Trieste and Rimland: Infrastructures and Conflicts

The term “Rimland” was introduced in the 1930s by American geopolitician Nicholas John Spykman. It defines a coastal strip that, drawing a growing crescent running from the Baltic Sea to Suez, passing through Gibraltar, includes most European countries, as well as the peoples and states that are richest in resources and throughout history have attempted to challenge world power and therefore have encroached on the achievement of hegemony (Sweden, Napoleonic France, and Germany, first Wilhelmine and then Nazi). In 1904, the Briton Halford Mackinder, considered one of the founding fathers of geopolitics, introduced the term “Heartland” to define the central part of Eurasia. The two geopoliticians had a great influence on decision-makers in each other’s empires, first the British and then the American, making them realize that the greatest threat from a geopolitical standpoint was precisely the union of the Heartland and the Rimland, or rather the integration of Eurasia, which would almost automatically lead to the integration of Africa, making the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the central continent of the world – Euraphrasia, which Mackinder called World Island. One of the hawks of the Cold War era, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his famous book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), stated: “The way America ‘governs’ Eurasia is of fundamental importance.”

In fact, Eurasia, with an area of fifty-five million square kilometers of land, covers approximately 37% of the entire surface area of the planet’s emerged landmass and is home to approximately 75% of the world’s population. The Americas account for approximately 13% of the world’s population. Eurasia’s GDP is about 65% of global GDP (Asia 48%, Europe 17%) and growing, while the US GDP is stable at about 18%. Most of the world’s physical wealth is in Eurasia, both in its factories and in its subsoil, where about three-quarters of the world’s known energy resources – rare earth elements and raw materials needed for industrial and technological development – are located. Thus, preventing the economic and political merger of the Rim and Heart lands of Eurasia is a strategic imperative for the global hegemon, which tends to pit the Rimland and its contradictions against the Heartland. Seth Cropsey writes in the April issue of Limes magazine: “America is engaged in a fierce struggle for control of Eurasia that will end with some winner.” After the end of the Cold War, Spykman’s thesis was revived stating that the United States should seek to keep the strip surrounding the Eurasian continent (Rimland) divided so that it would not fall under the hegemony of Germany in the West and China in the East. To prevent the birth of the fear-inspiring Beijing-Moscow-Berlin triangle that would mark the end of American hegemony, which, like previous hegemons, has thrived by organizing blocs, dividing regions, and creating zones of fragmentation, conflict, and barrier-breaking: “Keeping Rimland on fire.” Now there is the added spreading fear of the emergence of new “autocratic” Eurasian powers to maintain the status quo. Given the vast Eurasian potential, it is not surprising that some of Eurasia’s major powers, such as China, Russia, and the Turkic world, are actively working to connect the continent through a system of land and sea routes, exemplified by the New Silk Roads.

And not surprisingly, the USA and its satellites are trying to prevent this by destabilizing various parts of the Rimland, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to Suez. Even using strategic bombing diversions, such as the Nord Stream pipeline, which supplied cheap energy to Germany’s industrial system, which is now consequently in crisis. Advances in science and technology, especially in infrastructure and materials science, have overcome physical and geographical challenges by breaking down strategic barriers. Trieste, an international free port and gateway to Central Europe from the Mediterranean, is unfortunately and (perhaps) eventually fortunately located at a strategic point on the Rimland and has been directly exposed to the geopolitical upheavals passing through it for over a century. Its function as a “gateway” port to Central Europe on the Suez route led to its selection as the terminal of the Maritime Silk Road promoted by China with significant investment in infrastructure. This was one of the topics of the Memorandum of Understanding between Italy and China signed on March 19, 2019. Naturally, this did not please the United States, which instead sees the port of Venice-Julia as a functional part for its nearby Aviano and Vicenza military bases, as well as strategic for Central Europe’s military logistics. Their intervention, heavy though belated as evidence of certain intelligence inefficiency, led to the abandonment of the project: Italy withdrew from the New Silk Road membership in December 2023.

In September 2023, during the G20 summit, Italy joined the India – Middle East – Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), also known as the Cotton Road, to emphasize its opposition to the Silk Road. The White House website is enthusiastic about the initiative included in the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment (PGII), an ambitious and nebulous project, by which the American government wants to connect India to the Middle East and, therefore, Europe through a network of ports, railroads, and submarine cables. The corridor, which will include India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel, and the European Union, will help boost trade, secure energy resources, and improve digital connectivity, as well as help normalize relations between Israel and the Gulf States. Unfortunately, a month after the signing, the Middle East was engulfed in war in Gaza, and Israel’s normalization of relations with its Arab neighbors was undermined along with the Abraham Accords promoted by Washington: the possibility of building a railroad in the desert between Saudi Arabia and the Israeli port of Haifa now seems a pipe dream.

