The Europe That Exists – OpEd
Criticisms point out of diversity, which is the strength, and forget culture, which is the real growth engine
It is a real shame that England is missing from the European elections. It would teach us that for decades now, democracies have been voting on the basis of a ‘no’ vote. The yes doesn’t make it. They have an accessory function.
It is a fact that governments change, majorities are nullified, but electoral campaigns are exalted in denial, and Clement Attlee is the forerunner of all government “nos”. On the eve of the negotiations to divide up the world after the Second World War, the Labour leader replaced Churchill who, more than any other Western leader besides De Gaulle, had won the Second World War morally for the West. Moral merits did not prevent him from losing the empire that was ceded to Washington – the African colonies, the Asian colonies had only long since been liberated.
And it was an Englishman, Lord Keynes, who sanctioned the advent of His Majesty the Dollar and the decline of the pound as a handmaid in the secret suites of Bretton Woods. The pound was partially redeemed by an adequate development of tax havens. But Stalin’s surprise at the resumption of negotiations for the division of the world, suspended for the elections, when he did not find Winston with a cigar and bowler hat, and sat next to Attlee, of the “never seen before” series, is historic. And it is no coincidence that the historical picture of that partition of the planet remains the one with Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, naturally seated because Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had polio but had forgotten for twelve years of his presidency to tell that to the American voters and who only discovered it a couple of decades later.
Therefore, in modern democracies, “no” reigns. It’s easier to pronounce and if consolidated with an integrative f..k it’s easier to capitalize on electoral votes.
Returning to the risk of saying no to Europe, in Italy a serious danger was Paolo Savona, past enfant gatè, very much gaté and a little enfant, diverted in time to Cosob before it developed Plan B for the euro, an unimaginable economic and political disaster.
To the promoters of the “no” virus, it must be reminded that Europe is by far the most extraordinary cultural and political entity that world diplomacy has managed to produce, it is not far-fetched to say, in the centuries, as many as have passed since the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Critics fail to notice that Europe has abolished borders, abolished internal wars, cancelled petty geo-nationalistic diatribes, created a single currency and invented Erasmus, a wonderful initiative of circulation between students invented by the formidable Sofia Corradi, “Mamma Erasmus” and in any case all eighteen-year-olds should be guaranteed forever free movement on European railways.
A small detail to reiterate to the critics: all without wars, but with culture. Once upon a time, Metternich said that Italy was a geographical expression, confusing territories with culture. In this mistake was displaced by Kissinger a very modest diplomat, unsuccessful in almost all his gimmicks, famous more for massacres than for political constructions. Suffice it to say that his greatest genius was the opening to China – something for which we are all grateful – but seen as an anti-Soviet function that in the space of half a century has turned into a solid Russian-Chinese alliance and the greatest American economic antagonist. For him, too, Europe was a geographical expression – world order restored – ignoring the immensity of this continent’s cultural richness.
Culture, like it or not, is the soul of progress. Today, with the Internet, with artificial intelligence, knowledge is on its way to becoming the true measure of the wealth of nations (GDP Knowledge) by supplanting the old, retro, troglodyte GDP, as the most populous country, in the world India has already decided to do.
Friends of the no, Europe has a variety of cultural reserves that do not exist elsewhere with the sole exception of India and Africa. That is the greatness of Europe, but none of the candidates in the elections exalts it.
This immense wealth of Europe is the envy of all. From America, which is unable to talk to other powers because it still lives on the remnants of power monopolists. Envied by Russia, which aspires, and has the right, to be part of it politically, but which, besieged on all sides, has had to take refuge in Asia, the most tragic of diplomatic nonsense according to Brizinsky. Envied by China, which knows it can’t do without it, and lands there with the New Silk Road.
Enough of the no’s. Praise to the bureaucracies that have consolidated a common thought about dates and its mass consumption. Praise to the legal entities that are creating a common pattern. But above all, praise for the diversity of political vision that allows us to hypothesize an Orban, a Scholz, a Le Pen, with whom one can disagree, but which allow us to develop a richer planetary political dialectic. Europe is alive because of its diversity.
Let’s make peace with Russia, its expulsion from the European cultural context is ridiculous, clearly saving Atlantic security. Open up to Africa, which is the real future of Europe. Why did China settle in Africa? And open up to Draghi without ifs and equivocations.
Diversity is the unifying element of Europe. Let’s savor it and be proud of it.
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