Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi meets Wednesday in Washington with Joe Biden and proposes to the President of the United States that he advocate a ceasefire in Ukraine. The Roman consul also asks the emperor to negotiate with Russia the release of wheat shipments blocked in the Black Sea ports, in order to avoid a food drama in North Africa and the Middle East within a few months. India was one of the alternatives, but the phenomenal heat wave of recent weeks in South Asia has forced them to suspend wheat exports. A heat stroke in India can be more dangerous than the blockade of the port of Odessa. Intertwined energy crisis and food crisis could turn the winter of 2023 into hell. Gas restrictions in Germany, Italy and other European countries. Riots over the price of bread in Egypt and Tunisia. Here’s a perspective.
Draghi will always be well received in the White House. He received his doctorate from MIT, was executive director of the World Bank, worked at Goldman Sachs, headed the European Central Bank during the most serious financial crisis after World War II, and has returned Italy to the Atlantic axis after excursions to Beijing and Moscow of the two Italian populisms: the Northern League, co-opted by the Kremlin and magnetized by the reactionary theories of Aleksandr Duguin; the chaotic Five Star Movement, attracted by Chinese diplomacy. This drift was stopped in its tracks a year ago by the national unity government presided over by the illustrious banker.
Draghi is “one of us” and is authorized to tell the US president that Europe’s major industrial economies are at serious risk next winter if the war in Ukraine drags on, with oil and gas through the roof. Before leaving the White House, the Italian premier leaves on the table the proposal to create a cartel of hydrocarbon buyers that will force OPEC to increase oil production and set a cap on gas prices. Wednesday, May 11, 2022.
That same day, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, lands in Algiers to reaffirm the historic Russian-Algerian alliance, while the hermetic Maghreb regime dedicates many flattery to Italy, to underline its anger with Spain, after the uneventful reconciliation between Madrid and Rabat. Italy has asked to buy more gas from Algeria to face the coming winter, while Spanish purchases are decreasing in favor of liquefied gas imports from the United States. (Additional fact to take into account: the long-term contracts between the Spanish suppliers and the Algerian state company Sonatrach are being renegotiated). Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune receives the official invitation to visit Moscow. There is no piece on the board that does not move.
Wednesday. The Russians have just celebrated the holiday of May 9 without a call for general mobilization. In celebration of the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, Vladimir Putin does not take a single step back, but neither does he spend his time inflaming Red Square with new threats. The war is not going well for Russia on the battlefield and they are assessing costs. They are also studying what the next winter may be like.
Coinciding with the Italian Prime Minister’s trip to Washington, French President Emmanuel Macron has a long telephone conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in which the word truce also appears. The next day, Thursday, there is a telephone contact between the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Lloyd Austin, and the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergey Shoigu. They do not agree on anything, but it is the first exchange of calls between the two top brass since Russia invaded Ukraine. Austin and Shoigú had not spoken since February 18, six days before the start of the war. [The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports contacts between Russian and Ukrainian generals this week]. On the same Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has a long telephone conversation with Putin. Stubbornly, the Germans have not wanted to bring their relations with Russia to the brink of rupture, despite pressure from the Anglo-American axis, Poland –especially Poland–, the three Baltic republics and, of course, the Government of Ukraine. Scholz asks Putin for a truce and effective measures to unblock Ukrainian grain exports.
Thursday is not over yet. Finland officially announces its desire to join NATO, after receiving the strongest support from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a tour of Scandinavia. Sweden may take the step in the coming days. Turkey, which has not broken with Moscow either, is threatening to veto both requests, citing traditional Scandinavian support for the Kurdish minority. If the accession of Finland and Sweden is consummated, eight of the nine members of the Arctic Council will form part of the North Atlantic Alliance.
The battlefield is expanding. The war in Ukraine is not limited to fighting, which highlights the aging of the Russian military doctrine, based on the tank. We are facing an international conflict of colossal magnitudes in which old Europe is beginning to take the measure of next winter. There may be a lack of gas and India has just curbed wheat exports. The week of the red telephone has surprised Spain within a dense spy movie.
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