Giuseppe Conte Wearing a statesman’s suit, he claims to be the only straight-backed Italian political leader on the international stage. “We will not discuss our Euro-Atlantic position, but attitude is important” in these forums, the former prime minister told Radio 24. “I’m not taking orders from Washington,” he added, invoking the Distinctions line of firmness. the Draghi government during the Ukrainian crisis. The President of the Five Star Movement then added: “I’m the only political leader who doesn’t go to take orders. I’m loyal to all our allies, but I honestly defend the national interest, I’m not like Meloni, who goes to Washington to recommend himself to govern and then speak of national interest. I take it that we are not a country with limited governability.”
Conte sinks directly against it Giorgia Meloni, also recently interviewed by Fox News, and relates to the visits to Washington made by the leader of the Brethren of Italy from 2019 to date. Three, to be precise: the first to speak in March 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, one of the biggest events related to the Republican Party; the second in February 2020, attending the 68th Congressional Prayer Breakfast; the last in February again for the CPAC. For Conte, these visits are an attempt at accreditation, even if political and partisan diplomacy between the two sides of the Atlantic has been consolidated for a long time, both on the right and on the left, and Giorgia Meloni must be added Leader of a European group, that of the Conservatives and Reformists (Ecr). The statesmanlike stance of the former prime minister seems decidedly out of place in this perspective when we look at his foreign policy roadmap.
Conte was Eurosceptic and populist (in words) first, guarantor ofOrthodox Europeanism then. Conte is the prime minister who signed the memorandum of Italy’s accession to the New Silk Road in March 2019, the man who opened relations with China that are as warm and pompous in tones as they are cosmetic, but at the same time have declared a firm ally of the US President Donald Trump in the yellow-green era. While flirting with Beijing, which failed to understand the epochal significance of the US-China confrontation, Conte professed his utmost Atlantean loyalty and spoke of shared “control rooms” in Libya. Except then to go back on his steps and break the axis with Washington in the case of the recognition of Juan Guaidò in Venezuela.
Conte was dubbed “Trump’s cheerleader” by Politico during the first few months of his tenure. After Joe Biden was elected to the White House as head of a progressive coalition like the M5S-Pd Traction One, Dagospia recalls trying to establish “a belated friendship with the new president”, his second administration, Conte explained: “ The Biden agenda is our agenda.” We remember well how the story ended. It ended badly, with the new American President calling everyone (Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Israel) on the first round of calls from the White House on January 20, 2021, but not the Italian Prime Minister, soon to be replaced by Mario Draghi became.
Conte therefore managed to be seen in Washington as an unreliable leader for his flirtations with China, underestimated Beijing’s challenge to the Euro-Atlantic camp and undermined Italy’s position without gaining an iota of influence, which was achieved by signing a strategically non-binding Business partnerships with Xi Jinping have been achieved Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. And what about relations with Russia? Conte condemned Ukraine’s aggression but maintained distinctions in support of Kiev. But even on the political-diplomatic front, his management of relations with Moscow remained obscure.
Conte’s visit to Vladimir Putin’s court in October 2018 even resulted in Russia’s pledge to buy Italian debt at a time when Rome was locked in negotiations to approve its financial maneuver, perhaps Conte’s greatest foreign policy achievement; he could have done little or nothing to break the economic encirclement of Rome in the event of a break with Brussels. A few months later, in July 2019, it was Putin who was a guest in Rome. Great dialogues, gala dinners, agreements and a roadmap to overcome the sanctions announced by Conte. Twenty days later, however, he pressed government ally Matteo Salvini for alleged Russian money to the league following the outbreak of the Metropol scandal. From this point of view, with the return of the M5S-Pd coalition, any discourse on overcoming the sanctions was over. And there was only the complex back end of the military health mission Greetings from Russia to which a major discussion has been sparked in recent months between politicians, the media and the secret services about the alleged “biopolitical” nature of the Russian operation to combat Covid-19 in Italy, which Conte would have given too much room for maneuver with ingenuity.
Basically, during his two-and-a-half-year reign, Conte appeared irrelevant towards Russia, wavering on the European field, distant and naïve towards China, overly ambiguous towards Washington. We can only boast one foreign policy record far from the vision of a “loyal” leader, a coherent defender of national interests. A leader who doesn’t care whether he follows orders or not: he was overly ambivalent, smoky and humorous in his decisions. By conducting foreign policy with the air of a lawyer who tries to mediate in every process, rather than that of an experienced politician. Conte’s Italy was essentially a country of limited governability, partly because Foggia’s lawyer’s foreign policy was designed to maintain power and keep his shifting coalitions together. And subordinating the country’s common strategy to the needs of the palace is the furthest thing from the fight for national interests, whose spokesman Conte is in words.