The dangerous loneliness of Giorgia Meloni

He travels at a speed different from that of his majority, and even from that of his party. And Tuesday, in Ukraine, with clear words, aligning Italy alongside the United States, England and Poland, the first line in defense of Western democracy, Giorgia Meloni also shattered the forest eternity of those Italian duplicities that in foreign policy has always been, by Christian Democrat and communist tradition, the claim to have advantages both from a drunk wife and from a full barrel. Americans, yes, but also a little Palestinian. With the Constitution, of course, but also with Uncle Stalin: “Has Putin invaded the Ukraine? Yes, but also Zelensky…”. And so while the Prime Minister shows herself at the table of the great Atlantic game, while confirming an ability that is anything but obvious in the complex field of foreign policy, a strange paradox occurs: at the same time she gives a role clear to his country and to itself, the Italian public debate revolves around a surreal and extravagant detail: did Zelensky offend Berlusconi on Tuesday? Certainly Joe Biden won’t sleep in it at night.

On Tuesday, in Ukraine, Giorgia Meloni let the world and the United States understand that no argument, composed or frantic, whether it comes from Silvio Berlusconi, Matteo Salvini or anyone else, shifts her initial certainty by a single millimeter: in this war there is an aggressor and there is an attacked. The aggressor is equipped with one of the largest arsenals of weapons on the planet, the attacked defends its territorial integrity. The aggressor cannot come up with any justification or excuse, the attacked has the right to the most complete solidarity on the part of the international community and on the part of Italy. And he will have it. Along with weapons and a reconstruction plan, “because we won’t look the other way” and “we will fight for you and for your freedom”. In the fresco that Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted in Siena from 1337 to 1340, on the other hand, Strength sits between Peace and Prudence. To the right of the Buongoverno.

And yet, in the same instant in which Meloni presented himself abroad as guarantor and leader of Atlanticism in Italy, while chasing away the ancient ghost of duplicity and ambiguity which are the taint of our country, precisely when in Kyiv he pronounced unequivocal words, in Rome a strange debate flared up which in the journalistic reverberation, at least in some newspapers, yesterday sounded roughly in these terms: Zelensky’s answer to Berlusconi, the one in which the Ukrainian president said that the Cavaliere evidently never had his bombed house, it was a “slap” to Meloni. A fool. When on the contrary it would be logical to assume that Zelensky’s emphasis on Berlusconi’s Russophilia actually further strengthens the idea that Meloni is the only point of reference also abroad of the allies as well as the only interlocutor of the international community, if not in Italy certainly within the government and the centre-right.