Carotenuto (M5s): "Leaving NATO? Maybe"

“Leaving NATO? Maybe. Ours will be a square against rearmament,” says Dario Carotenuto, deputy of the 5 Star Movement, to Il Foglio. “A square that starts from the bottom,” he adds. In the run-up to the NATO summit in The Hague, next Saturday, which will propose that Italy increase spending on rearmament up to 5 percent of GDP.

Honorable, will Saturday's demonstration be a demonstration against NATO? "NATO has serious responsibilities. It was born with an excellent, defensive intent, but it has largely gone beyond that boundary." So you would like to leave the Atlantic Alliance? "Leaving NATO, I fear, is science fiction. Unfortunately." Unfortunately? "If we could leave NATO, we would be a free and democratic country. And right now we are not. If only we could leave. I'm not saying exactly that we 'should' do it, because there are good intentions at the base of the Alliance, but given the situation..." Yes? "Well, we won't decide that. If anything, it will be NATO that will fall apart. We, at this moment, are slaves and not protagonists, so we cannot choose whether to leave or stay."

You mention the Alliance's serious responsibilities. The latest of which is this idea of ​​increasing the share of GDP allocated to defense. "It's just the latest, exactly." Are you referring to the strengthening in the countries bordering Russia? To the provocation that would have sparked the conflict in Ukraine in 2022? "2022 seems too recent as a temporal reference to me. The current scenario was born from the end of the Second World War. I think that so-called soft power has always worked to defuse situations that could become uncomfortable..." Explain, Mr. President. "Soft power has acted where there were flourishing markets, I'm thinking of energy. And so I'm thinking of Iraq, Afghanistan. We have passed off as 'democratization' a series of realities that had a very different matrix." Do you think the same about ongoing conflicts? “I think the same about Israel’s attack on Iran, of course. Tehran has been talked about for ages as one of the objectives of the West… West… Let’s call it that…” You mean NATO? “NATO.”

So, it has nothing to do with the nuclear bomb? The enrichment of uranium? “Look, we've been talking about Iran for a long time. Even for all the passages of the gas pipelines. Today some cornerstones are falling. It is very difficult to disavow the order of values ​​that we have always given ourselves”. Of course. “Many times, even with fraternal people, I find myself reasoning about a moral supremacy of the West, which is always taken for granted". And...? "And it is so endemic that it ends up legitimizing everything. Facts are justified as such that are unjustifiable. Even more so today”.

Does the square against rearmament that “starts from the bottom” – and holds together M5s, Avs and perhaps a delegation of the PD – find itself in these reasons? “I can say that I feel more at ease in this square than in the other one on June 6”. Why? “I think that in the face of the massacre in Gaza we should have made even stronger gestures. In any case, it will be a square against rearmament”. A topic with respect to which your major ally, Elly Schlein’s PD, seems a little confused. “Let’s say it’s embarrassed, and I understand that. The coexistence of Picierno and Boldrini, Fassino and Scotto…”. An ircocervus? “Of course. Schlein is trying to hold the party together but a congress would be needed”. A congress or a miracle? “I really don’t envy them. In the Labour Commission, where I am too, we get along very well, to the point that they often take over our ideas”. Copyists? “Yes, but they communicate them better, because they have a more efficient structure than ours. On work, however, we are united. But in Europe…”. In Europe it is painful. “They should choose which side to be on in economics as in foreign policy. Given that even on Productive Activities, with them, we are in difficulty. The truth, however, is that the PD is rooted in a turbocapitalist seed. I wish them a congress”.

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