Decio Lucano’s reflection on the geopolitical evolution involving the littoral countries of the Mare Nostrum
by Decio Lucano – DL Notizie Logbook 2025 n°33
The workload of European ports would increase by almost 40% if all liners, following a ceasefire in Gaza, decided to immediately restore the traditional route via Suez for the Asia-Europe connection services. This was stated by the British analyst Sea Intelligence. Specifying that such an event is still far from coming, especially since no ceasefire has been announced by the Houthi militias, whose attacks on ships transiting Suez in protest of the Israeli aggression in Gaza had pushed the vast majority of companies to route ships via the Cape of Good Hope to reach Europe. The report presented by Sea Intelligence calculates the quantitative effects, should shipping companies return to the Suez route.
Predag Matvejevich, the great thinker, during a lecture at the Collège de France in Paris, a lecture collected in a famous book published in 1998, Il Mediterraneo e l’Europa (Garzanti), said with foresight, among other things: “To perceive the Mediterranean solely from its past remains a tenacious habit, both on the coast and inland. The ‘homeland of myths’ has itself suffered from the mythologies it has generated… The image offered by the Mediterranean is not at all reassuring. The northern side lags behind Northern Europe and the same applies to the southern shore in relation to the European one… It is not possible to consider this sea a true ‘whole’ without taking into account the fractures that divide it, the conflicts that tear it apart in Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, the Maghreb, the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia… Decisions concerning the fate of the Mediterranean are made, very often, outside of it or without it, and this generates frustrations and phantoms.”
And it must be added that the Law of the Sea with its articulations of territorial waters, contiguous zones, continental shelf, exclusive zones up to 200 miles from the coasts, etc., has practically reduced the free spaces of this sea. Take a nautical chart and draw the lines of the zones described by the Law of the Sea among the intersecting grids that involve the policies of many nations. Just look at the Adriatic Sea (but whose is it? Italy or Croatia?). I don’t know if Lucio Caracciolo (of Limes) has considered this aspect as well.
