The New Great Game

If on the one hand the farcical state of Italian foreign policy – and the very same meaning of Italy’s standing in the global arena – never fails to regularly make itself grotesquely visible, then on the other it often unveils wider geopolitical dynamics, thus highlighting historically persistent patterns in the relations between global powers.

Such was the case recently when the British liberal newspaper “The Guardian” claimed Russia was suspected of being behind an unsuccessful attempt to hack into Paolo Genitloni’s email account, at the time when the unelected Italian PM held the post of Foreign Minister in Matteo Renzi’s government.

The article claimed that then Foreign Minister Gentiloni wasn’t affected by the attack, further stating that:

The foreign ministry “field offices”, including embassies and staff members who report back to Rome about meetings with foreign officials, were affected by the malware attack. But the government official said sensitive information had not been compromised because it would also been encrypted.

The similarities between this ‘revelation’ and the circumstances surrounding the built-up of neo-McCarthyism during the recent presidential elections in the United States are embarrassingly noticeable.

Indeed, as with previous claims of Russian meddling in American internal political discourse and the Kremlin’s alleged hacking of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail account, the accusations made by the British newspaper are also entirely unsubstantiated.  The lack of any evidence is too conspicuous to be ignored even by the author of the article, who claims that the allegations aren’t confirmed by any official source. adding, however, that:

Two other people with knowledge of the attack said the Russian state was believed to have been behind it.

Moreover, on the grounds of tips received from anonymous sources, the exposé conveniently corroborates Barack Obama’s solemn premonition of Russian efforts to disrupt the ‘democratic course’ of the European Union within the year, by concluding that the aborted attack on Italy’s cyber infrastructure was meant to “gain insight into decision-making within the Italian government”.

Such a statement stands as a bitterly ironic oxymoron in light of historical evidence highlighting the fact that Italy has been lacking any decision-making capability ever since 1945. However, if possessing anything more than a basic grasp of contemporary history – along with the slightest resemblance of deontological standards – might be too much to expect from anyone working within the constraints of modern mainstream media, the clumsily calculated timing of The Guardian’s revelation bears testimony to the true nature of Atlanticist propaganda – one that is so aggressive as not to concern itself anymore with presenting its instrumental narrative in a believable guise.

The article came just two days after Gentiloni’s official meeting with British PM Theresa May, held in London on the 9^th of February. On that occasion, the Italian PM reassured his British counterpart about Rome’s friendly and cooperative stance on the issue of post-Brexit negotiations.

More significantly, Gentiloni stated that President Putin wouldn’t be invited to the next G7 summit to be held in Taormina, Sicily. In doing so, Italian politics didn’t miss yet another opportunity to reaffirm the country’s unconditional surrender to the strategy masterminded and executed by the axis connecting the control rooms in Washington, London, and Brussels, which was responsible for the exclusion of Russia from the G7 in 2014 following the Crimean crisis and the implementation of the sanctions.

Rome’s inevitable feebleness in dealing with the externally imposed escalation of tension with the Kremlin came at a high price for Italian economy, one that – unlike the British one – relied extensively on strong trade relationships built with Russia over time. Indeed, the total volume of exports from Italy to the Russian Federation nearly halved as a result of the sanctions, plunging from a total of fourteen billion US dollars in 2013 to seven billion in 2015.

With fears of a possibly softer American approach to Russia by the newly elected US President Donald Trump casting menacing clouds over the unipolar world order, the United Kingdom has taken upon itself the ad interim responsibility of spearheading the globalist offensive against Moscow.

Immediately before Donald Trump was inaugurated, indiscretions emerged regarding a series of briefings being held by the British government, as part of what officials from the Russian Embassy in London described as an out-and-out “witch hunt” against the Kremlin. Following suit with a narrative ignited by the Obama administration in the dying days of its rule, Britain’s conservative government justified its Cold War frenzy with the need to remain vigilant against a non-well specified Russian plot to undermine the “democratic course” of the nation. Amidst the escalation of diplomatic tension between London and Moscow, British Foreign Minister and former Brexit chieftain Boris Johnson added fuel to the fire, claiming Russia pursued a policy of deceit and sabotage of Western democracies by means of cyber-espionage and “all sorts of dirty tricks”.

