“Medioceano” rather than Mediterranean; a cove between two sections of the Ocean World rather than a semi-closed sea nestled between three continents.
In a world where most goods continue to travel by sea, the renewed geopolitical importance of the former Mare Nostrum lies in its role as a connector of a binary system on a planetary scale, a sea in between two oceans: the Atlantic, symbol of American dominance, and the Indo-Pacific, the main arena of the contest between heavyweight powers the United States and China.
It is precisely the concentration of U.S. efforts to contain China in the South China Sea that has led various actors to exploit the openings in the Mediterranean. The penetration of Chinese new maritime silk routes and the military presence of Turkey and Russia in North Africa have transformed its geopolitical orogeny, turning the Strait of Sicily into a space of competition among regional and extra-regional powers along the threshold between worlds perceived as order and chaos. Italy’s own future remains dependent on the sea: the position of a nearly island immersed in the transoceanic strait places Italy at the center of much of the ongoing contests.
The eight thousand kilometers of coastline at the heart of this system and an economy structurally dependent on maritime traffic provide our country with a geostrategic advantage that, if lacking awareness, risks becoming a structural weakness.