There was a place in Venice called the Fondaco dei Turchi where one traded with the enemies. While the Serenissima and the Ottoman Empire were fighting on the seas, business continued in the Santa Croce district.
Death and trade were different matters, fighting on the seas and shedding blood was perhaps the last act of diplomacy for a new peace, but business and commerce could not be interrupted for the benefit of both. The Ukrainian war reminds us that the times are the same as what happened on the Grand Canal.
The EU continues to buy gas from the new Soviet Union, while anti-tank missiles are delivered to the Ukrainian resistance on the Polish border. An order of values and hierarchies is established, luxury shops in Moscow are closed for the oligarchs and Ikea for the urban bourgeoisie, banking interconnection systems are interrupted, but not for the credit institution that manages payments for methane gas flows.
Substance and accident, economic rationality and tragic representation of reality, for the use of the naive and the war industry driving industrial research.
China observes. There are few comments in the Beijing press. Generic warnings about the risk of a nuclear massacre, the loss of too many human lives. The opening of a dialogue and moderation is suggested. The Russian aggression is not justified, but the concerns of the neo-Soviet elite over the expansion of the Atlantic West are recognized as legitimate.
China observes because it has in common with the new Soviet Union hegemonic and territorial aspirations, the rhetoric of the great humiliation suffered by the liberal West, but also the close dependence on its markets and its capitals, its lifestyles and consumption and it suffers from cultural hegemony.
China observes and could replace the Swift payment system with its own RMB, but as David P. Goldman writes in the Asia Times, it does not want to challenge the West because everywhere there is a Fondaco where to deal with business and trade.
The article was originally published on the Italian language site www.altriorienti.com
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