Triangle Made in USA that Should Pass Through Trieste

On May 21, the Atlantic Council Journal published an article, signed by a group of four experts, “Bridging the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic seas would serve both European and NATO interests,” signed by Kaush Arch (USA), Adam Eberhardt (Poland), Paolo Messa (Italy), and George Scutaru (Romania). Attached to the article was a map showing the “Trieste, Gdansk, Constanta Triangle” called Corridor N3, which we also reproduce here.

All four authors are very well known experts. Kaush Arha is president of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Technical Diplomacy at Purdue. Adam Eberhardt is Deputy Director of the Center for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. The Italian Paolo Messa is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder of Formiche, an Italian cultural and editorial project. George Scutaru is CEO of the Center for New Strategy and former National Security Advisor to the Romanian President.

The Atlantic Council is a high-functioning, high-profile American think tank based in Washington DC, whose purpose is to “advance American leadership and promote international agreements based on the centrality of the Atlantic community to the challenges of the 21st century.”

Similar theses, albeit with a more historical and cultural bias, were also supported by Arha and Messa last March in the article, “Why One Italian Port is Central to Indo-Pacific Competition,” in the American Republican bi-monthly National Interest magazine in Washington. Note 1.

In Central Eastern Europe, it is particularly known for promoting the Three Seas Initiative (3SI), which now unites thirteen countries, from Estonia to Greece, located along the north-south axis between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas. Emerging in 2014 from an initial rapprochement between Poland, Romania, and Croatia, it has since expanded to include Greece, as most recently in September 2023, bringing as a dowry a major US base at the port of Alexandroupolis, near the Dardanelles, along with the bases of Stefanovikeio, Cretan Souda Bay, and Larissa.

The article also argues that part of the $100 billion fund proposed by NATO Secretary Stoltenberg for Ukraine should be allocated to Corridor N3 and concludes as follows: “The United States, Europe, and NATO must strengthen their collective economic and military resilience to counter both Russian military aggression and Chinese economic coercion. Corridors N3 will serve both purposes.

They will not only better mobilize the full force of Central and Eastern European military and defense capabilities, but will also potentially change the region’s interaction with the global economy. No time should be spared to implement this strategic plan.”

Limes (an Italian Center for strategic studies) analyst Mirko Mussetti explained in an article titled “The Three Seas Divides the West and the Russian World,” published by the Italian Navy’s March 2022 monthly Maritime Journal: “The Three Seas Initiative (3SI, jargon for Three Seas) is a regional reworking of NATO’s geopolitical goals: to bring in the Americans, keep out the Russians, and suppress the Germans. It is therefore functional for expanding American hegemony in Central Eastern Europe with a predominantly anti-Russian function, but useful for keeping a close eye on Berlin and containing its expansionist tendencies. This explains the frequent participation of senior Washington officials in summits of twelve countries located between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic seas.”

And more: “Nevertheless, the apparent American interest in this platform of economic and infrastructural cooperation reveals Washington’s goal to degrade or make vulnerable at any time the projects of greater European autonomy (economic, strategic, or cultural) from overwhelming North American influence conceived in the Western capitals of the Old Continent. A compact and pro-American front that diligently carries out the dictates of the White House is becoming rampant in softening or postponing the integration policies being discussed in Brussels. Starting with the recurring idea of giving the EU a common, alternative, and potentially competing defense with the Atlantic Alliance.”

In addition: “Among the main projects is the Rail2Sea rail route, which will connect Gdansk (Poland) on the Baltic Sea to Constanta (Romania) on the Black Sea. Moving goods from a semi-enclosed sea to another semi-enclosed basin is not a good idea; much more preferable would be to employ logistical links to the port city of Trieste on the third sea – the Adriatic (see the following map – ed.). Therefore, the deep meaning of the Rail2Sea railroad project promoted by the USA is not so much in the lauded economic development, but in the efficient transportation of military equipment throughout the eastern flank of NATO… The symmetry of the new virtual ‘Iron Curtain’ is incredible and rests on the two bastions of the Atlantic Alliance’s eastern flank: Poland and Romania.”