While the situation in the Middle East is getting increasingly worse, US emissaries recently arrived in Trieste with a proposal to make IMEC’s Cotton Road a cornerstone of the Venice-Julia port development: meetings are being held locally and across the ocean, while conferences are being planned for next spring with important international political figures. The slogan is “Three Ports: Mumbai, Dubai, Trieste” (via Haifa), to which three more European ports – Trieste, Gdansk, and Constanta – can be connected, thus creating the Three Seas: a project to link the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas in order to consolidate and strengthen the North-South front line for Russian deterrence between Gdansk and Odessa, along the European Isthmus, with Trieste as a rear area. The clear and stated primary objective is to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank with “dual-use” civil/military infrastructure. Although Three Seas has been planned for about a decade, it has yet to make much progress, primarily due to lack of funds: The United States is thinking about building this type of infrastructure with low commercial interest at the expense of “allies” using financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Investment Bank (EIB). However, there are serious doubts about the EU’s ability to make these large investments, as it will have to take on the estimated one trillion needed to rebuild Ukraine after the Russian-American war on Ukrainian soil finally ends: the United States, the main arms suppliers, has already made it clear that it will not bear the cost of reconstruction. It should be borne in mind that the United States, the initiators of the Three Seas project, in which it is interested for strategic and non-commercial reasons, has so far financed it with only three hundred million dollars: a paltry sum when you consider that France spent seven billion on the Paris Olympics alone. On the economic level, the Three Seas smells like “scam”: an operation, by which the world hegemon wants to force its satellites to pay for new military-strategic infrastructure.

The Port of Trieste has long had commercial rail links to the Baltic Sea and in particular to the German port of Kiel, which anticipates the EU’s Adriatic-Baltic Corridor, while a direct land link to the port of Constanta in Romania must cross the troubled Balkans and Serbia: with what economic benefit?

There is a similar sense of economic “scam” when we hear about IMEC, the Cotton Road, which is supposed to cross territories that have been completely destabilized by violent conflicts and will remain so for decades to come, given the amount of accumulating hatred. Moreover, no major trade corridors between India and Europe based on real operator interest have been established so far: industrial production currently seems insufficient to support the large flows needed to finance so much infrastructure. It is assumed, or rather dreamed, that soon goods transiting 2500 km through Arab desert territories will be able to load peacefully into the Israeli port of Haifa, despite the carnage taking place there, with the decisive contribution of the main Western ally in the region (Israel) and with the United States unable or unwilling to stop them. After more than eight months of naval intervention, the USA has demonstrated that it is unable or unwilling to reestablish routes from the Red Sea to Suez, despite its self-proclaimed role as guarantor of global maritime connectivity. Now they have gone from “clear destiny” of the world’s hegemon and guarantor of sea lanes to “clear decline.” When the Balkans were destabilized by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, accompanied by NATO intervention against Serbia, the big long-haul trucks stopped driving through them to connect Asia Minor to Europe. Then “the maritime highway” was born between Turkey and Trieste, where semi-trailers were loaded onto ferries and rejoined with tractor-trailers upon arrival in Trieste, continuing on to Central Europe. Today, thirty years later, the Balkan TIR route has not resumed, and “the maritime highway” has grown tremendously: semi-trailers travel from Trieste mainly by rail, and Turkish goods account for more than half of the transit cargo to the port of Trieste. However, how can an overland route in the Arab countries with an exit at Haifa in Israel be pacified and quickly made possible when, despite Western military intervention in the Red Sea, they have been unable to restore normalcy to vital traffic through Suez? Moreover, the IMEC – Cotton Road advocated by the United States cuts off Turkey, a fast-growing regional power that immediately reacted with harsh statements from Erdogan: “I said it clearly, and I repeat it: without Turkey there will be no corridor,” “Turkey is an important trade center, our position guarantees the most convenient east-west line of communication. If you want to connect the Persian Gulf to Europe, Turkey remains the most logical route.” Looking at the geographical map, one can only agree with him. The route by which Turkey proposes to connect India to Europe involves, with the approval of the Emirates and Qatar, the construction of a double-track railway line about 1200 kilometers long in populated areas and surrounded by a highway that connects Turkish ports to the port of Al-Fao in Iraq’s Basra province, while the US plan calls for a railroad about 2500 kilometers long in the desert and in a destabilized zone between Dubai (or other Saudi Arabian ports) and Haifa.

Then, broadening our view to entire Eurasia, we find that the Turkic-speaking countries, firmly linked to Turkey, represent the center of the continent.

The Organization of Turkic States, OTS, includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as Turkey: vast territories through which trade routes between the East and Europe have always passed and which are rich in resources: Kazakhstan is the world’s largest exporter of uranium, and the entire territory is rich in hydrocarbons. OTS now apparently includes Turkmenistan as observers, Northern Cyprus (which means a strong Mediterranean projection of Turkey that has also confirmed its hegemony in Tripoli on the Libyan coast), and, to the surprise of Europeans, also Hungary, which is often forgotten as a country that speaks Finno-Ugric language that is similar to Turkish, not Indo-European language. If we were to look more closely at Hungary’s proximity to the Turkic world, we would better understand its foreign policy, which is equally similar to Turkey’s, reaping widely recognized successes: non-interference and mediation in the Russian-American conflict unfolding in Ukraine, predominance of national interests in the agenda dictated by allies (including NATO), great diplomatic unscrupulousness, and attention to the dynamics of Central Asia. All things like Orban’s recent trips to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the USA to seek a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis are branded by the EU as betrayal of loyalty to the West (i.e. NATO, to which they belong). It is no coincidence that in the 19th century, between Turkey, Hungary, and Germany, thanks to Magyar and Ottoman intellectuals, Turanism was born: an ideology aimed at the unification and “revival” of all Turanian, or Ugric, peoples: Ugro-Finnic, Turkic, and Mongolian. This ideology, which takes its name from the geographical name of the “Turanian Lowland” located between the present-day states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan and considered the cradle of the Ural-Altaic population, is still widespread in Asia Minor and Central Asia (and beyond) and inspires Erdogan more than the neo-Ottomanism and Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood with which he is often associated.

