Trieste 2027: Free Harbor in Dystopian Novel

Winston Churchill wrote: “Before you start a fight, make sure you have a sharp tongue,” alluding to the power of rhetoric in preparing for and leading events. Indeed, his March 5, 1946 speech “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” indelibly marked the Cold War era. It may now appear that European political leaders, supported by much of the media, are engaged in irresponsible preparations, now talking openly and insistently about war on European soil and the need for an arms race. Speeches that until recently were unspeakable are now influencing public opinion, which underestimates their danger, not fully realizing what this drift can lead to and how much it can affect everyone’s daily life.

It is interesting to note that Churchill referred to Trieste as the border between East and West.

Trieste, with its complex history, has an international port, through which 90% of goods are destined for Europe and only 10% for Italy. It is located on an active geopolitical rift, at the junction of the Latin, Slavic, and German worlds, periodically turning into a microcosm of tension tearing the globe apart. On one side is the USA that would like to see this port become an exclusive NATO outpost, and on the other side are those who defend its status of a civilian free port open to all. Central-Eastern Europe, included in the German “value chain,” the natural hinterland of the Giulia region’s port, is trapped between American pressure and the desire to restore profitable trade relations with Russia and China. The city, born as a Freeport of the Habsburg Empire, was linked by intense relations with the twin Freeport of Odessa, founded by Czarina Catherine II. Even Karl Marx wrote about it in two 1857 articles in the New York Tribune: “Trieste has tied its fate to the rising star of Odessa…”

The great tragedies of the 20th century hit it hard: here began the funeral of Franz Ferdinand, assassinated in Sarajevo, whose body arrived on the battleship Viribus Unitis, “cause of war” (the Great, First World War); it was the capital of Adriatic Küstenland, the territory annexed by the Third Reich, with a concentration camp (Risiera) with crematoria run by the SS; it became the “independent” Free Territory of Trieste until 1954; it was a few kilometers away from the bloody Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Each of these military crises took ordinary people by surprise, who, just as today, did not expect such a tragic turn of events.

Trieste is thus a sensitive seismograph of international tensions, and from here one can see the warning signs of geopolitical storms in advance. For example, the current crisis in the Red Sea (and the Suez Canal, to the construction of which Trieste contributed significantly), characterized by the military actions of the Houthis in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, immediately caused a 27% drop in container traffic at the Port of Giulia. The strategic Transalpine Pipeline, which transports oil from Trieste to Bavaria and meets most of the needs of southern Germany, Austria, and Czechia (and which came under gigantic Palestinian attack during Black September in 1972), was most recently fueled by tankers loaded with Russian crude oil coming from the Black Sea. The efficient Adriatic-Baltic rail corridor now connects the ports of Trieste, Kiel, and Rostock. Recently, the United States has been leery of the possibility that the port of Trieste, linked to Europe by an extensive rail network inherited from the Empire, could become the European terminal for the maritime New Silk Road proposed by Beijing, fearing “dual civilian and military use of Chinese commercial transportation.” Nor have they looked favorably on recent investments by Germany’s HHLA, the publicly traded company that controls the port of Hamburg, where it has partnered for decades with China’s Cosco, which acquired a concession for an important terminal at the Port of Trieste. An article in the geopolitical journal Limes 3/24 on the existence of secret treaties between Italy and the USA raised concerns that the port of Trieste was involved, as this explains the 70-year reluctance of Italian governments to fully implement the free harbor status provided for in the 1947 peace treaty and confirmed by the 1954 London Memorandum (an agreement between the USA, Britain, Italy, and then-Yugoslavia that transferred the civil administration of Zone “A” of the Trieste’s Free Territory to the Italian government). Despite unanimous and repeated requests from local institutions, economic operators, and even the Swiss MSC, the largest shipping company in the world, a simple official communication that the port is a duty-free zone in relation to the EU, as expected, has not yet been sent to Brussels, which followed from the peace treaty implemented by the European legislation. As Limes writes, in the same 1954 as the London Memorandum, Italy signed a secret agreement with the USA called BIA (Bilateral Infrastructure Agreement). The text is still classified (i.e. secret), but from various leaks it can be learned that it seems to regulate “organizational procedures for the practical application of bilateral infrastructure programs” in relation to US military bases and “American military presence in Italy’s infrastructure”: the port of Trieste is clearly strategic infrastructure. Also in 1954, the US and Italian governments signed an agreement (Status of Forces Agreement) to share a base in neighboring Aviano, which thus became a NATO base. US Air Force Headquarters in Europe officially activated the US Air Force on February 15, 1955. In 2008, the USA opposed the publication of these secret treaties because it feared that their notoriety could provoke an anti-American resurgence and become an obvious limitation on Italian national sovereignty (Limes 3/24). Obviously, this state of affairs was clearly contrary to the status of the International Free Port, open to all countries equally and without discrimination, as enshrined in the Peace Treaty signed by 21 belligerent powers and still in force. However, the status was quietly violated by the ban on Russian ships berthing as a result of the EU’s fifth package of sanctions of April 2022.