Moreover, recently revealed were plans by the flamboyant British FM for the allocation of 700 million GBP to an “empowerment fund” aimed at boosting United Kingdom’s Eastern European allies’ strength– namely Ukraine and the Baltic nations –against the allegedly increased “Russian aggression”. Short of being embarrassingly amusing – given the pre-emptive and unprovoked build-up of NATO troops on the Baltic front – Boris Johnson’s statement is a by-product of Britain’s long-lived anti-Russian sentiment, one that is deeply rooted in the dynamics of 19^th century “Great Game”.

Mainstream Western historiography depicts the “Great Game” as the diplomatic confrontation which took place between two geopolitical superpowers of the time – the Russian and British empires – whose spheres of influence had naturally come to overlap in Central Asia due to mutual expansion, resulting in an inevitable clash for ultimate predominance over such strategic area. This narrative, however, fails to differentiate between the opposite natures of the two empires. Indeed, whilst Britain – a sea-locked entity, geographically cut-off from the natural network of cultures and economies connecting Europe to the Middle East and Asia – built a thalassocratic empire whose components had no mutual geographic and anthropological connection, Russia always was the social, cultural, and economic cusp of the Eurasian heartland – the telluric and organic entity spanning from the black land of Ukraine to the wooded mountains of Eastern Siberia and beyond - a vital space, the Eurasian one, that Britain, true to a corroborated tradition based on piracy and sabotage, attempted to intrude upon from its southern Indian possessions in order to gain access to the vital routes of economic, cultural and political interdependence connecting mainland Europe to Asia. The espionage and deceit techniques utilised by Old Albion in its quest for Eurasian dominance were glorified and romanticised by British author Peter Hopkirk in its bestseller named “The Great Game”.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the United Kingdom, concurrently with concerted Chinese attempts to implement a logistic network spanning the length of the Eurasian continent, has recently revived its predatory and imperialist old habits of towards the heartland that doesn’t naturally belong to it.

With logistic land solutions allowing for a threefold reduction of current maritime delivery times between China and Europe, the “One road-one belt” Chinese initiative would constitute one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of contemporary economics.

Simultaneously,  this ambitious Chinese project promotes the long-awaited, all-rounded cooperation between China and the Eurasian block in an organic system that fosters the establishment of a multipolar world, one in which Russia would naturally acquire centre stage.

Should the “One road-one belt” vision become reality, it would happen to the dismay of Washington and London, whose fortunes have so far relied on the imposition of a unipolar order, rooted in the firm belief in the moral, political, and economic right of the Anglo-Americans to exploit the vast Third World Belt spanning the length of Central and South America, Africa, and Asia.

The emergence of a solid and stable Sino-Eurasian bloc to counteract Atlanticist hegemony is a prospect both the United States and Britain are forced to disrupt by any means,for the world order that emerged from the end of the Cold War to be preserved.

With Russia representing the social, cultural, and political glue to hold East and West together, and with the White House taking what might be seen as a temporary back seat on the anti-Kremlin propaganda, London has revived the “Great Game”.

The fact that The Guardian’s revelations surfaced immediately after the “entente” between the Italian and British Prime Ministers,reveals the depth of the aforementioned strategy – one that envisions most continental European nations as pawns for the Anglo-American grand strategy, to be utilised as buffers or as forward operators in the never ending globalist attack against the Eurasian landmass.

Instead of attempting to mend the breach caused by the sanctions in order to re-establish the traditionally amicable relations between Rome and Moscow – thus partially improving the agonizing Italian economy – Gentiloni conceded to playing the role of an eager pawn in the hands of his Atlanticist master.