But the study of these things and history is hindered by the simplistic and erroneous worldview of the American-led West: out of this willful ignorance come America’s increasingly frequent painful mistakes and hasty escapes (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) with their associated dramatic loss of credibility and deterrence potential. The large Turkic-speaking territory of Central Asia, which extends into China with the Xinjiang region and into Europe with Hungary, is in a phase of economic growth and is crossed by a multitude of infrastructure initiatives, not only logistical but also energy and IT, which aim to connect the Far East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Persian Gulf, and Europe not only in the east-west direction but also north-south. For example, India also supports north-south corridors that cross Afghanistan and connect to major east-west corridors, such as the TITR (Trans-Caspian International Transport Route), which reaches Turkish ports, or north-south corridors such as the INSTC (International North-South Transport Corridor) that enters the Russian Federation.

All actors in the region are firmly committed to maintaining peace and stability to facilitate trade and economic development. The commitment to act as a barrier against conflict, chaos, and war in Central Asia was strongly reaffirmed at a meeting of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), which brings together China, Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and which was also attended by Erdogan from Turkey. The SCO includes much of Eurasia, which does not want conflict within itself.

At this point, the question arises regarding Trieste, which is already effectively linked to Turkey, its main port partner, and which also hosts the Hungarian terminal on the Mediterranean: “What good would it do for the Port of Trieste to abruptly take sides in support of the unlikely IMEC – Cotton Road agreement, conceived in the USA as contrary to the interests of the major Eurasian powers?” Given Turkey’s strong growth in geopolitical power, rewarded by its choice of substantial neutrality and mediation, both in Central Asia and Africa, as well as in the Mediterranean, with power lines that extend in the area between the Turkish and Libyan coasts passing through Cyprus, “wouldn’t a neutralist and non-adjacent position be more convenient for Trieste, in accordance with the status of the International Free Port derived from the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty signed by more than fifteen nations, including the major Eurasian powers China and Russia?”

The development of ties between India and Europe is a good and proper thing, as are all new ties, especially in the future, but it must be carried out in accordance with the interests of all the states of the Eurasian continent along paths determined with the cooperation of all parties and avoiding contrast. Why immediately reject the Turkish proposal, which, as we have seen, goes through Iraq, and instead insist on a path that touches problematic territories marked by serious conflicts, such as Israel and neighboring Arab territories? India, unlike China, does not yet have an industrial system capable of producing large flows of goods with Europe, but it is experiencing strong growth in a new sector: data processing and information technology. It is a global hub, from which submarine and land-based data and software cables depart, usually reaching Europe via Suez, the western Mediterranean, and the Tyrrhenian Sea, often landing in the port of Marseille, which now derives most of its revenue from the flow of goods rather than the flow of data. However, there are no important cables running in the Adriatic. IMEC, Cotton Road, is also planning to lay cables along the same route as the commodities follow – to Haifa: however, the company is not planning submarine cables along the Adriatic to the port of Trieste. Blue Raman is a submarine fiber optic cable project that, once built, should connect India to Europe, pass through the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, and the Western Mediterranean, reaching the European coasts from the Tyrrhenian Sea, apparently leaving aside the Adriatic and Trieste.

Nevertheless, Trieste has an important card allowing it to make landing in its port profitable: the transalpine oil pipeline TAL-SIOT, which after a 750-kilometer journey reaches Bavaria, in the heart of Europe. Well, the company that runs it is already exploring how to bypass the long pipe with data cables that will run along the already mapped out, safe, and effectively monitored route.

Moreover, Trieste, which already boasts the highest density of scientific researchers in the world thanks to the Research Zone, the Elettra synchrotron, and the Center for Theoretical Physics, provides the best environment for the development of data centers and IT companies, where submarine cable landings are usually located and where they could also benefit from the special Free Port regime (non-taxable energy at the lowest price, customs and tax incentives, etc.). At a conference in Trieste in February, Open Fiber, a fiber-optic network infrastructure company, proposed using this city in the Venice-Julia province as a hub for heavy data traffic flows destined for large European servers, but complained of funding problems. Who knows if we will realize that the future of the International Free Port of Trieste may be different from mere logistics and, above all, from military logistics in the service of NATO strategies that would relegate it to the unenviable rank of a legitimate military target.