Why Grassroots Movements Are Not Enough: From Lenin to Cateno De Luca, How Power Protects Itself

The Central Problem: Winning Support Is Not the Same as Winning Power

A political movement can win public support, expose the failures of established parties, and give a voice to citizens who feel abandoned by the political system. Yet none of these achievements guarantees that it will be able to translate popular support into institutional power.

This is one of the fundamental contradictions of modern democracy: the ability to challenge the political establishment depends not only on how many people support a movement, but also on whether the institutional system allows that support to become effective political representation.

Established political forces possess advantages that newcomers often lack: organizational infrastructure, financial resources, media visibility, experienced personnel, and access to existing networks of influence. Electoral rules can reinforce these advantages, even when they are formally applied to everyone.

But there is another dimension to this problem. When a country's political system becomes increasingly incapable of absorbing dissent, the resulting tensions may also create opportunities for foreign powers seeking to advance their own strategic interests.

These two dynamics must not be confused. Institutional barriers facing new political movements are not proof of foreign interference, and popular dissent is not evidence of a hidden geopolitical agenda. Nevertheless, both phenomena reveal an important truth: political power operates within a broader struggle involving institutions, domestic interests, and international competition.

The history of Lenin's return to Russia in 1917 illustrates the geopolitical dimension of this problem. The experience of Cateno De Luca in Italy offers a contemporary example of the difficulties involved in translating local political strength into broader institutional influence.

The connection is analytical, not personal: neither example should be taken to imply that De Luca has foreign sponsors or intends to destabilize Italy. The common question is how political systems respond when forces outside established power structures attempt to challenge the existing order.

Lenin and the German Strategy of Exploiting a Domestic Crisis

In April 1917, during World War I, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile by crossing Germany on a special train that became known as the sealed train. German authorities permitted his passage because they believed his return could intensify the political crisis in Russia, then an enemy in the ongoing war.

Berlin was not motivated by ideological sympathy for the Bolsheviks. Its calculations were strategic. If revolutionary agitation weakened Russia's government and reduced its capacity to continue fighting, Germany would benefit militarily.

The German authorities were therefore willing to facilitate the movement of a political figure whose objectives differed from their own because they believed his return could serve German interests.

This episode does not mean that Germany created the Russian Revolution. The collapse of the tsarist regime, the devastation of war, social inequalities, and the weakness of political institutions had deep domestic roots. Nor did German assistance guarantee the Bolsheviks' eventual victory.

The historical significance lies elsewhere: a foreign power can exploit an existing domestic crisis by helping a political force whose rise may weaken an adversary, even when the foreign power does not share that force's ultimate objectives.

The underlying discontent does not have to be manufactured. It already exists. External actors may instead seek to amplify it, accelerate developments, or turn internal instability to their advantage.

This is a recurring possibility in international politics. It is not, however, a universal explanation for revolutions, protests, or political movements. Claims of foreign interference in any specific contemporary case require independent evidence.

When Domestic Weakness Becomes a Geopolitical Opportunity

Every country contains social divisions, economic grievances, political conflicts, and groups that believe established institutions no longer represent them adequately. Such conditions can produce entirely legitimate movements for change.

Yet domestic crises also attract the attention of foreign governments and other external actors.

A state seeking to weaken a rival may benefit when that rival faces political paralysis, declining public confidence, or deep social divisions. Depending on the circumstances, it may attempt to influence public narratives, amplify existing disagreements, or exploit tensions that domestic institutions have failed to resolve.

The distinction between exploiting a crisis and creating one is essential. A foreign actor does not need to invent every grievance, control every protest, or finance every political organization to benefit from a country's internal difficulties.

At the same time, three different phenomena must remain analytically separate: genuine popular dissent, the domestic or foreign exploitation of that dissent, and documented foreign interference. The first is a normal feature of political life. The second is a possible political strategy. The third is a factual claim that requires evidence.

Treating every protest as a foreign operation is as misleading as assuming that every political movement operates entirely outside broader networks of influence.

The more useful question is whether a political system can address legitimate grievances before they deepen into a crisis that others may find advantageous to exploit.

Cateno De Luca and the Limits of Local Political Strength

The political experience of Cateno De Luca and his movement, Sud chiama Nord—literally, “The South Calls the North”—offers a useful contemporary case study of a different but related problem: the difficulty of turning a strong local political base into wider national or European influence.

De Luca's trajectory illustrates the importance of territorial organization, direct relationships with voters, recognizable political communication, and a sustained presence in local communities.

These resources can allow a movement to challenge established parties within a particular territory. But local success does not automatically translate into national competitiveness.

Expanding beyond a regional base requires an organization capable of addressing different electorates, competing in a wider media environment, sustaining a broader network of candidates and supporters, and meeting the practical requirements of electoral participation.

The challenge is not simply persuading more voters. It is building the organizational capacity to compete across an entirely different political landscape.

This is why the distinction between popular legitimacy and institutional access matters. A movement can have genuine support and still struggle to convert that support into representation on a larger scale.

De Luca's experience should not be interpreted as evidence of foreign sponsorship, hidden destabilizing intentions, or geopolitical manipulation. It is relevant here because it illustrates a general question facing political outsiders: how can a movement challenge established power when the resources and structures needed to compete nationally are distributed so unevenly?

Italy's Recently Approved Electoral Law: Who Gets to Compete?

The question of political access is not merely theoretical. It also concerns the rules governing elections.

In Italy, an electoral law approved recently has renewed debate over the requirements imposed on political groups that lack parliamentary representation. Among its provisions, the number of signatures required to present electoral lists rises from 1,500 to 6,000 per constituency for parties without representation in Parliament. The number of constituencies in which lists must be presented also increases, while specific exemptions remain available to certain political forces meeting established criteria.

The broader issue is whether rules designed to promote governability can also make it more difficult for new political movements to enter the electoral arena.

There are legitimate arguments for limiting excessive party fragmentation and ensuring that elections operate under clear, workable procedures. Stable governing majorities matter. So do transparency, administrative feasibility, and the integrity of the electoral process.

But the practical consequences of electoral requirements cannot be assessed solely by looking at whether the rules are formally the same for everyone.

Established parties generally have greater organizational capacity, broader territorial networks, and more public visibility. New movements must build these resources from scratch. A requirement that appears reasonable for an established political organization may impose a much heavier burden on a newcomer.

This does not establish that the Italian law was deliberately designed to exclude political outsiders. That conclusion would require evidence beyond the existence of stricter requirements. Nevertheless, the law raises a legitimate democratic question: when the rules governing political competition become more demanding, do they preserve a genuinely open contest, or do they risk reinforcing the advantages of those already in power?

