Trieste, US Projects for Indo-Mediterranean and New Silk Roads

On September 1, National Interest magazine, a respected think tank of the US Republican direction since 1985, published a new article on US strategy in the Indo-Mediterranean region: “An Indian Ocean Strategy Is Key to Prevailing Over China.”

The main author is again Kaush Arha (*1) (this time together with National Interest Editor-in-Chief Himberger), whom we have already met in the three articles on American strategic projects for Trieste, published on Pluralia and in the book “International Free Port of Trieste or NATO’s Military Bastion.”

Promptly on September 4, Formiche, the American voicer in Italy, published an article: “U.S. Indian Strategy Serves Italy in IndoMed. Here’s Why.”

Formiche’s article states: “The Indo-Mediterranean (or IndoMed) is a geostrategic environment in which Italian and US interests coincide. For Rome, this is an obvious extension of the projection on the wider Mediterranean – a classic of Italian doctrine – to the east, that is, to the Indo-Pacific. For Washington, this is a crucial region to contain China – economically, commercially, and in the event of a possible global conflict.”

In fact, “our clear purpose in the Indian Ocean is to assert, in close consonance with allies, operational advantages in theater of war, while denying the same to the adversary,” Ahra and Himberger write in the National Interest. “This requires a two-pronged strategy: first, to place tactical and strategic forces in critical geographic areas of the Indian Ocean, and second, to enhance the capabilities of allies and like-minded partners.”

Formiche’s article continues as follows: “…what the two authors write is useful to keep in mind the importance of projects such as IMEC (the commercial corridor connecting India, Europe, and the Middle East, known as the Cotton Road, launched at the same time as last year’s G20 meeting).”

Here the Cotton Road reappears as part of the American military-strategic project.

Because Arha is talking about military force in this National Interest article, as in the previous articles described in the aforementioned Pluralia articles, which point to Trieste as the fundamental connection point between the Cotton Road and the Three Seas.

Economic development considerations are only secondary and are a useful consequence of the fact that the US project could be sold to “allies” who are expected to bear most of the costs.

Actually, the Cotton Road with its supposed Trieste – Dubai – Mumbai triangle (via Haifa) seems devoid of economic specifics, given that it involves an illusory long overland link alongside Saudi Arabia from Dubai – Dammam to Haifa in Israel, whose territory is involved in a major military crisis.

The same is happening with the Three Seas in Europe, with the proposed Trieste – Gdansk – Constanta triangle, whereas little economic interest and cost to the American military-strategic project falls on the “allies.”

On September 10, just six days after the previous article, Kaush Arha is back on the battlefield with a new article in Formiche, this time signed by Italian bigwigs very close to Prime Minister Meloni and her hyper-Atlantic line.

This concerns former foreign minister in the Monti government, former diplomat and now senator for the Brothers of Italy, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata and former diplomatic advisor to Giorgia Meloni in the Chigi government palace, Francesco Maria Talò. Ambassador Talò resigned after a fraudulent phone call organized by two Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus: a phone call in which the prime minister spoke to them for 13 minutes, thinking that the person on the line was the president of the African Union Commission.

In this regular article, we return to Trieste’s strategic role for the Cotton Road, an imaginary transportation corridor that would run from the Persian Gulf ports overland through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel before reaching the Mediterranean. Turkey and Iraq also plan to connect land routes from the Persian Gulf through Anatolia to Europe (but this is in direct contradiction to the Cotton Road conceived in Washington – ed.).

It is noteworthy that Kaush Arha’s articles, signed from time to time with different endorsing partners, deal only with vague issues of economic development, if they are intended for the Italian public, while their main topic is a specific military-strategic aspect, true American interests, if published in the Atlantic Council and National Interest magazines.

The article, co-published with important Italian government diplomats, makes it clear that the project has the support of the current Italian government, which is willing to “sell” Trieste to the United States.

It would not be surprising if in a few months international conferences and initiatives on the Cotton Road and the Three Seas were organized in Trieste, perhaps through right-wing government think tanks, such as the Florence Machiavelli Center for Political and Strategic Studies, whose motto is “Suadere atque agree” – Persuade and act, to complete the analysis and hold conferences for action by policy makers.

While the West is discussing unlikely logistics corridor projects that actually hide far more concrete US military-strategic interests, in July in Astana, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kazakh President Tokayev launched a route that would allow Chinese trucks to arrive at the Kazakh port of Kuryk to cross the Caspian Sea with a final destination in Turkey. Where they can be loaded onto ro-ro ferries following the “sea highway” to Trieste, on which 70% of Turkish exports already travel.

And from Trieste, all of Central-Eastern Europe can be reached thanks to a dense rail network.

Thus, East-West trade will be able to count on a new logistics corridor thanks to the so-called Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), called the Middle Corridor of the New Silk Road, which will become the most strategic for connecting commercial powers on both sides of the Eurasian continent.

It is a route alternative to Suez via Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus to Turkey. Today its cargo flow is 2.3 million tons, but after the planned stages of modernization, within six years it will reach 11 million tons.

A practical time-saving solution could be a list of long-haul trucks, which avoids intermediate checks and delays by providing transit countries with an international customs voucher for multiple countries. The system involves customs, transport ministries, local authorities, and industrial partners from various countries, with whom Chinese road transport companies are constantly opening new routes to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Europe. Similar integration with Georgian railroads is also being considered by the Kazakhstani side in order to significantly ease customs procedures.

In addition, a significant role is played by the cargo terminal in the port of Xi’an, established in the framework of the joint venture of the Chinese-Kazakhstani Trade and Logistics Company, which has the advantage of managing 40% of all container trains directed to Kazakhstan.

The prospects are diverse, as evidenced by Kazakhstan’s decision to encourage Serbia (and hence the Balkans) to explore the possibilities of the Central Corridor of the New Silk Road.

Meanwhile, in Trieste on Sunday, a demonstration crossed the city carrying banners in several languages with the words “TRIESTE PEACE CAPITAL,” “TRIESTE DEMILITARIZED AND NEUTRAL,” and “I WAS NOT BORN FOR NATO WARS.”

The demonstration was promoted by various pacifist and independence groups in Trieste. Boris Popovic, former mayor of the neighboring Slovenian port city of Koper, sent a message announcing a Peace March in October in the cross-border macro-region Alpeadria, between Slovenia, Italy, and Croatia. While the Catholic associations Pax Christi and Fari di Pace (Beacons of Peace) in collaboration with the Weapons Watch Observatory also announce an initiative for peace and against the passage of weapons in the ports of Trieste and Monfalcone on November 20, with the participation of the bishop.

While Italy is busy with vague projects, the Middle Corridor of the New Silk Road is almost ready. Meanwhile, in Trieste there was a march for peace, and this is only the first mobilization

(*1) Kaush Arha is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Center. He is also a senior visiting fellow at the Krach Institute for Technical Diplomacy at Purdue. Previously, Arha served as a Senior Advisor for Strategic Engagement at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where he led the agency’s global structure for countering the malicious acts of US adversaries. He co-chaired, along with the USAID Deputy Administrator, the Clear Choice Executive Council, comprised of agency leadership, to operationalize the US National Security Strategy while implementing US development assistance and diplomacy in the global competitive space (from the Atlantic Council website).