Today we share with you another edition of our series – Chat with our Alumni.
This time we meet Gioia Ghezzo, who was an intern in ITL Marketing in 2022. Natalija Bojanić, trainee in ITL Marketing in 2023, moderated the meeting. The meeting was supervised by Irene Pepe, Marketing and Communications Manager for ITL Group.
Gioia, could you please introduce yourself?
First of all I would like to thank ITL group for inviting me for this opportunity, especially because I had the chance to to do an internship for ITL group, so I would like to thank Irene, and also Natalija here, Alessandro Farina, and Luigino Bottega.
I have graduated with the Master’s degree in Comparative international relations at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Previously I had graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign languages and international politics, and I also completed a Master’s degree in Economics and Eurasian studies.
Can you tell us what is your book about and how did you come to the idea to write it?
Talking about what I did in the university and talking about my Eurasian studies that led me to the creation of my book, Grande Eurasia: La sfida russo-cinese all’Occidente, I focused my university career on the study of Eurasianism and Neo-eurasianism. More specifically I studied the influence of Aleksandr Dugin in Russian foreign policy, which I have discussed in my undergraduate dissertation. I then expanded my Eurasian studies on a broader perspective, and I analyzed the geopolitical scenario we are currently observing, which is Russia’s progressive detachment from the West, and on the other hand Russia’s close relationship with China within the framework of this Greater Eurasian project.
In Italy, there was no book about the project of a Greater Eurasia so my book aims to provide an analysis of this idea that has increasingly appeared in Putin’s political discourse since 2016. A question that was asked to me when I did a presentation at the Feltrinelli bookstore in Venice was when did I conceive the idea of writing a book about the greater Eurasia. Actually, this is a book I conceived long before the international scenario turned into what is today, so what I did was to revise everything I wrote in order to be up-to-date since the war in Ukraine. This was not an easy thing to do, as I wrote already 200 pages.
Talking about the relations between Russia and China, how would you define them?
This strengthening of relations between Russia and China evolved on the basis of common values, more specifically Russia and China show a shared vision of international relations, as they are aligned on the principle on which the international order should be based, and on the role of the US. For China and Russia, US dominance is a temporary aberration in international politics, and this refusal of Western values and norms creates a strong bond between the two countries that seem to speak, in a way, common political languages. The two countries reject the notion of universal democracy proposed by the West, and in this sense Russia and China are often included in the set of powers that some scholars have defined revisionist or soft revisionist, since they challenge the unipolar order which was established at the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in this sense Russia and China are willing to transform the international order through the creation of a Sino-Russian block, whose aim is to reduce the weight of the West, especially the United States, through a creation of a multipolar world order. I think that this multipolarity is at the heart of the Sino-Russian relations, which means the coexistence of many poles, many values, many systems of values, many centers, and above all the rejection of the cultural standardization imposed by the United States, imposed by the eurocentrism.
How did these relations evolve after the start of the war in Ukraine?
The war has certainly clarified two points. First of all, how to understand China’s position towards Russian revisionism as we said, and of course the limits that exist in the relations between the two powers. Since the beginning of the war, China has pursued what some scholars called a pro-russian neutrality, and this is because the country has referred to the conflict with the moderate term of Ukrainian crisis, it hasn’t imposed sanctions on Moscow in the UN framework, and because China doesn’t blame directly the war in Ukraine on Moscow, but rather than on the Cold War mentality associated with the NATO enlargement, and is in this way justifying the perception of insecurity that pushed the military action of Russia. However, in my opinion, it would be wrong to think that China’s ambiguity towards the war in Ukraine means a general consensus towards Russian action, and we know that China has strongly opposed to the threat of the atomic bomb, especially to protect its reputation as an international player, but also because China most of all needs stability to exist and wouldn’t profit from an escalation of the conflict, so we can therefore say that today China is in an extremely difficult position regarding relations with Russia, because on one hand Russia remains a key partner to support China in its competition with the USA, and on the other hand the new Russian revisionism in a way threatens the stability of the relations that the country has developed so far.
What are your plans for the future?
I’m planning on a book about the influence of Aleksandr Dugin in Putin’s political discourse, so stay tuned.
I am participating in a festival called Alter festival – Antidoti contro il pensiero unico, which will be held in Cerea, in Italy, and it will be on the 28th of May. I have my LinkedIn account in which I publish articles and my updates about the events that I am participating in.
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