Opinions #14/24

Macron’s pirouettes and Scholz’s stuttering say a lot about Europe’s difficulties in the face of a crisis on its doorstep. But they don’t say everything. After a brief period, in which they sought to build their “sovereignty” – in the diplomatic, military, financial, technological, and medical spheres – the leadership of the Old Continent returned to adopting the subordinate role that had characterized its history since the mid-twentieth century. With an aggravating circumstance compared to the recent past: it was willing to follow the direction indicated by Washington, but also has to wait for the outcome of the electoral dispute between Biden and Trump, drawing on positions and strategies that have never before been so contradictory in foreign policy. But the rest of the world keeps going. In his essay on Modi’s India, Ambassador Daniele Mancini illustrates the depth of the evolution taking place in the world’s most populous country, a hitherto silent and reticent superpower that intends to make its greatness increasingly evident in the international context. The greatness that the United States and Europe, when they had it, could not use to prevent or limit the worst colonial consequences in equatorial Africa: the genocide in Rwanda, whose origins and responsibilities, direct and indirect, are reconstructed by Massimo Nava.

Alessandro Cassieri

Editor-in-chief