Democracy does not guarantee every movement a parliamentary seat. It should, however, preserve a meaningful opportunity for new political forces to compete.

If citizens can vote only among alternatives that have already passed through increasingly demanding institutional filters, formal political freedom may coexist with a narrowing of practical choice.

That is the structural concern. It is not proof of a conspiracy, but it is a question of democratic design that deserves scrutiny.

How Institutional Barriers Can Deepen Political Discontent

Political barriers rarely operate only through outright prohibitions. They may also emerge through organizational costs, demanding signature requirements, short deadlines, unequal access to public visibility, and procedural obstacles that smaller groups find especially difficult to overcome.

The result can be a political system in which participation is formally open but practically easier for established actors than for newcomers.

When citizens believe that institutional change is possible only for those who are already part of the system, confidence in representative democracy may decline. When political outsiders repeatedly struggle to gain access, frustration can extend beyond individual parties and begin to affect the legitimacy of the system itself.

This does not mean that restrictive rules automatically cause instability, or that every anti-establishment movement offers a credible alternative. It means that the capacity to absorb dissent is one of the foundations of a resilient democracy.

A system that allows dissatisfaction to be expressed, organized, and represented has a better chance of addressing problems through ordinary political processes. A system perceived as closed risks pushing discontent into less predictable channels.

Such vulnerability may also become strategically relevant to external actors. The point is not that every domestic conflict is engineered abroad, but that unresolved grievances can create opportunities for those seeking to weaken another country's cohesion or influence its decisions.

Institutional openness is therefore not merely a matter of fairness to political outsiders. It can also contribute to a country's political resilience.

The Paradox of Grassroots Movements

The paradox is that a movement may emerge to challenge a closed political system only to discover that becoming influential requires it to navigate the very structures it criticizes.

It may win local elections, mobilize supporters, and expose the shortcomings of established parties, yet struggle to turn those achievements into broader institutional power. Its problem may not be a lack of public support alone, but the difficulty of sustaining an organization capable of competing beyond its original base.

The answer is not to assume that every outsider is right or that every established institution is illegitimate. Political movements must still demonstrate competence, develop credible proposals, and build organizations capable of lasting beyond a single leader or electoral campaign.

At the same time, institutions must ensure that the pursuit of governability does not become an excuse for making political competition unnecessarily difficult.

The relationship between these two responsibilities is crucial. Outsiders must prove that they can govern; established institutions must demonstrate that meaningful alternatives can emerge.

Neither side can demand unconditional trust. Both must earn it.

The Real Lesson: Open Political Competition Is a Democratic Safeguard

The examples of Lenin and Cateno De Luca illuminate different aspects of a broader political problem.

Lenin's return to Russia demonstrates how a foreign power may seek to exploit an existing domestic crisis for strategic purposes. De Luca's experience illustrates the organizational and institutional difficulties that political outsiders can face when attempting to expand beyond their local base. Italy's recently approved electoral law raises a related question about the practical conditions under which new political forces can compete.

These are not equivalent situations, and there is no evidence here to suggest that they share a direct causal connection. Their relevance lies in the broader principle they help illuminate: political outcomes depend not only on popular support, but also on the institutions through which that support must pass and the wider interests that may seek to influence political developments.

A genuine grassroots movement can encounter structural barriers without being manipulated from abroad. A foreign power can exploit domestic weaknesses without having created them. An electoral reform can pursue legitimate objectives while still producing effects that deserve democratic scrutiny.

The essential task is to distinguish evidence from speculation while recognizing the relationship between institutional openness, political legitimacy, and national resilience.

A healthy democracy does not have to guarantee that outsiders will win. It must ensure that they have a meaningful opportunity to compete.

When political alternatives become inaccessible, the damage extends beyond the fortunes of individual movements. Citizens may begin to question whether elections can produce meaningful change at all. That loss of confidence weakens the political system and can create opportunities for forces seeking to exploit its divisions.

The strongest defense against external interference is therefore not indiscriminate suspicion of dissent. It is a political system capable of addressing grievances, allowing credible alternatives to emerge, and maintaining public confidence in the possibility of change through democratic institutions.

A democracy proves its strength not by preventing challenges to established power, but by remaining open enough to confront them without losing its legitimacy.

Europe Between Three Empires

The Continent That Never Became an Empire

Europe has spent two thousand years trying to solve the same political problem: how can a continent divided among many peoples, languages, memories and political traditions become a coherent power without being permanently dominated by one of its own inhabitants?

The Romans solved the problem through empire. Charlemagne briefly recreated a Western imperial order. The Holy Roman Empire preserved the idea of Roman universality without ever acquiring the centralized power of Rome. The Habsburgs maintained a multinational imperial structure until nationalism gradually made it increasingly difficult to sustain. Napoleon attempted to reorganize continental Europe under French predominance. The twentieth century then demonstrated, in the most catastrophic way, what could happen when a European power attempted once again to establish continental hegemony.

The European Union emerged from the ruins of that history with an entirely different proposition: Europe could become one without becoming an empire.

That proposition is historically extraordinary. It is also unfinished.

Europe Between Three Empires

The Europe of the twenty-first century does not exist in a geopolitical vacuum. It sits between three enormous centers of power: the United States, Russia and China. They are not equivalent political systems and they do not exercise the same kind of influence, but from a European perspective they represent three different models of external power.

The United States provides the security architecture within which most European countries operate. Russia represents the return of a major continental power to Europe's eastern frontier, while China represents an economic, technological and increasingly strategic power whose influence Europe cannot simply ignore.

Europe therefore finds itself in an extraordinary position. It is economically powerful, technologically advanced and demographically enormous, yet it does not possess the political structure normally associated with a major geopolitical power. It has the population, the wealth, the industrial capacity, the nuclear arsenal of one member state, the common market and, for most members, a common currency.

But it does not have a single sovereign government.

And this creates the central paradox of the European project.

Europe Has Institutions, But Not a State

The European Union is not simply a collection of countries. Its institutions possess genuine powers that profoundly affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. But neither is it a federation in the classical sense.

There is no European president equivalent to the President of the United States, no European army controlled by a single European government and no single European foreign policy comparable to that of a sovereign state. On many foreign-policy and security questions, national governments retain decisive authority.

The result is a political structure that is difficult to classify. It is more integrated than a conventional international organization but less centralized than a federation. It is not an empire and it is not a nation-state.

It is something historically unusual.

And perhaps this is precisely why the European project remains so difficult to complete.

The Missing European People

The deepest problem may not be institutional at all. It may be psychological.

