The unprecedented parallel convergences between Berlusconi and Conte
The bizarre effects of some sorties by Berlusconi. Damato's Scratches
Perhaps it is inevitable, since the phenomenon also occurred in the so-called and distant first Republic, and continued in subsequent editions of which I have personally lost count, many have been warned and even analyzed by real or presumed experts in the matter, but it is certainly risky to see foreign policy through the glasses of domestic policy. And vice versa, of course. What emerges is a distorted vision, to the detriment of clarity and objectivity.
I think the young Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has just experienced its effects on her return from the much desired mission to Kiev on the first anniversary of the war undoubtedly waged against Ukraine by Putin's Russia in the conviction, sensationally denied by the facts, of ending it in a few days or weeks as a "special operation". So again the Russians are obliged to call her in order not to end up in jail, giving her the name she deserves, and she ominously deserved it.
BERLUSCONI'S CONTROVERSY AGAINST "MR. ZELENSKY"
In the intentions of the Italian premier, it was to be a mission of further or definitive international accreditation on the Atlanticist and pro-European side of his right-centre government, or centre-right as Silvio Berlusconi still prefers to call it to claim a sort of denomination controlled and guaranteed by his participation, albeit in reduced ranks compared to previous editions, in a series that began in 1994. It had to be, I repeat. But Berlusconi has begun to compromise his credibility by relaunching his now old controversy against "Mr. Zelensky", undeserving, according to him, of courtship, friendship, solidarity and so on for having provoked the war more and before Putin.
Forced home by a seasonal flu that left her with the inconvenience of insistent coughing, the prime minister had to follow this sort of appetizer with understandable disappointment, undeserved after she had given generously, for the ambitions and vanity of the person concerned , of "our best foreign minister" to the Cavaliere, at the risk of demoting the one in office who is Antonio Tajani, Berlusconi's deputy in the party. Where for some time the aspirants to take his place have been growing, being able and having to suffice for him the role that divides the Farnesina and Palazzo Chigi as Minister of Foreign Affairs, in fact, and head of the force delegation in government with the ranks of Vice President of the Council .
Then, having finally recovered from the flu and packed her bags for the trip, the Italian premier was overtaken in international traffic by the American president Joe Biden, presented in Italy by the opposition as a smart ass who moved in such times and ways as to deliberately obscure Meloni , up to denying her or in any case avoiding a meeting between her arrival in Poland from Kiev and Meloni's departure from Poland to Ukraine. A phone call from Biden was not enough to spare the Italian premier half a demotion in the anti-sympathetic newspapers at home, useful for internal policy purposes.
READ FOREIGN POLICY FROM DOMESTIC POLICY
Then in Kiev in the joint press conference with Zelensky, after the visit to the closest places devastated by the war and the final meeting of the mission, the scathing response of the Ukrainian president to the still curious journalists fell like a tile on the head of the premier, after that who had already said in the previous days, that he knew his opinions on the relationship between Putin and Berlusconi. Which the Russian friend has spared – Zelensky said – the bombs and the blood reserved for the Ukrainians. The former Prime Minister replied from Rome, breaking the "silence" announced by the newspaper, claiming the memory of the adolescent years in which his family, in the Second World War, experienced displaced persons.
We have witnessed, again thanks to the glasses of internal politics with which in Italy we are accustomed or condemned, as you prefer, to view foreign policy, the somewhat unusual spectacle of ferociously anti-Berlusconi newspapers rising up against Meloni for not having defended the "ally" from the Zelensky's attacks and ridicule. Who would have humiliated, with his way of doing, the same guest who rushed to confirm her support for the defense of Ukraine "until the end".
From here to supporting, as was shouted from the boxes or from the curves of the opposition, the failure, the flop and the like of Meloni's mission in Kiev, the step was naturally short, indeed very short. But, even at the cost of looking like what I am not, that is, an elector of the party of the Italian premier, and trying to clean the lenses of my glasses very well, it is frankly difficult for me to see Meloni weakened by her trip to Ukraine. And agree with Berlusconi, who had practically advised him against it.
BERLUSCONI ALIGNED WITH CONTE?
Whoever emerges weakened, or most weakened of all, by this international affair, also for the purposes of internal politics, seems to me rather the former prime minister. Who is now, willingly or unwillingly, with his vaunted positions of "man of peace" opposed to all the other men of war, more aligned not even with the Democratic Party, with all his internal troubles destined not to end with the primaries of next Sunday, but to Giuseppe Conte. Not exactly the best, I would say: neither for him personally nor for his party. And not even for his, and ours, Foreign Minister.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/berlusconi-conte-convergenze-ucraina/ on Thu, 23 Feb 2023 06:38:31 +0000.