Resource Sovereignty Is Coming And The West HATES It | Minister Evarist Bartolo

## A new axis of power begins with who controls what The conversation lays out a deceptively simple thesis with broad consequences: sovereignty over resources, when combined with a multipolar world, threatens the old Western order because it erodes the mechanisms of economic and political dominance that have sustained that order for decades. What sounds like a technical debate about oil contracts and refinery ownership is really about who writes the rules of development, who captures value across supply chains, and who gets to translate natural wealth into education, health, and infrastructure. The exchange highlights a historical exemplar—Enrico Mattei—and then traces how his model speaks directly to contemporary struggles over Africa, Europe, and the rising networks of non‑Western power. ## Enrico Mattei: a template for resource sovereignty The conversation revives Enrico Mattei as a figure whose strategy still matters. Mattei, an Italian statesman‑entrepreneur active after World War II, rejected the script of privatization and subordination to the Seven Sisters—the dominant Western oil majors of the moment. Instead, he turned a state company into a vehicle for asserting national and partner sovereignty: negotiating contracts that left host countries with a greater share of profits, transferring technical know‑how, and fostering local capacity. As Minister Evarist Bartolo frames it, Mattei combined moral purpose with hard political judgment—what Mattei himself reportedly regarded as being “innocent as doves, wise as serpents.” That blend of principle and strategic savvy allowed him to open alternative pathways for Italy and for countries across North Africa and the Middle East. Mattei did not only pursue better terms. He pushed for downstream development—refineries, management education, and the creation of sovereign wealth. These measures were not charitable; they were structural. By enabling nations to process and market higher‑value products, Mattei aimed to disrupt the asymmetry that had persisted after formal decolonization: nations that wore the trappings of statehood yet remained economically tethered to former imperial centers. ## State business as geopolitical strategy One recurring point in the discussion is that Mattei’s power derived from the fact that he ran a state company, not a private firm. This matters because the public ownership of strategic industries can be an instrument of foreign policy and development policy simultaneously. Through a state energy company you can offer different contract structures, insist on technology transfer, and prioritize national industrialization over short‑term dividends to distant shareholders. That model runs counter to the Cold War and neoliberal orthodoxy that equated free markets and privatization with modernity and stability. In practice, the privatization script often meant vested foreign interests continued to extract resources at terms that left host countries dependent and underdeveloped. Mattei’s strategy undercut that dynamic. By reinvesting rents into local skills, infrastructure, and downstream capacity, he sought to create durable economic independence, which in turn could broaden a country’s room for diplomatic maneuver. The episode also illustrates how economic tools can be multipurpose: Mattei’s deals with the Soviet Union and China were not merely commercial; they also diversified Italy’s energy sources and gave Rome diplomatic leverage. For smaller European powers, cultivating such options was a pathway to reduce subordination within superpower blocs. ## The resource curse as political design, not destiny The conversation rejects the fatalism embedded in the “resource curse” narrative and reframes it as the predictable outcome of particular political and economic structures. The curse does not fall from the sky; it is engineered through modalities of extraction, ownership, and trade that concentrate value in foreign hands and keep home countries reliant on raw exports. Far from being an inevitable paradox, the resource curse is the product of choices: contract splits that favor multinationals, lack of local refining and manufacturing, capital flight, tax avoidance, and the imposition of debt and conditionalities. Examples discussed in the exchange underscore how Western policy and corporate practice reinforced this extraction model. Restricting which countries can build refineries or refusing to transfer technology keeps the value chain truncated at the export stage. Debt instruments denominated in foreign currency, conditional loans, and structural adjustment programs have historically been used to lock countries into configurations that undercut sovereign development. Illicit financial outflows today often exceed the official investment and aid that flow in, further draining capital and agency from resource‑rich states. In this light, resource underdevelopment is not a curse but a deliberate architecture of dependence. ## Europe, Africa, and the politics of fragmentation A powerful strand of the discussion focuses on Europe’s relationship with Africa as a case study in how the old order sustains advantage. Rather than engaging with the African Union and supporting continental integration such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, the European Union frequently negotiates bilaterally. This approach fragments African bargaining power, making it easier for individual European states and companies to extract concessions and shield markets from African manufactured goods. The transactional posture—import primary goods, export manufactured products—reflects a willingness to accept economic asymmetry in exchange for political stability and cheap inputs. It is paradoxical: Europe laments migration and instability while preferring trade patterns that inhibit African industrialization and employment creation. The conversation notes that China, Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf states have filled the gap left by EU ambivalence, offering infrastructure projects, trade, and technology transfer on terms that sometimes appear more attractive to African leaders precisely because they are less prescriptive about domestic reforms and more oriented toward large, tangible projects. This pattern matters because a continent that successfully industrializes and integrates internally will command very different leverage in world markets. Breaking the cycle of primary‑export dependency requires policy choices—trade architecture, technology transfer, investment in processing and education—that Europe has often been unwilling to make when it