A genuine United States of Europe would require Europeans to accept that the French, Germans, Italians, Poles, Spaniards, Greeks, Dutch, Swedes and others could remain French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Greek, Dutch and Swedish while simultaneously becoming citizens of a genuinely federal European political community.

That sounds simple. Historically, it would be revolutionary.

National identities in Europe were constructed over centuries. European states possess their own armies, diplomatic traditions, historical narratives, school systems, political parties, constitutional identities and collective memories. Even the twentieth century is still alive in European politics. In some cases, the nineteenth century is still alive.

Europe is therefore trying to build a political structure for the twenty-first century while many of its citizens still interpret power through categories inherited from earlier centuries.

Cooperation Is Not Federation

This distinction is crucial. Europeans can support European cooperation without necessarily supporting a European federation.

A citizen may want European defence cooperation while still believing that the national government should retain ultimate control. A voter may support the euro while rejecting a European treasury. Someone may favour coordinated European foreign policy while refusing to imagine a European government capable of overriding national governments.

This is the missing leap.

The leap from “Europe should cooperate” to “Europe should become a political community capable of acting together.”

Those are not the same proposition.

And the distance between them may be the greatest obstacle standing between the European Union and the famous United States of Europe.

The American Paradox

The European project was partly born from the desire to make another European war impossible. But the security architecture that made Western European integration possible was largely embedded within the transatlantic system.

The United States therefore became not the emperor of Europe, but something almost as historically unusual: the external guarantor of a continent that was attempting to become politically united without becoming an empire.

For decades, this arrangement was extraordinarily convenient. Europe could integrate economically, the United States could provide much of the strategic umbrella, and national governments could retain their political identities.

Nobody was forced to answer the most uncomfortable question:

What happens if Europe eventually has to provide its own strategic answer?

Today that question is becoming increasingly difficult to postpone. European governments are increasing defence spending and discussing greater strategic autonomy, while NATO remains the central framework of European collective defence.

The contradiction is therefore not simply between Europe and America. It is between European integration and European dependence on a wider security system dominated by a non-European power.

The Russian Alternative Changes the Patron, Not the Problem

There are Europeans who have historically looked toward Russia as an alternative to American influence. But replacing Washington with Moscow would not solve the fundamental European problem.

It would simply change the external patron.

A Europe dependent on Washington would remain dependent. A Europe dependent on Moscow would also remain dependent. The alternative is neither American tutelage nor Russian tutelage, but the development of sufficient European capabilities to make strategic choices without requiring another great power to guarantee the continent's security.

That does not necessarily mean abandoning NATO or breaking with the United States. It means eventually being capable of contributing to the alliance from a position of greater strength rather than permanent dependence.

The Balkan and Caucasian Warning

Europe's internal diversity makes the problem even more complicated.

Europe is not culturally homogeneous. It contains Latin Europe, Germanic Europe, Slavic Europe, Nordic Europe, Orthodox Europe, Catholic Europe, Protestant traditions, secular societies and numerous national historical identities.

In this respect, Europe resembles, on a much larger scale, some of the problems encountered in the Balkans and Caucasus. These regions demonstrate how powerful language, religion, historical memory and national identity can become when different communities are placed inside a common political structure.

The dissolution of Yugoslavia is particularly instructive. A multinational state that had managed for decades to contain competing national identities eventually fragmented as its political, economic and ideological foundations weakened. The result was not simply peaceful separation but a series of devastating wars.

But the comparison also contains a paradox. Several former Yugoslav republics subsequently chose European integration. Slovenia and Croatia became members of the European Union.

The lesson, therefore, is not that multinational structures must inevitably collapse. It is that institutions alone cannot erase national identities. A larger political community requires legitimacy, shared interests and a sense that the larger structure belongs to its citizens.

Europe Does Not Need an Ethnic Core

This may be where the historical analogy with the great empires reaches its limit.

Rome had a political centre. The Chinese empires had imperial dynasties and a powerful state tradition. The Russian Empire expanded around a dominant political centre. The Mongol Empire was built through conquest and military supremacy.

Europe does not need to reproduce those models.

A European federation would not require a dominant European ethnicity. It would require something much more difficult: a political identity strong enough to coexist with national identities.

The United States itself was not created by abolishing the identities of its constituent states. Switzerland did not require the disappearance of German, French, Italian and Romansh identities. A federation can theoretically unite different peoples without turning them into a single ethnic group.

But such a federation requires citizens to accept that national interests are sometimes subordinate to decisions taken at the federal level.

That is precisely the leap Europe has not yet clearly made.

The Quantic Leap

The United States of Europe cannot simply be created by another treaty, another institution or another transfer of competences from national governments to Brussels.

It would require a transformation in political consciousness.

Europeans would have to stop seeing Europe merely as a mechanism for obtaining economic advantages from cooperation and begin seeing it as a political community with a common destiny.

That does not mean becoming less French, less Italian, less Polish or less Greek. It means accepting that national identity and European political identity can coexist.

This would be a genuine historical revolution.

Not a revolution of flags or borders, but a revolution in the way Europeans understand political belonging.

The Danger of Remaining Halfway

The greatest danger may therefore not be European integration itself. It may be permanent incompleteness.

A Europe that is too integrated to return comfortably to the old balance of power, but not integrated enough to act as an independent great power. Too large to be treated as a collection of small states, too divided to behave like a federation and too dependent on an external security architecture to operate entirely on its own.

Such a Europe could become something very different from the peaceful federation imagined by the pioneers of European integration.

It could become a geopolitical space whose internal divisions make it vulnerable to the influence of larger powers.

Not necessarily through military conquest. In the twenty-first century, influence can arrive through energy, technology, finance, trade, information, infrastructure, military alliances and political pressure.

The old empires conquered territories.

The new ones can shape choices.

Europe Must Decide What It Wants to Be

Perhaps this is the fundamental European question.

Does Europe want to remain a collection of historic nations protected by an external superpower? Does it want to return to a classical balance of power among sovereign European states? Or does it want to become something history has never quite seen before: a democratic federation of ancient nations capable of acting as a single geopolitical power without abolishing the identities of its peoples?

The third option would be the most difficult.

It would require national governments to accept common institutions with genuinely consequential powers, citizens to accept political decisions taken at a level above the nation-state, and European societies to develop a stronger sense of common destiny.

It would also require Europeans to understand that cooperation is not the same thing as political unity.

Europe: Subject or Object of History?

Perhaps Europe's greatest illusion is believing that history has already chosen its place in the world.

It has not.

