In a world shaken by global tensions, conflicts (armed and commercial), new systemic challenges, ‘At the center of the storm’ by Donato Benicenti (Rai Libri, 253 pp, 20 euros) is proposed as a compass to orient themselves in an era dominated by uncertainty. With a narration as precise as well as personal, the journalist – head of the Rai correspondence headquarters in Brussels – traces the Key events who modeled the geopolitical present, placing Europe at the center of a lucid analysis.
The book opens with the attack on Donald Trump In July 2024, a symbol of a very polarized America, and winds along the most crowded electoral year in history, with beyond Four billion people called the polls all over the world. From this personal incipit (the phone call with the director of the TG1 on the coverage of the event) and powerful – who lived by Benicenti on the front line in the television story – a large reflection on the new global architecture and the role of the European Union starts.
The volume alternates Chronicle and analysis: From the reconfirmation of Ursula von der Leyen to the presidency of the European Commission, to the advance of the rights in many EU states, passing through the rebirth of protectionist dynamics and the progressive weakening of the liberal international order. But there are also a United Kingdom space, with the election that led to the overwhelming victory of the Labor but also on the return with Nigel Farage Exploit.
Then India, more and more protagonist both economic and geopolitical level; China, growing but still struggling with structural internal limits; And Russia, who through the war in Ukraine has deeply destabilized the international balance. Benicenti outlines Europe as “The center of the storm”, a powerful entity for history and values but too often unable to fully exercise your weight geopolitical between the US and China giants.
With a style that combines journalistic rigor and cultural depth, explores the dialectic between world order and global disorder, recalling thinkers such as Hegel, Giannini and Keynes. War, impossible peace, the contradictions of globalization, the return of nationalisms: complex themes addressed with the clarity of the reporter, without indulging in technicalities or simplifications.
The preface signed by the deputy premier and foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, recalls the founding values of the European Union – freedom, democracy, equality, state of law, dignity of the person – and underlines the urgency of a foreign and common defense policy capable of strengthening the role of the continent in the new world order. Tajani also relaunches the need for a more competitive Europe, less bureaucratic and closer to citizens. Cardinal elements of the report by Mario Draghi who is repeatedly recalled in the text by Benicenti.
The vice -president of the European Commission, Raffaele Fitto, in his speech instead reflects on the challenges of industrial relaunch, regulatory simplification and energy costs, crucial issues for a Europe that aims to be not only a market, but also a political and social community. Ample space is dedicated to European elections of 2024 And to the new political balances that emerged in Strasbourg and Brussels, but the story widens to the global scenarios: the rise of new regional powers, the Crisis of the Middle East, the climatic challengetensions in the digital space.
On each page, theEurope appears as a potential giant, Still looking for a common political will capable of translating its economic and cultural weight into strategic leadership. At the center of the storm we read as a diary on board of a privileged observer who, without sacrificing civil passion, reflects on the big questions of our time: which Europe do we want? What place can still occupy in the new world order? And in what conditions?
The book is also a hymn to the value of the public service and responsible information, as evidenced by the pages dedicated to the television coverage of the war in Ukraine and other recent historical events. ‘At the center of the storm’ it is an essay that tells not only Europe, but also the job of the reporter in front of a world that changes more quickly than our ability to understand it. An invitation not to turn to the other side, to participate, to build, also “in the center of the storm”.