We live in an age of extremism and polarization . An adversary is always an enemy, anyone who thinks differently is a danger, anyone who questions our positions is automatically a fascist or a communist, depending on how you look at things. Just think of our own politics. Our political class, for years now, has stood out for its propensity for brawling. Members of virtually all political factions compete to see who uses the most aggressive tone toward their adversaries. In this political climate, it has become natural to dismiss any attempt at mediation as a deal or, worse, an example of betrayal because one is seeking an understanding with the "enemy." In this political landscape, it is difficult to envision implementing the many reforms the Italian state needs. Every decision made by one government, in fact, is then dismantled piece by piece by the next, as has been happening for years now. Obviously, the Italian system is effectively blocked by overlapping laws and counter-laws, while reforms always require clarity, time to be implemented, and a shared vision.
If we think about it, the great results achieved by Italy after the Second World War were also the fruit of the willingness of all the parliamentary forces of the time, led by the Christian Democrats and the Communist Party, to collaborate. Without the ability to negotiate, mediate, and decide together, not even our Constitution would have been born, nor our republic. Those political forces, so different as they were, did not play for blood if Italy and its citizens were to pay the price. They relied on pragmatism and common sense.
The discussion of the impossibility of dialogue between opposing local extremisms can easily be extended to global phenomena. Opposing visions and radical phenomena create a sense of uncertainty that is rapidly compromising the ability of states and ruling classes to govern change. This is the core of Gianluca Ansalone's excellent essay, "Estremi" (Guerini e Associati, 2026, pp. 176), which analyzes in-depth and with extreme clarity the dynamics of a world teetering between chaos and polarization.
Ansalone—a manager of multinational corporations and a professor of Geopolitics and Strategy at the Campus Biomedico and the Carabinieri Officers' School—starts from a premise: radical social, political, and cultural forces have often represented positive change throughout history, until radicalism turned into polarization, the denial of the other's rights, a tool for struggle, chaos, and violence. Now that extremes dominate relations between states, parties, and individuals, a new governance model is needed. Pragmatic responses are needed in the face of the return of war, the power of technological para-states, a changing climate, mass migrations, political polarization, and the division of the world into spheres of influence. These are epochal changes, made more destructive by ideology. Ansalone's essay warns of the risks of exasperation in international relations and in relations between parties, systems, political models, and even between individuals, with a realistic, not nostalgic, vision in search of effective solutions for the coming decades. To avert catastrophe…because there is still time to do it!