Europe likes to describe itself as a geopolitical power because it has wealth, institutions, universities, industries, armies, nuclear weapons, a common market and hundreds of millions of inhabitants. But these things, by themselves, do not make a political subject.

A political subject is able to decide.

And this is precisely where Europe remains unfinished.

When a crisis erupts, European capitals can still look in different directions. When security is at stake, Europe continues to rely heavily on an alliance whose most powerful member is not European. When foreign policy becomes truly consequential, national interests frequently reappear beneath the European flag.

Europe therefore risks becoming something deeply uncomfortable: a giant political space that possesses almost everything required for power except the political machinery and political consensus necessary to exercise it as one.

It is not an empire. It is not yet a federation. It is not simply a classical balance of power.

It is something more vulnerable:

a geopolitical object.

Others Shape Europe's Choices

Others can negotiate with Europe, pressure it, trade with it, protect it, compete for influence within it and attempt to shape its choices.

But can Europe do the same to them?

That is the real test.

The Roman Empire did not ask Persia whether Rome was allowed to become a great power. The Mongol Empire did not wait for Europe to approve its expansion. The great powers of later centuries understood a brutal principle of international politics: those who possess power shape the environment in which others make their choices.

Europe, after two catastrophic world wars, chose another path. That choice was historically understandable. But peace cannot be confused with political irrelevance.

A continent can renounce imperialism without renouncing power. It can reject conquest without abandoning the capacity to defend its interests.

The End of Imperialism Is Not the End of Geopolitics

The tragedy would be if Europe confused the end of European imperialism with the end of geopolitics itself.

Geopolitics did not disappear.

Europe simply stopped playing it with the same determination as others.

And history does not guarantee protection to those who refuse to choose.

Perhaps, therefore, the real question facing Europe is not whether Brussels should acquire another competence, whether another treaty should be signed or whether another bureaucratic institution should be created.

The question is much more brutal:

Do Europeans actually want to become the authors of their own history?

Because if the answer is yes, eventually they will have to accept the consequences of becoming a political power: common strategic interests, common responsibilities, common risks and institutions capable of making decisions for the continent as a whole.

If the answer is no, there is nothing inherently wrong with remaining a collection of sovereign nations.

But then Europe should stop pretending that it is already a geopolitical actor equivalent to the great powers surrounding it.

Europe Has Learned Not to Conquer Itself

That may be the darkest paradox of European history.

For centuries, Europeans fought each other to dominate Europe. After 1945, they finally discovered how to prevent themselves from doing so. The extraordinary achievement of European integration was to transform the continent from a battlefield into a common political and economic space.

But the unfinished part of the project is precisely what comes next.

Europe has learned how not to conquer itself. It has not yet demonstrated that it can defend itself, speak for itself and act for itself.

Until that happens, Europe will remain suspended between three major external poles: an American security sphere, a Russian challenge from the East and an increasingly powerful Chinese presence in the global system.

Three great external powers. One European continent. No single European sovereign authority.

That is not necessarily the end of Europe.

It may be something more subtle and, in the long run, more dangerous: Europe continuing to exist while others increasingly shape what kind of Europe it is allowed to become.

A civilization that does not decide its own strategic destiny does not cease to exist. It simply ceases, little by little, to be the subject of history.

And becomes its object.

The Right Isn’t the Cause. It’s the Symptom of a Deeper Crisis

Why are we so afraid of the political right when the real crisis came first?

Across Europe, right-wing parties are gaining ground. Governments are changing, political alliances are shifting, and commentators warn about nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism.

But I am not particularly afraid of the rise of the right.

Not because it is harmless. Not because elections don't matter.

Because the right is not the cause. It is the consequence.

Its rise reflects deeper economic, social, and geopolitical failures that were already underway. Confusing the effect with the cause is like looking at a fever and blaming the thermometer.

A Narrative in Crisis

For decades, Europe lived inside a reassuring story.

Globalization would bring prosperity. Free markets would create efficiency. European integration would guarantee stability. Economic interdependence would make major wars increasingly unthinkable. Western alliances would keep us safe.

Then reality intervened.

Ukraine. The Middle East. Energy prices. Inflation. Rearmament. Stagnation.

The war in Ukraine exposed Europe's dependence on a fragile energy system. After abandoning Russian gas, Europe faced dramatically higher energy costs.

Whatever one's position on the war, the lesson is unavoidable:

Geopolitical decisions have economic consequences, and ordinary people eventually pay the bill.

Then came the Middle East.

The war following October 7, 2023, brought another conflict to the center of global politics. The widening confrontation in the Persian Gulf has added another layer of uncertainty to an already unstable system.

This is no longer just about war.

It is about energy, economics, social stability—and whether Western societies can absorb another major shock.

Europe Is Getting More Fragile

There is a contradiction at the heart of today's Europe.

Governments struggle to preserve living standards while committing more resources to defense. They talk about fiscal discipline and spending restraint while preparing for years of higher military budgets.

The argument for rearmament is straightforward: Europe must be able to defend itself.

Fair enough.

But there is another question.

What happens when societies spend years filling arsenals with weapons?

Military power can deter war. It can also magnify the consequences of miscalculation, escalation, or political failure.

The issue is not simply who has the weapons.

It is the kind of world we are building by accumulating them.

We Have Become Fragile

There is another vulnerability that receives far less attention.

The Italian psychiatrist Vittorino Andreoli wrote extensively about what he called the "fragile man." I would broaden the idea.

It isn't only men.

Human beings have become fragile.

Western societies have spent decades becoming accustomed to comfort, security, instant availability, and predictability.

We are not accustomed to deprivation. To waiting. To doing without.

Earlier generations knew scarcity in ways we can barely imagine.

For them, the problem might have been finding enough food.

For us, it can be losing a cellphone signal.

That sounds trivial.

It isn't.

Prosperity gives us comfort, but it also creates dependence on comfort. The more a society takes normality for granted, the harder it is to absorb its sudden disappearance.

We Are Not Ready for a Long War

Modern conflicts have exposed another weakness.

For years, we convinced ourselves that war could be quick, technological, precise, and decisive. Superior weapons would produce superior outcomes.

Afghanistan should have cured us of that illusion.

Twenty years of Western intervention ended with the departure from Kabul and the return of the Taliban.

The lesson was not simply military. It was psychological.

A society accustomed to prosperity and security struggles to sustain a conflict when victory is neither quick nor certain.

And that vulnerability becomes far greater when the enemy can strike back.

We are accustomed to thinking of war as something that happens somewhere else.

What happens when it doesn't?

What Happens When the Lights Go Out?

Imagine a genuine global war—not a distant conflict, but a confrontation between major powers capable of striking each other's territory.