If you trace a straight line between Gdansk and Constanta, you will see that it runs very close and almost parallel to the line connecting the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (the old Königsberg where Kant was born) and the city of Odessa, a strategic Ukrainian port on the  Black Sea, crossing Transnistria, which is practically “another exclave under Russian control.”

This is the red line of the European isthmus, that is, the shortest front between the Russian world and Europe, which is under American influence, dotted with military and missile bases.

But this front line needs to be supplied with finances and troops in the event of a clash.

And here is the meaning of the third vertex of the Triangle: the strategic port of Trieste, which, among other things, is very close to the American Aviano airbase, from which the planes that bombed Serbia and Belgrade during the Kosovo war took off in 1999.

In the following map (lower), you can see the triangle proposed by the Atlantic Council Magazine superimposed (in blue) on a previous map of the European Isthmus (circled in pink and with major adjacent military bases marked), published in a December 2021 InsideOver article, time before before Russian troops entered Ukraine (Feb. 24th 2022).

Trieste is a deep seabed port capable of receiving the largest latest-generation ships and is well connected to the interior of Europe by a railroad network that has existed since 1859, a legacy of the Habsburg Empire.

Railroads are the preferred means of rapid transportation of heavy equipment, weapons, and troops.

It is an international free port, as established by the current Peace Treaty of 1947 and its Annex VIII, but for seventy years the Italian Government, which has been its administrator since the 1954 London Memorandum, has been unwilling to fully apply its characteristics of duty-free regime and accessibility to the entire international community with no exception or restriction, “as is usual in other free ports of the world” (Art. 1 of the Annex VIII PT 1947), continuing to treat it as any national port, except for certain customs aspects.

This is despite constant calls for the full application of the Free Port status by port operators, even such large ones as MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company – ed.), and local policies promoted by citizens.

Military use, or “dual use” in favor of one party and to the exclusion of others, does not seem to be in keeping with the spirit of the Freeport, nor with international law still in force.

And the population is unlikely to appreciate that they have become a strategic military logistical base in the event of conflict, especially given the development of medium and long-range assets designed to strike deep behind these types of logistical centers.

With the Three Seas, the idea put forward by the White House in 2014 through restoring and renewing Mezhmorje by Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski, one of the most significant geopolitical theories concerning Europe’s central-eastern space, American strategists have rallied the ranks of Central European countries and tied them logistically and defensively to Washington’s decisions. The process is long-standing and proceeds symmetrically, slowly, and gently: formally, it aims to “boost trade and connectivity in transportation, energy, and infrastructure.”

However, the infrastructure project requires huge capital, and Three Seas has insufficient funds to carry out the planned works worth at least seven billion. The United States said it would intervene by providing twice the capital raised by member states, but when Poland provided 735 million, it changed its mind and said it was only willing to provide loans: only after negotiations, it provided about 300 million. In fact, last year the availability of funds to pay out was about one billion, but only if a clearly exorbitant 14% return is guaranteed.

There is talk of possible but no more concrete financing through the EBRD and EIB, as well as European political consensus, but the Three Seas states represent only 15% of total EU GDP and obviously do not have the economic power to implement all 143 designed infrastructures (railroads, roads, power, data cables).

Thus, the military-strategic dimension of the Three Seas clearly took precedence over the economic one, also as a result of the Ukrainian crisis. By contributing only 30 percent of the money to the Three Sea Fund, the United States shifts much of the cost of its strategic interests to its thirteen member countries.

Now there is a desire to specifically involve Trieste, the historic intermodal “gateway” to central-eastern Europe, which has the advantage of having rail infrastructure, assuming the participation of its territory in the Three Seas, even if not by Italy.

This is not just geopolitical speculation or magazine articles (which are actually preparations for operations): contacts are intensified, searches and pressures are conducted, local and American meetings are organized, and major publicity events are planned.

