The Plot against the Mediterranean

To many critics of Atlanticism, the ignition of the ‘Arab Spring’, which resulted in the ‘controlled chaos strategy’ being imposed throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, might have seemed like a contemporary consequence of the globalist strategy.

The truth is, however, that the ongoing Anglo-American meddling in the Mediterranean is the sheer continuation of a tradition dating back to pre-modern times.

More specifically, it is the by-product of the transition from indigenous to externally controlled trade in the Mediterranean Basin,  a process which French historian Fernand Braudel defined as the outcome of the 16th century conjuncture.

According to Braudel, the conjuncture represented a breaking point in the economic history of the Mediterranean, as it determined the shift from a medieval ‘before’ to a modern ‘after’.

Following the demise of Genoa as a maritime power in the first half of the 15th century, Venice’s Serenissima and the Ottoman Empire stood as the sole key-players in the Mediterranean.

If the fall of Constantinople in 1453 on the one hand represented the end of Christian rule over the Sublime Porte, then on the other, the Ottomans, by merging the conquered lands with the Middle Eastern possessions under the same banner, prevented the disintegration of the former Byzantine Mediterranean territories. The political stability thus achieved allowed for the establishment of secure maritime and terrestrial trade routes which, in turn, led to a regime of cooperation between two traditional ‘enemies’ – Venice and the Ottoman Empire – based on the safeguard of mutual commercial interests. The sharing of the same maritime colonies and docking points in the Aegean Sea by Venetian and Ottoman galleys bears testimony to the robust and effective regime of mutual support that the two indigenous entities were able to establish over the Eastern Mediterranean.

This balance, however, changed drastically between the 15th and 16th centuries with the new oceanic dimension of maritime trade. The metals extracted in the New World, paired with the natural abundance of fossil fuels in British and Dutch subsoil and, last but not least, a particularly aggressive entrepreneurial attitude, allowed Britain and the Netherlands to emerge as the new key players in the Mare Nostrum. It was the British in particular who took over the reins of Mediterranean leadership from Venice and the Ottoman Empire, which were abruptly downgraded to the status of second-rate powers in their own vital space.

During the 17th century, whilst Venice had to fence off a multi-vectored attack on its positions in the Adriatic concertedly carried out by the Austro-Hungarians and the Papal State  - the latter acting as the quintessential ‘anti-Italian agent’ and facilitator for the infiltration of foreign powers in the Mediterranean Basin – the Ottoman Empire became an exporter of raw materials to Britain and the North, where these were processed into finished products and sold back to the Ottomans at extortionate prices.

Even though Mediterranean trade flourished thanks to the Levant Company’s aggressive commercial activities in Leghorn and Izmir, this was solely the result of foreign direct investments, which – by definition – are subordinated to the interests and strategies of the foreign entities to whom these investments belong.

Thus, the 16th conjuncture established a proto-colonial relationship between Northern European countries and the Mediterranean.  A “bubble” created through a system that was based on foreign direct investments that allowed the ‘modern’ Northern European nations to determine the commercial and political strategies in the up-until-then ‘medieval’ Mediterranean Basin. 

This tradition has been replicating itself up until today.

16th century Northern European maritime traders have been replaced by supranational organisations, whose long arms dispose of the Mediterranean as they see fit.

Indeed, it comes as no surprise that the countries to be sacrificed on the altar of Eurocracy are the ‘vile’ Southern ones – Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, derogatorily nicknamed PIGS – by ‘virtuous’ and law-abiding Northern Europe.
Moreover, American formidable military presence in the area has – de facto – turned the Mediterranean into a territory under siege.

Besides proving the tautological statement that Italy has only limited sovereignty as a country, the over 60 currently active US military installations on Italian soil bear witness to how the Mediterranean has become the forward operating base for the export and imposition of Western free-market autocracy to a vast area, ranging from the Near and Middle East to Sub-Saharan Africa. The Naval Air Station Sigonella, in Sicily controls US drones operating in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

The joint 2011 Anglo-French-American bombing campaign in Libya in the wake of UN Resolution 1970, which was aimed at overthrowing Gaddafi in order to hone in on the country’s natural resources and allow foreign corporations to swarm into the national market, clearly exemplifies this modus operandi.

Italy has proven – time and again - incapable of projecting a foreign policy of sorts in the Mediterranean, whilst Turkey’s foreign policy has played the bribed gatekeeper’s role in the migrant crisis ever since such was instigated by the Washington-Brussels axis.

Thus, the sabotage carried out in 16th century by British and Northern European proto-industrialists has evolved into the contemporary exploitation of the Mediterranean as the launch-pad from which the advocates of the unipolar world escalate the colonisation of the African, Middle Eastern, and Asian portions of the Third World Belt.