What would they target?

Military bases. Command centers. Communications. Transportation.

And energy infrastructure.

Because destroying electricity means attacking the nervous system of modern civilization.

No power means crippled telecommunications, failed payment systems, disrupted computer networks, impaired water systems, stalled fuel distribution, broken supply chains, and hospitals forced onto backup generators.

The smartphone in your hand could become little more than a piece of glass and metal.

Italy experienced a warning in 2003, when a massive blackout left almost the entire country without electricity.

That was 2003.

There were no smartphones in everyone's pocket. Digital payments were nowhere near as pervasive. Our dependence on permanent connectivity was nothing like it is today.

Now it is 2026.

Imagine that blackout lasting days instead of hours.

And imagine that it wasn't an accident.

Imagine it was deliberate.

That is when we would rediscover something we have forgotten:

technology does not free us from physical reality. It makes us more dependent on it.

So Why Is the Right Winning?

This is why I see the rise of the right as a secondary phenomenon.

When people become poorer, more frightened, and less secure, they look for someone who promises to restore control.

The right understands this instinctively.

Immigration.

Borders.

Sovereignty.

Order.

Identity.

Enemies.

Simple answers are powerful when people are afraid.

But they do not necessarily address the forces producing that fear.

They can capture anger. Turn anxiety into votes. Give people someone to blame.

They cannot, by themselves, repair the economic and geopolitical structures underneath the crisis.

And the political center and left have their own problem: they often warn about the right without convincingly explaining why millions of people have become receptive to it.

That is the real political vacuum.

The right may offer simplistic answers, but at least it offers answers.

Its opponents too often offer explanations without a compelling alternative.

The Problem Is the Model

This brings us to the uncomfortable question.

For decades, much of the West embraced the idea that markets should regulate an ever-larger share of economic and social life.

Government intervention was reduced. Economic planning became suspect. Redistribution was treated as a distortion. Efficiency became the supreme virtue.

But a country is not a corporation.

And a society is not a marketplace.

When crisis arrives, we remember what the market cannot guarantee on its own.

Energy.

Water.

Healthcare.

Transportation.

Industrial capacity.

Strategic reserves.

Infrastructure.

Food security.

These are not merely economic assets. They are the foundations of national resilience.

This is where Keynes inevitably returns to the conversation.

Not as a relic of the twentieth century, but as a question:

Can a modern society really entrust its survival entirely to the invisible hand of the market?

The answer should not be ideological.

The real question is practical:

Where does the market work—and where must society retain the capacity to plan, protect, and prepare?

The Crisis Beneath the Elections

That is why the rise of the right does not frighten me nearly as much as the conditions producing it.

If Europe becomes poorer, energy remains structurally expensive, rearmament becomes permanent, wars spread, and economic insecurity deepens, the right will continue to find fertile ground.

Changing governments won't be enough.

Changing parties won't be enough.

Changing leaders won't be enough.

A structural crisis cannot be solved by changing the occupants of the palace.

The conditions themselves have to change.

And perhaps we are asking the wrong question.

We obsess over elections, polls, parties, leaders, and social media.

But what if the more important question is much simpler?

How resilient would our society be if tomorrow we lost the things we now take for granted?

Electricity.

The internet.

Electronic payments.

Fuel.

Logistics.

Heating.

Instant access to goods.

Security.

Peace.

A civilization is not truly strong because it possesses extraordinary technology.

It is strong when it can survive without it.

We have built an extraordinarily sophisticated civilization.

But sophistication is not the same thing as resilience.

And if the arsenals we are filling today ever have to be emptied, the question may not simply be:

Who won the war?

It may be:

How long can we survive when the lights don't come back on?

The Memory of the Vanquished

There are questions we cannot answer with certainty, yet they continue to follow us. We can try to explain them through psychology, history, the workings of memory, or what Jung called the collective unconscious. We can choose to dismiss them as coincidences. And then there is another possibility—harder to prove and therefore more unsettling: that certain memories may somehow cross the boundaries of time and reappear in someone who has no idea where they came from.

I do not claim to know which explanation is correct. I can only tell the story of certain things that have happened in my life and leave readers free to decide what they mean.

The Germany I Saw as a Child

When I was a child, I had a geographical atlas, and even today I remember how often my eyes would settle on Germany. Not simply Germany as a country, but especially its eastern territories—the lands that had once been East Prussia, stretching toward Königsberg on the Baltic Sea. 

I was drawn in much the same way to another part of Europe: the old Austrian Littoral of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Trieste and Istria.

At the time, I knew almost nothing about the history of those places. I could not have known that Königsberg would become Kaliningrad, that East Prussia would disappear from the political map of Europe, or that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would vanish in the aftermath of World War I. To me, they were simply territories that seemed to hold my attention more than others.

What is strange is that this curiosity did not remain confined to childhood. It staye

d somewhere inside me, only to reappear many years later in forms I could never have anticipated.

When German Soldiers Died

There is another memory that has stayed with me. When I was a child and watched war movies in which German soldiers were killed, I felt an inexplicable discomfort, almost a sense of grief. I did not yet have the intellectual tools to form a historical judgment about Nazism, war, or Germany's responsibility for what had happened. I simply saw a human being dying, and instinctively I did not want him to die.

At the same time, I felt a spontaneous dislike toward the French, British, Russians, and Americans portrayed in those films. It was an instinctive feeling I could not explain. And precisely because it was so irrational and selective, I have often wondered about it as an adult.

There was also Yugoslavia, toward which I felt an even harder-to-explain hostility. Looking back now, with everything I have learned since childhood, I cannot help wondering whether those feelings were simply shaped by my surroundings, by the images I saw, by the books I later read—or whether they had deeper roots.

Albert von Berrer and Ernst Kölle

Many years later, two men appeared in my writing who belonged precisely to the world toward which I had felt that mysterious childhood attraction: Albert von Berrer and Ernst Kölle.

Albert von Berrer was a German general who fought on the Italian Front during World War I. He died in 1917, only a year before the Central Powers collapsed. He died before witnessing the defeat of the world to which he had devoted his life—and perhaps that is precisely why his story still seems unfinished.

Albert Von Berrer

 Kölle was much younger. He was a German soldier who died in 1945, at just twenty-three years old, as Germany was descending into the final catastrophe of World War II.

Ernst Kölle 

They belonged to different generations, but they shared something fundamental: both died on the side that history would ultimately regard as defeated.

What still strikes me is that I did not simply want to tell their stories. I wanted to make them speak. I imagined their thoughts, their fears, their relationship with death, and their awareness of a world that was disappearing around them.

