Raisina Dialogue: the role of Italy in the enlarged Mediterranean. From the soft power of the Mediterranean Diet to the bridge of peace between peoples

The Raisina Dialogue, the geopolitical forum, in collaboration with the G20, that brought together 250 decision-makers, including Tony Blair, ministers, heads of state, and experts from around the world, concluded in New Delhi, India.

Among the themes that emerged at the forum was that of the “enlarged Mediterranean,” as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also called it, emphasizing the “connection between the Mediterranean and the Indo-Pacific,” and pointing out that the Italy-India axis, which celebrates 75 years of bilateral relations this year, can be further strategic for “cooperation in areas such as renewables and hydrogen, telecommunications, and space.”

We are therefore entering a new era. One in which we have the opportunity, and the duty, to further strengthen the ultimate root of our identity, culture, the historical matrix, and the soft power of Made in Italy, which is undoubtedly connoted by being Mediterranean.

“I am Mediterranean,” I wrote in the last issue of my column in Gusto. “I am Mediterranean” is an ode to the identity of a multi-ethnic people united in diversity and appearance to principles and values that combine to create the most essential soft power for our country. I am Mediterranean as an ode to the culture with historical roots and the origin of life.

Faced with the massacre of Cruto, the 63 corpses that the mare nostrum returns to us, I am Mediterranean through gritted teeth and with my heart split in two in front of the most revolutionary source of life, which is again and again, like tides that never stop tormenting us, the cradle of death, continuous and constant ferry of eternal contradictions, daughters of inequities, cruel policies, crimes of rights and inability to manage an equitable allocation of resources.

What unites the peoples, what composes the asynchronous symphony of Mediterranean humanity, is the same bridge of death crossed by the desperation of 200 people driven to exasperation and absolute lack of alternatives and opportunities. For there is no irresponsible choice but that of policies taken in rooms so far removed from the beneficiaries of the laws on which they intervene that they no longer even recognize them, that they do not even know who or what is being regulated.

From Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the 63 people who died in our sea, the dozens of children who, in crossing a sea of hope, lost their lives. They are me. They are us. They belong to us. They concern us. They resemble us. They are hyper connected with our choices; those are choices. With our lifestyles. With our diet. With geopolitical action. With our complicit silence that pretends to be deaf-blind, but can no longer turn away when 63 bodies arrive helplessly to expire on the shore where we were distracted to talk about choices that these bodies, neither living nor dead, have.

I am Mediterranean in the shame I feel at this death-generating connection and the narrative surrounding it on this side of the sea. And I am Mediterranean in the responsibility and strength toward sustainable, equitable, and just models that I feel are even more urgent and that we owe to the dead bodies that have returned to populate the mare nostrum.

Let the G20 be a moment of dialogue and become an effective instrument of peace. Let the enlarged Mediterranean start from the responsibility to implement concrete, integral ecological, equitable, and sustainable models that those broken lives impose on us with even more urgency to realize.