It is said that asking is a lawful activity and that answering is only a matter of courtesy, especially when the question is uncomfortable in terms of interests in the field. If so, we could say that this "war", formerly a Russian-Ukrainian "special military operation", has helped to reveal, in relations between the United States and the European Union, and despite the institutionalized alignment of the summit represented by Mario Draghi, a necessary as well as different vision on the future of the international order which, for the former, would focus on their undisputed power while, for the latter, it would crystallize on the sharing of international power between several powers on the basis of a "democratic" concept political management of relations?

On the geostrategic level, and tracing the question back to the articulations of the “democratic” dynamics, does it make sense for us Europeans to continue to support the American strategic “whim” aimed at carrying on, almost exasperating it, the tactic of containing Soviet power? Undeniably, any reflection on the specific aspects mentioned hardly seems to be able to disregard the existence of a principle of institutional pluralism common to both and which represents, on several occasions, and on several levels, the true and only obstacle (and fortunately we would say) to the affirmation of univocal and standardized decisions both internally and in mutual relations. And the circumstance can only translate into a different management of democratic power and autonomously considered "democracy" which, evidently and despite the attempts of our President of the Council of Ministers, does not lend itself (or rather, not theoretically, it should lend itself to “external” conditioning if not to the extent useful to allow its controlled and functional evolution to the interest of the team from which it originates.

Translated into a nutshell: what convenience, nowadays, in the frame of this hateful armed conflict, could the European Union portray from following "prone" and "reverent" the stars and stripes input? Evidently none. In the meantime, because the forthcoming and potential enlargement of the Union to the east, as well as the accession to NATO of Finland and Sweden, if on the one hand they serve to question the Franco-German axis, on the other hand they will help to strengthen, with good verisimilitude, the less critical positions towards American unilateralism, forcing us to survive "mutilated" on a democratic level in a friendly "deadly embrace". Therefore, because, unlike what many (and Mario Draghi himself first) seem to want to believe, the European Union, as an ontologically multilateral system, is by its very nature prudent with respect to the perverse mechanisms of the use of force, however surprisingly chosen and advocated in the specific case of the current conflict. Finally, because this geostrategic cultural diversity, unlikely to expand to the risk of cleavage, far from being taken to the extreme, represents the main element of interlocutory relational weakness which, in turn, contributes to making us succubus to an "external" war setting ”Which we are unable to resist due to a lack of autonomous and pluralist leadership. All the more so when this condition is functional to configure the European Union in terms of a pseudo-power with "planned obsolescence", as it is unable to find the liberal inspiration pursued by its founders in the democratic principles that should govern it.

If it was not yet understood, the sooner we get rid of the mental yoke that mistakenly configures the United States as a superpower useful for managing the external threat (to whom and / or what does not seem to be known), the sooner we will be able to come to the awareness that beyond beyond the Atlantic colossus, and outside that closed and self-reported circuit, there are "other" powers, such as those of Russia, China, India and Japan, entirely capable, due to their economic impact, of altering, to them favor, and as seems to happen in the contingent context, any apparently consolidated democratic balance.

In other words: are we able to define what a "European democracy" is, and if it exists, even if only in a broad sense? Any interpretative effort, even acute, on the specific point is destined to turn out to be fallacious and seems equally destined to break the wall of phenomenal evidence. If it is true, in fact, that every functioning democratic form requires suitable institutions and procedures (which European ones seem to be, but are not), it is equally true that those "superstructures", identified with the centers of power, have almost nothing they can serve where shared communities, identity, collective acceptance of bond commitments, respectful mutual recognition are lacking (again as in the case of our Union).

The European democratic deficit continues to constitute, even after the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, the real and unsolved obstacle to the affirmation of the whole team in the globalized universe dominated, on several occasions, by the lopsided coexistence of the two "blocs" within of which the Old Continent represents only a land of conquest to be "colonized".

As long as true political leaders and statesmen continue to be lacking, we will be destined to navigate between compromise solutions that are apparently useful and advantageous in the short term but destructive in the future.

It is extremely evident that the persistent and obstinate preservation of the status quo and the uncritical enslavement to American diktats can only favor the dissolution of the European system, as it is fragmented on the social level and non-existent on the political one. For us Europeans, if we really want to boast of being considered as such, there is only one way out: we must begin to reject any narrative that could induce us to support our existential solidity to a perverse idea of "perfectionism" of American democratic institutions; and we must begin to develop the awareness that the predilection of the armed instrument as a method of resolving disputes, far from constituting a manifestation of force, constitutes, on the contrary, the evident signal of the collapse of the American strategic power which, now more than ever , it needs a strong Europe that is able to take the reins of the government of a world in full transformation.

Europe seems to be indirectly called to take on the role of leading power, and it is so at the moment of its greatest weakness. The rapid evolution of events must be rationalized as soon as possible if we do not want to run the serious risk of being irreparably overwhelmed. The Western camp has changed and with it the level of responsibility required of its members. Do we want to be the reference model for change, or do we want to resign ourselves to acting as a rusty crutch destined to succumb under the heavy weight of self-mortifying "sanctions"?

Giuseppina Di Salvatore

(Lawyer - Nuoro)

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