At that point, a question became impossible to ignore: Why them?

The Reincarnation of a Memory

I cannot say that I was Albert von Berrer or Ernst Kölle in a previous life. I have no evidence that could prove such a thing. And I do not want to turn a personal intuition into a certainty that I impose on anyone else.

But there is another question I can ask.

Why would someone who, as a child, was inexplicably drawn to eastern Germany, Prussia, and the old Austro-Hungarian world, who felt an unusual distress when German soldiers died in war movies, and who would later develop such a strong fascination with the history of the defeated, eventually find himself writing about two men from precisely that world?

Perhaps it is the collective unconscious Jung described. Perhaps certain images of human history remain embedded in the psyche and, under the right circumstances, find someone through whom they can re-emerge.

Or perhaps the explanation is much simpler. Perhaps I was fascinated by German history from childhood, and as an adult I unconsciously sought out stories that reinforced that fascination.

And then there remains the most difficult possibility of all: that what we call memory may somehow survive individual death in a form we do not yet understand.

I do not claim that this is what happened.

I simply leave the question open.

The Memory of the Vanquished and the World of 1945

This personal story, however, leads me to a much larger question.

The world we live in is still, to a significant degree, organized around the international order that emerged from World War II. More than eighty years have passed, yet a substantial part of the global system we know was born from the ruins of 1945.

That order had victors and vanquished. The United States emerged as the leading Western power, the Soviet Union became the other great superpower, Europe was devastated by war, and Germany was divided and radically transformed.

But no historical order lasts forever.

Today we are witnessing a transformation that cannot be explained simply by the rise of the BRICS. The war in Ukraine, the conflicts and crises in the Middle East, the strategic competition between the United States and China, and the growing autonomy of other major actors are gradually reshaping the international balance of power.

I do not necessarily believe that the victors of 1945 will become the defeated of tomorrow. The transformation may be much slower and much more subtle than that. We may simply witness a gradual decline in their relative weight, until countries we now regard as superpowers or great powers find themselves operating in a system where several different centers of power exist.

In other words, not necessarily defeat, but the end of a dominant position.

Rome Shows Us That Empires Change Before They End

It has happened before.

When we think about the Roman Empire, we tend to look for a precise date: 476, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus. But that date marks only the end of the Western Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire continued to exist in the East for almost another thousand years. The people we now call Byzantines considered themselves Romans and called themselves Rhomaioi. The term "Byzantine Empire" belongs to later historiography and, if used without qualification, can make us forget the continuity that the empire's own inhabitants recognized.

From this perspective, the final end of the Roman Empire came in 1453, with the fall of Constantinople.

But even then, history was not simply a succession of victories and defeats. Rome did not disappear overnight. First it stopped expanding. Then it had to defend its frontiers. It began losing territory, transforming itself, shifting its political center, and surviving in forms that its inhabitants still recognized as Roman.

This is something we often forget when we look at today's great powers: an order may already have entered the stage of relative decline long before historians are willing to declare it finished.

The World That Is Coming

Something similar may be happening today.

We do not know what the next international order will look like, and it would be naïve to pretend that we already know who its winners will be. But we can see that the world created after 1945 no longer appears as immutable as it once did.

The United States will probably remain an extraordinarily important power. But being a great power does not necessarily mean being the sole center of the system. China, India, Russia, regional powers, and other economic and strategic actors are contributing to the emergence of a more complex world—one that is increasingly difficult for any single country to control.

Perhaps the coming transformation will not consist of one empire simply replacing another.

Perhaps it will be the end of an age in which empires were capable of determining the fate of the world on their own.

And that possibility makes the history of those who lost even more interesting.

Perhaps the Dead Do Not Return. Perhaps the Questions Do.

When I think about Albert von Berrer, Ernst Kölle, and the child who, many years ago, stared at a map without knowing why his eyes kept returning to that particular part of Europe, I cannot determine whether there is truly a thread connecting them.

It could simply be a construction of my own mind.

It could be the collective unconscious.

It could be the result of a historical memory that slowly accumulated inside me.

Or, for those who believe in reincarnation, it could be something else entirely: a memory that does not belong exclusively to this lifetime.

I do not need to choose the answer for the reader.

I am more interested in leaving the question open.

Because perhaps reincarnation does not necessarily mean returning to Earth with a precise memory of who we once were. If it exists, perhaps it can manifest in far more elusive ways: through inexplicable attractions, places that seem strangely familiar, historical periods that seem to call to us for no apparent reason, or people who died decades ago yet suddenly compel us to tell their stories.

And perhaps history itself has a form of reincarnation.

Empires fall. Nations change. Borders are erased. Powers lose their relative weight. New actors take the place of old ones.

What once appeared to be permanently finished can return, even though it never returns in exactly the same form.

That is why I still wonder why, as a child, I kept looking at that particular part of Europe.

Perhaps it was nothing more than a map.

Or perhaps that map was showing me something I would not understand until many decades later.

I do not know which of the two is true.

But perhaps that uncertainty is precisely what makes the question worth asking.

The Price of Defiance: When Sovereignty Ends Where Fear Begins

There is something I think we talk about far too little when discussing sovereignty: fear.

Not the kind of fear that politicians admit to on camera. I mean something deeper, almost instinctive, that has always been part of international politics: the fear of losing the protection of the system you belong to.

A country can be formally sovereign. It can have a parliament, an elected government, a constitution, and an army. But that does not necessarily mean it can do whatever it wants. Legal sovereignty is one thing. Real sovereignty, when countries confront one another within an international balance of power, is something else entirely.

And when I look at the history of the Western sphere of influence, that distinction is difficult to ignore.

Take Mohammad Mossadegh. In 1951, Iran's prime minister nationalized his country's oil industry, challenging enormous British interests. Two years later, he was overthrown in a coup involving the CIA and British intelligence. This is not conspiracy theory. Operation Ajax is a documented historical event.

Then came Salvador Allende.

Again, we are looking at a government that pursued a political and economic course deeply opposed to American interests. The United States intervened extensively in Chile and in the events surrounding the 1973 coup. Allende died inside the presidential palace, and Pinochet took power.

These are obviously different stories. But they tell us something remarkably simple: when the interests of a hegemonic power collide with those of a country within its sphere of influence, the balance of power matters more than declarations of principle.

And then there is Italy.

Bettino Craxi was neither Mossadegh nor was Italy in the 1980s comparable to Iran in 1953. It would be absurd to suggest otherwise. But Sigonella remains, in my view, one of the most revealing episodes for understanding what it means to pursue an independent foreign policy while remaining part of the Western alliance.

