Has politics given way to the economy and transferred much of its regulatory power to it? Do the so-called “strong powers” affect the choices of governments? Anyone who thinks it is a degeneration of the balance of power of the globalized third millennium should read this book. Thay shall discover that dot.com, the giants of e-commerce, large corporations in general have not invented anything, but are walking in the footsteps left by merchant companies starting four centuries ago. And that, paradoxically, the “hybrid diplomacy”, in which non-state actors also participate, was born almost in conjunction with the emergence of the idea of the modern state, understood as a single sovereign political entity, in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia. With acuteness and critical spirit, For the Fatherland and for Profit shows us the long road that led to a shared world government between a plurality of subjects – in addition to States, supranational organizations, global NGOs, non-state public entities, large multinational companies – and to the exercise of a new form of diplomacy, a hybrid one, in which, however, politics can and must rediscover its centrality.
For years, diplomat Stefano Baldi has been responsible for the “La Penna del Diplomatico” project, which catalogs the works written by his Italian colleagues and moderates a series of recently published book presentations.
