There is no more talk of war. But it’s good news

You too will have noticed it: there is no longer any talk of war. Nothing. Poof. Off the radar. Of course: sometimes some news arrives. Sometimes some story comes from the counteroffensive. Sometimes there is some shooting from Putin. But, except for a few heroic newspapers that have been trying for about five hundred days to always have Ukraine on the front page, public opinion seems to have suddenly lost interest in the theme of war. And the same with politics. Nothing. Poof. All off the radar. At first glance, the news might appear dramatic. But how? Is there a country at war, which defends its borders, which defends its sovereignty, which defends its freedom, which has been besieged for a year and a half by a country led by a bloodthirsty dictator and we don’t talk about it anymore? If you think about it for a moment, however, it will be easy to understand that the apparently terrible news is actually simply exciting news. A piece of news that shows us a little-told side of the conflict and its unexpected effects in our country. It was said for a long time, remember, that the war in Ukraine would be unsustainable. Unsustainable for our economy. Unsustainable for our well-being. Unsustainable for our exports. Unsustainable for our political system. Unsustainable for our democratic model. Instead, a year and a half after the start of the conflict and a year and a half after the many declarations made by the professionals of the dispute, convinced that defending Ukraine by building a wall against Russia would have caused infinite damage to our country, we are there looking around us and no longer realizing, in our daily lives, the presence of the conflict. Sanctions are not working as well as they could, we know, but in the meantime, thanks to Europe’s unity, they continue to work and continue to cause more damage to Russia than they can to Europe (in the energy sector, there was a 50 percent drop in tax revenues from gas and oil in the first months of 2023 compared to the previous year). The sanctions work. But the military aid with which Ukraine is building its resistance to Russia also works (and the same Trojan horses of Putinism, within our public debate, are damned struggling to find good arguments to accuse the West of being a warmonger). Free trade agreements are also working, which are allowing countries like Italy to make up for the small percentage of exports that must be renounced by staying far from Russia (before the war, Italy exported 1.5 percent of its goods to Russia, against 80 percent of goods going to Western countries, and that eighty percent allowed our country to reach record numbers on exports: last year we broke through the 600 billion euro quota). The European agreements adopted on the price cap, the ceiling on the price of gas adopted at the end of last year in Europe, are also working, which helped to bring the cost of gas per megawatt hour (Mwh) from 300 euros in August 2022 to 28 euros in July 2023. The European policies of diversification of energy sources are also working to overcome dependence on Russia (according to Reuters, in the first half of 2023 Gazprom in fact pumped only 12.1 billion cubic meters of gas in European countries: in 2022 there were six times more). And the harsh but necessary measures taken in recent months by the European Central Bank are also working, which has chosen to move in the opposite direction to that indicated by the united front of Italian populism, which Luciano Capone writes about today in the Foglio, raising rates to cool inflation without collapsing economies. There is no more talk of war, in Italy, and also in Europe, because in a year and a half public opinion, with small and great sacrifices, has understood perfectly what the useful idiots of Putinism strongly denied. That is: the defense of an attacked democracy is not only right but it is perfectly sustainable with the defense of our well-being (and saying the opposite does not lead to any consensus). And this could have happened for some precise, non-discountable reasons. Thanks to the support of Europe, thanks to the sap of globalisation, thanks to the help of the United States (via LNG: the liquefied natural gas which is helping us to replace part of the Russian gas that we no longer buy), thanks to the ECB’s measures. In summary: thanks to all that populism has always dreamed of overthrowing, the free world, including Italy, is succeeding in the difficult task of making the defense of democracy compatible with the defense of our economy. Is there no more talk of war? So good.