In 1985, Craxi effectively told the Americans that Italy was in charge on Italian soil. He prevented U.S. forces from taking direct custody of the hijackers responsible for the Achille Lauro incident and asserted Italian sovereignty.

It was a moment of confrontation.

And this is where the story becomes more disturbing.

Investigations into illegal political party financing did not begin in 1992. That system had existed for years. It was known, practiced and, in many cases, tolerated. Then came Tangentopoli.

Suddenly, the system that had sustained Italy's First Republic for decades began to collapse.

I am not saying that someone simply ordered prosecutors to go after Craxi. My argument is different: Craxi gradually lost the political protection that had helped give him room to pursue a degree of autonomy.

And when protection disappears, things that were once tolerated can suddenly become much harder to sustain.

This dynamic does not require an all-powerful control room somewhere in the shadows.

In fact, that is precisely what makes it more powerful.

The most effective form of power is not the one that constantly has to issue orders. It is the one that makes people understand, in advance, where the boundaries lie.

No one necessarily needs to call a prime minister and say, "Don't do this."

The prime minister already knows the price of defiance.

He knows what it means to break with his country's most powerful ally. He knows what international isolation can look like. He knows how much his country depends on military alliances, intelligence, technology, energy, finance and trade.

And so he stops before crossing the line.

In my view, this is one of the most sophisticated forms of power.

Not censorship. Self-censorship.

And this is where the argument reaches Italy today.

On the one hand, we have governments that call themselves sovereignist and constantly invoke the national interest. On the other, we have a country deeply embedded in the Western political, economic and military architecture, with a dependence on the United States that extends far beyond defence.

Take energy.

After the break with Russia, Europe was forced to radically reshape its energy supply system. A significant share of Russian gas was replaced by other sources, including American LNG.

The question we should be asking is not simply whether that decision was right or wrong.

The question is: how free is a country to choose when its energy security depends on a particular geopolitical system?

The same applies to military security.

Italy is a NATO member. Italian territory hosts military infrastructure that is deeply integrated into the Western strategic architecture. Our armed forces rely on weapons systems, technology and infrastructure embedded in a network in which the United States has enormous influence.

We can call it an alliance.

We can call it cooperation.

We can call it Western solidarity.

But one thing does not change: relations between allies are not based on solidarity alone. They are also shaped by power.

And this is where modern sovereignism runs into a curious contradiction.

You can be sovereignist toward Brussels. You can defend national borders, speak about Italian identity and invoke the national interest.

But what happens when Italy's national interest genuinely collides with America's?

That is the moment of truth.

Not when speeches are delivered.

Not when flags are waved.

But when you have to say no to an ally that is vastly more powerful than you.

That is when sovereignty is actually tested.

And that is precisely why the stories of Mossadegh, Allende and Craxi remain interesting, at least as an interpretive framework.

Not because they are the same story.

They are not.

But because all three can be read as variations on the same question: what is the price of autonomy?

How independent can a country afford to be when it belongs to the sphere of influence of a great power?

How far can a government raise its head before the system begins to push back?

And above all: how much does sovereignty have to be exercised before we can actually call it sovereignty?

Perhaps the point is not that the United States directly controls every decision made by its allies.

That would actually be too simplistic.

The point is that there is a structure of power in which some countries possess vastly greater capacity to influence others. And everyone knows it.

Governments know it.

Diplomats know it.

Military establishments know it.

Foreign ministries know it.

And the people governing Rome know it too.

That is why the most important fear is not necessarily the fear of ending up like Mossadegh or Allende.

It is something subtler.

The fear of losing protection.

The fear of being left alone.

The fear that the moment you decide to go against the current, all those protections that once seemed natural may suddenly disappear.

And perhaps this is the most modern form of hegemony.

You do not need to constantly tell others what they must do.

It is enough for them to know what might happen if they choose not to.

At that point, sovereignty continues to exist on paper.

Parliament continues to vote.

Governments continue to govern.

Elections continue to take place.

But the real boundary of sovereignty is no longer simply the one written into the constitution.

It is the invisible line separating what a country is capable of doing from what it can actually afford to do.

And perhaps that is where we should look for the difference between formal sovereignty and real sovereignty.

The Decline of Europe and the Crisis of the West: From the Struggle for Hegemony to the Destiny of Civilizations

Europe, the Center of the World, and the Logic of the Balance of Power

To understand the crisis of the contemporary West, we must begin with European history, because the twentieth century represents the decisive moment when a continent that had dominated the world for centuries gradually lost its central position.

Since the modern era, European politics has been shaped by a fundamental principle: preventing a single power from imposing its supremacy over the entire continent. The balance of power became the mechanism through which European states attempted to contain the rise of potential rivals.

The Habsburg Empire, the France of Louis XIV, Napoleonic France, and finally unified Germany represented, at different historical moments, possible challenges to the continental order.

Britain, progressively transforming itself into the world's leading maritime and commercial power, adopted the principle that no continental power should be allowed to dominate Europe. Its foreign policy was therefore often based on creating alliances against whichever state appeared capable of altering the existing balance.

Germany and the European Tragedy of the Twentieth Century

At the end of the nineteenth century, Germany became the greatest challenge to the European order. After unification in 1871, the new German state developed an extraordinary industrial, scientific, and military capacity, rapidly becoming a power capable of competing with Britain.

The First World War was not the result of a single cause, but rather the explosion of accumulated tensions: nationalism, imperial rivalries, alliance systems, and political miscalculations.

The result, however, was an unprecedented European tragedy. The conflict destroyed four great empires and profoundly weakened the continent.

The Second World War completed this process. After 1945, Europe was no longer the center of the world, but a territory divided between two new superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.

The New Administrator of the European "Condominium"

The metaphor of a condominium helps to symbolically understand what happened. Europe, after decades of internal conflict, had exhausted its own strength. Like a condominium unable to resolve disputes among its residents, it found itself forced to rely on an external administrator.

That administrator became, on one side, the United States, and on the other, the Soviet Union.

The Iron Curtain became the concrete symbol of the end of European autonomy. The continent that had dominated the world for centuries had become the arena of confrontation between external powers.

The twentieth century was therefore the century in which global leadership shifted from Europe to the United States.

America and the Construction of a New Universal Model

The United States did not exercise its influence only through economic and military power. Its social and cultural model gradually became global.

The spread of American capitalism, consumer society, and a new conception of the individual profoundly transformed the world.

For some critics, this expansion represented the emergence of a standardized global culture, symbolically described as the "hamburger civilization": a model based on the market, consumption, and the increasing individualization of human existence.

