Dreams, Money, Blood: The Factors That Move the World

With the wars in Syria, Ukraine and the Middle East and the worsening of the conflict between the great powers in recent years, the term geopolitics has become very fashionable. But what is meant by geopolitics? What does this discipline deal with? If we read Treccani online we find more or less "Term coined to indicate that complex of political problems that originate from territorial facts, especially when the State is considered as an organism that is born, develops and decays, and that, like living beings, needs a living space". Explained in this way, geopolitics seems like something almost philosophical, from sorcerer's apprentices. Enrico Verga, an expert in geopolitical strategy, offers us a practical tool to understand how this discipline can help us interpret the world we live in, also doing some analysis on future prospects. The volume Geopolitica e finanza mondiale (Hoepli Editore, 2024, pp. 164) presents, in fact, a 360-degree overview of the various political, economic and financial events that have marked and still mark world history . The text - with the help of maps, graphs and links for further information - describes the main hotbeds of crisis in the contemporary world, providing a key to understanding some international events of recent years.

The author's starting point is an almost categorical assumption: the factors that move the world and determine the actions and policies of states are dreams, money and blood. Dreams because behind every enterprise of a nation, small or large, there is a narrative to offer to its people so that they commit to the enterprise itself. Money because at least in the last five hundred years it has been the economy that has moved the world. Finally, blood, because the strategies of powers often bring with them a load of suffering and destruction.

For Verga, studying the past, observing the present and keeping in mind the three factors mentioned - dreams, money and blood - we can define some reference models that can also be valid for the future. It is no coincidence that he offers as a starting point for his analysis the famous warning pronounced by American President Dwight Eisenhower at the end of his mandate, on January 17, 1961, in his farewell address to the Nation. Eisenhower exposed the problem of the so-called military-industrial complex, or the danger represented by the commercial interests of the war industry, which always needed some war to survive. "In government meetings, we must be on guard against the acquisition of unjustified influence, wanted or unwanted, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misallocated power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our freedoms or our democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and informed population can force the gigantic industrial and military machinery of defense to properly interact with our methods and goals of peace, so that security and freedom can prosper together."

Precisely because he is aware of the dangers deriving from an excess of concentration and power in the hands of one person, a military and/or industrial apparatus or an economic actor, Verga delves in particular into the various transformations that have affected the main economic sectors , from raw materials to the media, from technology to logistics, describing the reasons that have caused epochal changes and what are the inevitable economic and financial consequences. In short, Verga's book seems to be made especially for anyone who wants to understand what interests are behind the crises and geopolitical tensions that periodically occur.