connecting railways, which allows cargo to go up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, into the port and then across Europe. Italy could have competed for a share of this, but it has chosen not to, and it’s not like it will be selling anything additional to the US with its protectionist “America first” policies, is it?
In doing so, Italy has chosen to stop being a leader pursuing its own path in the world to better strengthen its global clout, but instead to be a follower, to play second fiddle to the transatlantic establishment which doesn’t see it as a particularly prominent partner to begin with. Italy joined the BRI precisely because it was sick of being a “rule taker” from Brussels, in a similar vein to what Greece has experienced. Now it appears happy again to hold up the political orthodoxy of the elitist, US-led G7. In doing so, it can kiss goodbye any hopes of becoming a powerful and influential country again anytime soon. Italy is admired mostly for its past, as opposed to what it offers to the world presently, and if its current leadership has its way, that will likely remain the case.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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