Speech by Riccardo Vatelli at the European Conference on Multipolarity

Good evening everyone!

As a passionate student of Multipolarity, I’m honored to take part in this event and to be able to learn from the distinguished international personalities gathered here.

This conference represents another important step on the path to a future Multipolar World and I’m thrilled to have the chance to speak as a guest, so I’m grateful for this opportunity.

While I’m still a neophyte, I will try to touch upon and discuss about significant aspects and points of view concerning Multipolarity, from what I have studied thus far of the works of Professor Alexandr Dugin and other present and past illustrious intellectuals.

In the years following the collapse of the USSR superpower and the disappearance of the second pole represented by the socialist bloc within the Bipolar World, the asymmetric advantage in strategic potential gained by the now-remaining U.S. superpower (or hyperpower, in Hubert Védrine's words) seemed to pave the way toward the triumph of Thalassocracy and the achievement of a geopolitical checkmate for the control of the Heartland, thanks to the domination of the Rimland through a gradual harnessing of non-NATO countries in the meshes of Atlanticism. In this way, the United States, as the supreme modern embodiment of the Sea Power, was to permanently crush the Land Power, standing as the sole pole of world influence and as the promoter of a globalization process aimed at the worldwide affirmation of Thalassocratic values, thus ending the existential clash between Behemoth and Leviathan. However, the unipolar American hegemony that arose at the end of the Cold War is faltering, the rosy expectations of the New American Century spearheaded by "America at the Apex" must reckon with the reality of an emerging Multipolar World. History did not end.

First of all, Multipolarism stands as the antithesis of unipolarism, thus of U.S. thalassocratic imperialism,of multilateralism and alterglobalist, neo-Marxist, antiglobalist and nonpolar tendencies. Starting from its  philosophical foundations, the Multipolar Theory rejects the imposition of universality advanced by the Western civilization, proponent of the imperishable myth of the so-called ‘Progress’ and of a perpetual movement of centralization and simplification against the plurality of world ideologies, cultures and religions. As opposed to neoliberal globalism, the Multipolar Theory outlines an approach fundamentally characterized by an appreciation of the variety of human cultures, based on an anti-racist philosophy in a broad sense: while rejecting the absoluteness of those political, economic and social dogmas professed by the Western civilization, including liberalism, materialism and individualism among the others, unquestionable discriminators between the West and the rest of the world, marked as inferior and underdeveloped because not properly aligned with them, Multipolarity favors full recognition of the multiple existing kinds of humanity, each equally worthy and free to develop according to its own will, among which the Western European and North American ones constitute only two possible declinations.

From a strategic point of view, an absolute pillar of the multipolar vision is the concept of pole as a composite power structure that brings together and integrates multiple territories to form an autonomous and cohesive political, economic, military, and sociocultural configuration in pursuit of its strategic interests, in which the positive local heterogeneity of individual pole components is respected. Multipolarism does not propose a constitutive ideology of a new hypothetical second pole, in line with a Cold War bipolar vision, but rather outlines a geopolitical project hinged on the formation of several sovereign world poles that united together manage to symmetrically challenge the established unipolar order. It presents a future Multipolar World as the integration of a number of Civilization-States as main actors, whose number does not necessarily match that of current legally recognized nation-states, beyond the Westphalian model of nominal sovereignty.

Civilization stands as a key notion of Multipolarity, taking into consideration Samuel Huntington's formulation in this regard, and a key operative concept lies in the principle of Great Space (Carl Schmitt's  Großraum): it not only quantitatively delineates the specific morphological characteristics of a geographic area so identified, but also qualitatively describes the degree to which the space is integrated and developed in relation to the social and cultural cohesion formed in it. Civilization is framed as a historical form of Great Space characterized by cultural, philosophical, linguistic and religious unity. There also exists another historical form of Great Space, embodied by the Empire, a concept to this day still relevant and functional when considered, in a properly political sense, as a centralized organization of a multitude of local sociopolitical entities, acting as a strategic unit in granting their security, while preserving and fostering the decision-making autonomy of the individual local realities on non-strategic matters (i.e. management of the educational and health system or choices in the economic field). An essential spatial continuity has been highlighted between Civilization and Empire, in which the Great Space is a common matrix. Therefore, the theory of Great Spaces is considered particularly suitable with respect to the political, cultural and religious issues peculiar to a world order involving the coexistence of different decision-making centers corresponding to different civilizations, an order of 'great spaces.'

Regarding the technological and socioeconomic development from the perspective of disengaging from Western domination, 'Modernization without Westernization' represents a highly relevant thesis for the Multipolar Theory, a powerful conceptualization according to which the adoption of Western countries’ technological achievements by non-Western countries has to be separated from the ideological content of the former and must not imply the gradual suppression of the latter's traditional value system and identity characteristics, so that the absorption of innovations and new methodologies produced by the West must only serve to assist the strengthening of the national system and the preservation of the cultural and economic sovereignty.

In conclusion, I would like to briefly discuss about the European matter.

Europe has often been considered an ideal candidate for the role of pole in the Multipolar World, given the heterogeneity of its peoples, the breadth of its territories, and the amount of resources at its disposal.

At present, however, it is an entity incorporated into the Global Western Project, whose political, cultural and geopolitical strength and heritage has been submitted to the domination of the Global Empire, which considers it its own appendix stripped of decision-making autonomy.

The European geopolitical identity is regarded as twofold, an atlantist one and a continentalist one, a battleground of worldviews. As long as the atlantist identity is predominant, unipolarity will be favored and specific European interests different from those of the U.S. will not be pursued. Only when the continentalist identity will emerge, fulfilling its desire of independence from U.S. hegemony, the chance will arise to create a politically, economically and militarily autonomous power center, whose boundaries will include the European civilization with its own identity and its own initiatives concerning the models to be adopted and the choices to be made in every field.

By deviating from financial capitalism and totalitarian liberalism, Europe could be built on alternative foundations that would favor its continental geopolitical nature, eventually giving rise to a Greater Europe capable of interacting and cooperating with other civilizations of the Multipolar World in order to counteract the Atlantist system.

Thank you very much for your kind attention, I wish you all the best!