Adriatic microcosm. Robert Kaplan’s journey between the two shores of the superum sea

From the rise of sovereignties to the end of the nation state. From New York, the writer goes in search of the answers to the thousand questions of our time and does so by studying the coasts and borders

Among the various issues touched upon in the presence of a large group of (rather worried) foreign journalists, last August Giorgia Meloni he had also dealt with that of the Adriatic and its ports to be strengthened, thus officially opening the electoral campaign in Ancona, the red city, and not in Rome, Milan or Naples. After all, the Marche and Abruzzo were the first two regions governed by the Brothers of Italy, two small Adriatic regions. “It doesn’t surprise me – he says Robert D. Kaplan from New York – the Adriatic has always been the gateway to the east not only for Italy but for the whole continent, it is here that the Catholic and Orthodox religions collide, the first and second Rome (Byzantium) and is on this not purely Italian side that the old imperialist dreams were founded, from the Serenissima to D’Annunzio. The 21st century sees geography shrink thanks to global trade, soon China and the Indian Ocean will be much closer than you think and if Italy wants to have a century of prosperity then it needs rather lively Adriatic ports ”.