“The question of Trieste” and its port, which was debated in the media worldwide in the 1950s, has returned to the center of international attention in a context that looks at Europe and its German-led economy, which has become the main loser in the clash between the United States and the developing countries of the East. The beginning of 2024 is dramatically marked by a crisis in the world order, and the situation is evolving, expanding the territory of a world in chaos. In the Red Sea, Western naval forces are proving ineffective in countering the Houthis’ asymmetric warfare. Meanwhile, conflict in the Middle East is spreading from southern Lebanon and in turn causing serious tensions in the Balkans, which have never been pacified, with repeated clashes between Muslim Kosovars and Orthodox Serbs, Russia’s historic allies, while in Bosnia the separatist tendency of the Serb Republic is being accentuated.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, both because of ammunition shortages caused by the inability of the Western industrial system to sustain a war of attrition of this intensity over a long period of time and because of manpower shortages, the crisis is also manifesting itself in internal divisions among Kiev’s leaders and opening the way for a Russian offensive as far as Odessa and Transnistria. This would fulfill Russia’s historic desire for access to “warm seas” and security on the “European Isthmus,” the ideal line from Kaliningrad to Odessa, which represents the shortest front on the Sarmatian Plains, through which Western invasions of Russian territory have historically taken place. Tensions are also rising around the Baltic Sea, now effectively a lake controlled by NATO coastal countries, where anti-Russian saboteurs are openly operating, and especially around the Suvalki corridor, which carries supplies to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which the Poles and Lithuanians intend to block after the escalation of events in Ukraine.

In the context of growing global disorder, there is an inevitable convergence of interests between the countries of Eurasia, in particular Russia, which possesses huge sources of energy and raw materials, and the major industrial powers that use them: China and Germany. Thus, the ultimate nightmare of American power tends to come true: “The Eurasian triangle” of Beijing, Moscow, and Berlin. Germany, along with its vast zone of economic influence, including northeastern Italy, has actually entered a deep recession and needs to restore its natural economic model based on importing cheap energy from Russia. Energy supplies were also disrupted by sabotage at the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea: “disengagement” caused by military action. Thus began the birth of a “multipolar Eurasian coalition,” initially informal, with the intention of bringing back the greater order that the American hegemon, in decline and in serious internal crisis, is no longer able to provide in the conditions of growing chaos. A new concept of world order based on multipolarity is developing, which has already manifested itself with the expansion of BRICS. The common Eurasian intention to resume the normal circulation of goods, including Russian and Chinese goods, after a long period of sanctions and blockades that have caused a serious economic crisis in Europe, takes the form of a trade convoy, highly symbolic and accompanied by the military, bound for the strategic port of Trieste, the natural “gateway” to Central-Eastern Europe and the only one in Europe with the legal status of an International Free Port and therefore open to all countries, including those under the sanctions imposed by either side.

The convoy is seen by the United States and its satellites as a provocative violation of unilateral Western sanctions elevated to “erga omnes” (concerning all) international laws, even though the new German government has endorsed the initiative. A subsequent attempt to block it due to a crash escalates into a naval collision that reveals the US’s severe tardiness with hypersonic weapons technology.

The city of Trieste was also involved in espionage and sabotage activities, as already in the 1950s, and in a “hybrid” terrorist attack that caused numerous civilian casualties. Which soon after is juxtaposed with worsening events around Taiwan after other predictable accidents involving autonomous weapons equipped with artificial intelligence during increasingly frequent military exercises in the strait separating it from China. The evolution of a geopolitical and military scenario, enriched by numerous historical and cultural references little known to the Italian public, is intertwined with the personal stories of a small group of young people between fear, love, and hope. And with the desire for peace, neutrality, free trade, and civil coexistence of a population engaged in spite of itself. However, the young people’s hopes are countered by the ominous specters of the outbreak of previous world wars, which are present in the collective consciousness of this region of the world and which they experienced first-hand there generations earlier.