Starting from 1946, American foreign policy for decades was inspired by two assumptions-evaluations: if Stalin is like Hitler, there are no negotiations, but total war; if instead Stalin is not Hitler then we must apply the art of “political patience”, containment. The Cameo by Riccardo Ruggeri
After the unpleasant period dominated by the triad of Virus-Vaccini-Pass, I hoped that 2022 would be the year of rebirth and pacification.
Unfortunately, already in February, when the economic-cultural recovery was still very fragile, the criminal Vladimir Putin suddenly dropped the ace of the war against Ukraine, and the balance of the West entered, obviously, in crisis .
The clash on the media and social networks of the previous two years is repeating itself, causing the silent majority of citizens (I am one of them) to enter a state of concern about a possible slide towards the Third World War. The latest polls confirm our great availability towards the Ukrainian people to give them everything possible, but with an insurmountable limit, 70% of us do not want Italy to be directly involved in a nuclear risk war.
In the previous Cameo I told how, having just finished writing a (dystopian) book like “Gordon Comstock’s World War III”, I had a lot of unused preparatory material left. Very useful material for analyzing foreign policy.
This is the real political priority of a country, because it is identified with the interests of Italy, which should be at the center of the interest of all our parties and leaders, regardless of their ideological position. And our interests, for many years now, do not coincide with Joe Biden’s imperial ones, let alone with Vladimir Putin’s equally imperial ones, but much more trivially with those of a part of Europeans, such as Germany, France, Spain and Holland is welcome.
The more time passes, the more this war becomes a confrontation between two thermonuclear powers, with the poor, innocent Ukrainians, forced to put territory, infantry and the dead. And also with a heavy economic involvement of us Europeans.
I would suggest, for those who want it, to study one of the most extraordinary foreign policy documents, the famous “Long Telegram”, by George F. Kennan. This “telegram” will then be the strategic basis of the subsequent “Truman Doctrine”, and the consequent “Marshall Plan”. In July 1947, the document “Long Telegram”, with another title, appeared as an article signed “X” in Foreign Affairs magazine. Let’s remember the facts and the context of that time, because they can be very useful for today.
Kennan was then the charge d’affaires of the American Embassy in Moscow. On February 9, 1946, at the Bolshoi Theater he listens to the speech of Iosif Stalin. The characteristic of Communist leaders (and their mirror-Nazi leaders) has always been to be very sincere about their goals with their followers. Stalin that evening was: I declare that he wanted to expand Soviet imperial policy as far as the Mediterranean. In short, he wanted a foreign policy specular to the imperial one of the United States.
Kennan sent a very long telegram-report of analysis (and doctrine) to Washington, with his proposal for containment. This inspired American foreign policy for decades. Simplifying, the scheme was based on certain assumptions-evaluations: 1 If Stalin is like Hitler, there is no negotiation, but total war, if necessary even nuclear, to destroy him; 2 If Stalin is not Hitler then we must apply the art of “political patience”, containment.
Harry Truman decided for containment, and this strategy was the one that always followed all the American presidents, dem and rep, until the self-collapse, forty years later, of the Soviet Union.
In my opinion it is the same scenario-dilemma that arises today towards Putin’s Russia.
Since we are a parliamentary Republic, it is up to the current Parliament and Premier Mario Draghi to clarify, solving today’s dilemma: 1 Putin is like Hitler
2 Putin is like Stalin