The issue is not merely economic. It concerns the way a civilization defines itself and transmits its values.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Question of Identity

Political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that the world would not become completely uniform because civilizations preserve profound differences connected to history, religion, and their understanding of human nature.

Globalization has therefore produced a paradox: while it tends to unify markets and lifestyles, it also generates reactions defending cultural identities.

The fundamental question becomes: can a civilization spread its values without transforming its own worldview into a universal model imposed upon others?

Western Freedom: The Strength and the Vulnerability of Our Civilization

One of the foundations of the West is the concept of individual freedom.

Its roots can be traced back to ancient Greece, where a revolutionary idea emerged: human beings are not merely subjects under authority, but citizens capable of participating in public life and contributing to the creation of laws.

Western freedom has produced extraordinary political, scientific, and cultural achievements. Yet it carries within itself an eternal question: how can individual freedom be reconciled with the survival of the community?

Plato had already reflected on the danger of freedom without balance. Alexis de Tocqueville, while defending democracy, also warned that societies can weaken when individuals become exclusively focused on private interests and lose their sense of civic responsibility.

Individual and Community: The Fragile Balance of Civilization

No society can survive solely through isolated individuals. Human beings are social creatures who require institutions, traditions, and shared values.

At the same time, a community without freedom risks becoming oppressive.

The challenge of modern societies is therefore to find a balance between two fundamental needs: protecting individual autonomy while preserving the cultural and social fabric that makes freedom itself possible.

Every cultural transformation raises a fundamental question: does it represent the natural evolution of society, or does it risk breaking the historical continuity of a civilization?

The New Global Challenge: The United States, China, and the Future of World Order

If the twentieth century was the century of Europe's decline as the center of global power, the twenty-first century may become the century of competition between the United States and China.

China represents today an economic, technological, and geopolitical power capable of challenging the international order created after the Second World War.

This competition is not only about resources and markets. It also concerns different visions of society and different understandings of the relationship between the individual, the state, and the community.

The Destiny of Civilizations: Decline or Transformation?

History teaches us that civilizations rarely disappear only because of external enemies. They often enter periods of crisis when they lose the ability to define themselves.

Oswald Spengler described the decline of civilizations as a natural historical process, while Arnold Toynbee emphasized the capacity to respond creatively to challenges as the true measure of a civilization's survival.

The question facing the contemporary West is therefore this:

Can a civilization founded on freedom, critical reason, and constant transformation renew itself while preserving its own identity?

Because the true challenge of every great civilization is not only what it manages to conquer, but what it chooses to preserve.

History does not belong only to those who dominate the present, but to those who are capable of giving meaning to the future.

Israel After Zionism? A Reflection on the Future of the Jewish State

Israel has the right to exist. This principle should not depend on the political orientation of the governments that happen to rule in Jerusalem, nor on one's approval or rejection of Zionism. Like every internationally recognized state, Israel's legitimacy rests on the principle of national self-determination and on the historical and legal reality that emerged after 1948. At the same time, the Palestinian people also have the right to live in security, dignity, and with their own political institutions. The failure to reconcile these two legitimate aspirations lies at the heart of one of the most enduring conflicts of the modern era.

Zionism has never been a monolithic movement. Its origins date back to nineteenth-century Europe, when nationalism was widely regarded as a force for the political emancipation of many peoples. Liberal Zionism coexisted with socialist, religious, and Revisionist currents. During the first decades of the State of Israel, the Labor movement dominated public life, promoting the kibbutzim and a socioeconomic model inspired by democratic socialism.

It is often forgotten that, in 1947 and 1948, the Soviet Union also supported the establishment of Israel at the United Nations, believing that the new state could weaken British influence in the Middle East. For several years, many on the European left viewed Israel sympathetically, largely because of the collective experience of the kibbutzim and the country's strong socialist tradition.

Over the following decades, however, the political landscape changed profoundly. The Arab-Israeli wars, terrorism, the occupation of territories captured in 1967, and broader social transformations contributed to the rise of nationalist conservatism. With Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and later Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel entered a political phase markedly different from that of its founding generation. The growing influence of religious nationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties reshaped domestic politics, reinforcing a concept of national security centered primarily on military strength and deterrence.

In his book The End of Israel, Furio Colombo describes this transformation as a gradual departure from the democratic and pluralistic ideals that characterized Israel's early years. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, his analysis raises important questions about the relationship between security, democracy, and national identity.

The militarization of Israeli society did not emerge in a vacuum. It developed in response to repeated wars, terrorist attacks, intifadas, and persistent regional security threats. At the same time, Palestinians have lived for decades under conditions of occupation, territorial fragmentation, political instability, and recurring violence. The result has been a vicious cycle in which each side tends to view its own use of force as a response to that of the other.

Against this backdrop, the internationally endorsed "two peoples, two states" solution appears increasingly difficult to implement. The territorial continuity required for a viable Palestinian state has been severely undermined by the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Jerusalem remains an unresolved issue, as do the future of Palestinian refugees and Israel's legitimate security concerns.

Is there an alternative?

Some scholars have proposed a single federal or confederal state in which Israelis and Palestinians would share common institutions while preserving broad territorial autonomy. Comparisons have been drawn—despite their obvious differences—with countries such as Switzerland, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Lebanon. None of these political systems is free from tensions, yet they demonstrate that communities with profoundly different identities can coexist within the same constitutional framework.

The greatest obstacle, however, is neither constitutional nor institutional. It is the legacy of more than a century of wars, terrorism, occupation, displacement, fear, and mutual distrust. No constitutional model can succeed without at least a minimum degree of reciprocal confidence, and today that confidence appears painfully absent.

There is also a broader geopolitical question. Israel's security has long relied on its strategic partnership with the United States and the wider Western world. If, in the distant future, the international balance of power were to change significantly and that support were to diminish, Israel would face the challenge of ensuring its long-term security through more stable relations with its regional neighbors. Comparisons with the medieval Crusader states occasionally appear in political commentary, but they should be understood as geopolitical metaphors rather than historical predictions.

How, then, can Israel secure its future?

Military superiority may guarantee survival in the short term, but it cannot by itself create lasting peace. Likewise, ignoring Israel's legitimate security needs would be no more realistic than denying the Palestinians their right to freedom, dignity, and political self-determination.

The fundamental challenge is to move beyond the illusion of total victory. As long as Israelis and Palestinians continue to view one another as enemies to be defeated or eliminated, no peace agreement will prove durable. A stable future will not emerge from the disappearance of either people, but from the recognition that both are now an irreversible part of the history of the same land.

Perhaps this is the hardest lesson of all. Yet it may also be the only one capable of preserving hope for the future.