Beyond the appreciation already made, the message I feel like sending is the testimony of a closeness to the sensitivity of the Romanian people and this magazine, too. I’m not just surprised by the understanding I found in their welcome. The feelings binding me to Eastern Europe are supported by my experiences, which marked my debut in the interest of international issues right there. Since then, cultural imprinting has prevented me from neglecting that complex and fascinating world that cannot be merely reduced to a consumer market.

All of this seems to escape the principles of geopolitics only for those who inscribe it in the economic sciences sphere aimed at “domination.” I find not sur-prisingly sensitive and open interlocutors in the Eastern Europe world, a fundamental geopolitical crossroads for the Euro-Asian continent, but also an area of culture, history, and traditions. And I find this dialogue on the ground of the relationship to Islam in an area, the Balkan one, particularly difficult due to its historical, political and religious past, a synthesis of my cultural interests and existential projections.

A last consideration.

My origins are in Southern Italy, a land culturally inter-weaving the Byzantine and Orthodox worldview with the Arab-Islamic one. This is not a historical-political or identity claim since part of my education developed mainly in the Western and Anglo-Saxon world. It is a matter of placing at the centre of decision-makers’ attention that there are people’s cultural and behavioural settings with which one must deal respectfully when setting geopolitical visions and beyond any cosmopolitan ambitions.

That is also geopolitics.

June 2023