would mean ceding short‑term advantage. ## Multipolarity, neutrality, and the strategic squeeze on Western hegemony A broader geopolitical thread links resource sovereignty to the rise of multipolarity and the anxieties it produces in Washington and other Western capitals. When resource‑rich countries exercise real choice—signing deals with China, Russia, or a diversified set of partners—they weaken the binary control that anti‑hegemonic Western policy designers have relied on. The prospect of a global economy where resource sovereignty is common reduces the leverage that Washington and its allies can exert through sanctions, supply controls, or aligned corporate networks. The conversation suggests that neutrality or nonalignment can be pragmatic rather than merely moral. By diversifying relationships across power centers, smaller states enlarge their policy space. This was the logic of Bandung-era leaders and later of European figures like Olof Palme and Bruno Kreisky, who pursued independent courses to avoid automatic subordination. Mattei’s model exemplifies how economic sovereignty can underpin such political autonomy. For Western policymakers accustomed to a bipolar or Western‑dominated order, this shift is perceived as a nightmare: loss of preferential access, erosion of geopolitical leverage, and the diminishing efficacy of policy instrume

Resource Sovereignty Is Coming And The West HATES It What will happen if you combine multipolarity with true resource sovereignty? Well, you get the nightmare of the neocons and hegemonic maniacs in Washington. This is why they hate not only BRICS but people's liberation movements in Africa, too. Today I’m talking again to Evarist Bartolo, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Malta. We want to do an update on what’s going on in European Foreign Policy and we also want to talk a bit about Enrico Mattei, an Italian Entrepreneur and his vision of a humanistic way to do international business. Minister Bartolo's Homepage: https://evaristbartolo.mt Our Shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com #M3 The moral high ground is not enough. This is what they thought 70 years ago when they met in Bandung—that they were a moral force, and that moral force would change the attitudes of the former empires. It did not. So what these countries need to do is develop relations with other powers, both great powers like China and Russia, and regional powers, so that they give themselves a bit more room for maneuver. That is why I agree that the approach they should take is to be neutral as much as possible—neutral in the sense that they build relationships with as many different countries as possible, so that they don't let one country, whatever that country is, dominate them. #M2 Hello everybody, this is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking again to Evarist Bartolo, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Malta. Today we want to do an update on what's going on in European foreign policy, and we also want to talk especially about Enrico Mattei, an Italian entrepreneur, and his vision of a, let's say, more humanistic way of doing international business and how to give countries back resource sovereignty. Evarist, welcome back. #M3 Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk about a great personality, Enrico Mattei, who was born in 1905 and killed in 1962. It's still a mystery how he was killed—was it a plane accident or was it an explosion? #M2 There are a lot of these funny coincidences where important European statesmen who are trying to work towards an alternative vision of world politics die in plane crashes or under mysterious -- 1 of 16 -- circumstances—like Olaf Palme. But Enrico Mattei is one of the people we need to put into this line. Can we maybe start with his life? Could you explain a little bit about who he was and why he matters? #M3 Let's give a bit of historical context. He was born in Italy in 1905. Eventually, he experienced fascism. What really changed him was the resistance against fascism. At first, when he joined the partisan movement, there was a lot of suspicion about him. Would they trust him? Was he an infiltrator? Because he had to work with communists. One thing that Enrico Mattei learned in his life was not to have any ideological prejudice about whom to work with. So he was a Christian Democrat. So, to a certain extent, to simplify matters, it's center-right, but not in the conservative tradition of England, for example. No, he was very much formed by Rerum Novarum, the teaching of the Catholic Church, which also talks about solidarity and social justice. Enrico Mattei gained the confidence of the communists to work with them during the partisan uprising against Mussolini. Then he was tasked by the first Italian government to take over the petrochemical industry that Mussolini had set up and actually to dismantle it and privatize it. Mattei went against that. He said, no, this is something very important. Let's make this a successful venture. So he started running it in a way to give, first of all, Italy sovereignty—so that Italy would have sovereignty over its own resources and how it was going to get its oil and its gas. Because he realized that Italy had emerged out of fascism, but now was faced with a new big problem, which he saw as a problem: that the United States, emerging victorious out of the Second World War, was taking over Western Europe and building its new empire on two tiers—the Western European countries that became quasi-colonies of the United States, and the former British, French, and Dutch colonies in the rest of the world. So he disobeyed the order to dismantle and privatize the petrochemical industry and actually started building it into a big company. Once he started doing that, he came up against what were called at that time the Seven Sisters. We're talking about companies like BP (British Petroleum), Esso, and the Dutch company Shell, who had all become very, very powerful. And that's why they were called the Seven Sisters. They were actually seven multinational companies that ruled Europe—all the resources, oil and gas resources of the former colonies. So we were passing politically: colonies were becoming sovereign, but "sovereign" in inverted commas. So they started playing their national anthem, they had their head of state, they had their head of government, they had their own flag, but the decolonization stopped there because basically their economic relations and their resources continued to be run, controlled, and exploited by the former empires—by the companies of the former empires. Enrico Mattei broke this logic. He went to North Africa, he