Luttwak: “Prodi works for the Chinese”

“The only place in the West where the Chinese have a great social influence is Italy”. Edward Luttwak returns to the topic of the unbalanced relations between China and Italy in his opinion, speaking at a seminar organized by the Luiss Business School. Chinese “propaganda”, says the US political scientist, can count on “people like Prodi, who sells millions of books in China, D’Alema, Tria, Giancarlo Elia Valori: all go on television to praise China”. Luttwak focuses on Prodi in particular: “Romano Prodi works for the Chinese. Find me another former prime minister who works for the Chinese”, he asks the audience. The US political scientist illustrates to the audience the basis of the so-called “geoeconomics”, a term coined by himself, to explain how after the end of the Cold War and the confrontation between the US and the USSR, various nations, starting with Japan, “began to use the logic of war with the methods of commerce “. The first wave of geoeconomics – explains Luttwak – has failed and the second wave, which is above all Chinese, will also fail. “The” Chinese propaganda “, he repeats,” is made up of a Western expectation, from thinking that since the Chinese they know how to produce ordinary things very well, it is thought that they can also produce other things. “But, Luttwak argues,” some things they cannot do, yet this illusion continues. “The political scientist takes as an example the announcements of Beijing on the great progress they would make done in the field of Artificial Intelligence. In fact, says Luttwak, “I’m 15 or 20 years behind.” The same goes for the recent Chinese announcement of the development of a hypersonic missile. “It’s a technology from 1969”, which they worked on already the US and the Soviet Union, he says, “is useless”.