But Trieste does not offer any new infrastructure, such as, for example, the desirable submarine data cables, which, as is already happening in the port of Marseille, where they generate more revenue than traditional goods, would create additional income for development and value-added production.

The laying of submarine cables for IT infrastructure development in Central and Eastern Europe is planned in Constanta, Gdansk, and Croatia.

The proposal to the port of Trieste, which is suffering greatly from the semi-blocking of the Suez Canal due to the Gaza crisis, would be to make it the European terminal of the Cotton Road – the American answer to China’s New Silk Road, whose marine terminal was to be in the Julian port of Venice before it was blocked by US intervention.

“The Cotton Road, or the India – Middle East – Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), is a logistics corridor project between India and Europe that would allow goods to transit from India to Saudi Arabian ports and then take a route by land to the Israeli port of Haifa, from where they would again sail to Europe.”

But while trade in goods between Central Europe and China is very significant (Germany’s first partner is China), trade with India is not very significant. Moreover, the crisis in the Middle East has made a land route to an Israeli port impossible and has for the moment jeopardized the very Abrahamic Accords, to which Saudi Arabia adhered.

And if that is not enough, Turkey, a regional player of increasing importance, expanding its influence in the Mediterranean from the Turkish coast to Libya with the Mavi Vatan – the Blue Homeland doctrine, opposes it because it will be cut off from trade flows.

“I said it clearly, and I repeat it: no corridor can be established without Turkey,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan thundered after the September 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi, where protocols were signed for the IMEC (India – Middle East – Europe) economic corridor, commonly known as the Cotton Road. And he added: “If you want to connect the Persian Gulf to Europe, Turkey remains the most logical route.”

Unlike the IMEC corridor, Erdogan’s proposed corridor envisions a system of rail and highway links that connects the ports of the Emirates and Qatar to Europe via Iraq and Turkey.

Erdogan said the Emirates, Qatar, and Turkey were “quite ready to begin,” and none of the partners involved “intend to waste any more time.”

This infrastructure project essentially concerns Iraq and involves the construction of a double-track railway line about 1200 kilometers long and a highway leading to the port of Al-Faw in the Iraqi province of Basra.

Turkey and the Gulf oil monarchies have emphasized the possibility that the commercial corridor will also be accompanied by oil and gas pipelines and industrial plants along the route.

Turkey is of great importance for Trieste, where now 60% of transit goods, of which 90% are destined to Europe, come from or are destined to Turkish ports, whose operation has increased also thanks to the diversion of flows and triangulations caused by Western sanctions against Russia and Iran.

Meanwhile, China, through its CCCC (China Communications Construction Compan – ed.), has just acquired 49% of the under-construction deep-water port of Anaklia on the Black Sea in Georgia, linked to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), better known as the “Middle Corridor”: this is the main branch of Beijing’s New Silk Road, which is supposed to connect China and Europe and on which Turkey is very active with its Central Asian partners.

The Georgian port of Anaklia also has ambitions to connect to the Persian Gulf (Basra in Iraq) via the same route indicated by Turkey.

Ankara recently applied to join BRICS with the support of Brazil and Russia, and its Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan flew to Russia on June 11 to attend the summit, as it also prepares to attend the next meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on July 3-4 with China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

On the contrary, US Ambassador to Turkey Jeff Flake in an interview expressed hope that Turkey would remain outside BRICS.

“The Big Game” is back, and not only in Central Asia: since we live in a globalized world, its effects are also evident in Europe, and it directly involves port cities such as Trieste, which in Italy is perceived as a peripheral “top-right city,” but which is instead central to this simmering geopolitical context.

At the moment, “the New Big Game” deals with logistics, energy, and information infrastructures and corridors, but increasingly also military issues: the war in Ukraine has changed the rules of the game, along with the semi-blockade of Suez.

As can be seen, the situation is complex and rapidly evolving, and will be worth examining in subsequent in-depth articles.