went to Iran, and started telling them, "Those resources are yours." -- 2 of 16 -- It's up to you to manage them, and it's up to you to get the maximum benefit out of them, to be able to build an education system, a health system, an infrastructure to make you independent. A very interesting conversation with the Tunisian authorities, for example, was that, "Listen, now, if you want to be sovereign, you must have the courage to be free, because to be free, you need courage. You can't simply swim with the current created by the new great powers. You have to be sovereign and you have to go against the wishes of those who still want to control you." I said, "I have learned this, that we have to do this in Italy, because in Italy, we have won our freedom from fascism." But now, with the Cold War and with blocs—NATO on one side, dominated by the United States, and the Warsaw Pact, dominated by the Soviet Union—we have entered a new kind of colonialism and a new kind of limited sovereignty. If we are part of a bloc, we have a very narrow room for maneuver. Ultimately, we cannot cross a border, because if we are on the western side, we will be checked and controlled by the United States; if you are on the eastern side, you will be controlled by the Soviet Union. In fact, there are very interesting studies that show that for a very long time, the two alliances did not serve to confront each other, but actually to control their members—to control their members in different ways. In Italy, the United States would control them politically. So, for example, if Mattei went to Iran— and it's very interesting that today, if we were to walk into the central office of the National Iranian Oil Corporation, we would find a big portrait of Enrico Mattei hanging there. If we go to Algeria, we will find a large garden named after Enrico Mattei. But this is not something that happened in the '50s or in the '60s. Actually, there was an Italian delegation two or three years ago, and they opened the garden then. Why am I saying this? To show that Enrico Mattei is still very relevant, and is still seen as very relevant, and also as an alternative way for Europe to engage with its former colonies. So even in the '50s and '60s, you had people with vision and energy like Enrico Mattei, who saw that it was not only possible to build an alternative relationship—a more equal and cooperative relationship—with the Global South, but actually, it was also in the interest of European countries to do that. He felt that the way to have more sovereignty and more say in decision-making in Italy itself was to do that also with countries like Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Iran, and eventually also with the Soviet Union and China. The United States did not like this. They accused him of being a communist, and he was everything but a communist. What Enrico Mattei was—I think he took to heart something that Jesus Christ told his apostles when he sent them off. He told them, "You have to be as innocent as doves, but you also have to be wise as serpents." And he was both. He had good intentions, but he also knew how to operate shrewdly in a difficult world. #M2 -- 3 of 16 -- Now, how did he do that? Because he didn't have a public office, right? He was purely and squarely a businessman, and he had ideas about how to put this resource business into the service of these former colonies, but also in the service of Europe, which should emancipate itself from this bloc politics. And we have had several famous politicians who were going that route in Europe. Again, we had Olof Palme in Sweden, we had Urho Kekkonen in Finland, and Kekkonen, of course, moving away from the Soviets with this neutral course. We had Bruno Kreisky and the Austrians. And now, Italy was, of course, a NATO member, but there were people in Italy, like Mattei, who thought there should be other ways. So, as a businessman, how did he go about this? #M3 He was different because, in his case, he was a businessman who was working for a state company. This is important—that is where his political power came from. He was not the CEO, chairman, or leader of a private company; it was actually a state company because he refused to privatize it. He said Italy needs it—Italy needs it to be able to develop itself. And he could do it. As I said, he was a very skillful operator. He started winning a lot of contracts in these countries because these countries realized that it made more sense, number one, to have a contract which gave them 75% of the profits and not 50% of the profits, like the British, American, Dutch, and French companies gave them. Number two, Mattei built a very egalitarian relationship with them in the sense that he wanted not only to take their oil and gas, not only to give them a greater share of their wealth, but he was also ready to transfer knowledge. So he organized a college in Italy where people from Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, and all the other different countries could send their young people to learn management skills and technical skills to be able to manage their petrochemical sector. Now, this was completely different from what the British, American, French, and Dutch companies were doing. In fact, the United States got very alarmed and told the Italian prime minister, "Stop Mattei. Because what he's doing—we are not worried about your petrochemical company, you know, we are not worried about it." But what we're worried about is what it's doing in these countries, because it's offering an alternative. And this is threatening Western dominance in these countries. Now, this language was going on while, very nobly, everyone was saying in these countries that they agreed to have decolonization, that all countries, irrespective of their size, should be free. But when it came to it, they did not want to lose control of these resources. #M2 And just for a second, the most famous part of neocolonialism is, of course, the debt trap, right? Giving these places loans—US dollar-denominated loans—through the IMF, World Bank, or whatever, -- 4 of 16 -- that they will never be able to properly pay back, and then imposing structural adjustment and things like that, and having some of their key industries under Western control. Now, the petrochemical industry is one key pillar of that. Can you maybe quickly explain why the petrochemical sector is so important, beyond just the value of the oil itself? It's also important downstream, right? And all successful former colonies, by the way, had their own petrochemical industries—even in Southeast Asia, like Singapore. They all needed to develop this. Why is that? #M3 Well, it's obviously s