The renewed centrality of Inland Seas. The regionalisation of the wider Mediterranean

The technological revolution in communications that unfolded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries significantly compressed physical distances, facilitating accelerated interactions among locales traditionally deemed remote. This shift has exponentially intensified reciprocal relations, to the extent that events occurring at a vast physical remove now exert a direct impact on our operational capacity and the broader strategic context in which we operate. For instance, geopolitical friction in the South China Sea between China and the United States directly reverberates within Italy; it impacts, first, bilateral import and export flows with China, and second, the broader geopolitical and geostrategic interests of the respective allied frameworks. More broadly, global interconnectivity catalyzes cross-border encounters, structural frictions, and hybridizations that were previously far more protracted and rare. An examination of the hypertrophied relational space within the Mediterranean immediately reveals the profound systemic complexity generated by this emergent geography. This complexity, however, does not manifest as a uniform layer that hardens proportionally and homogeneously. Relational networks remain inherently unstable and irregular, governed by variables that can introduce severe friction into interactions between highly distant states—such as the commercial linkages between Italy and China—while simultaneously decoupling or attenuating connections between geographically proximate regions, such as the northern and southern littorals of the Mediterranean basin. When this web of complexity exhibits internal coherence—meaning that the interrelations among specific locales are deep, enduring, and multidimensional—distinct geopolitical regions begin to crystallize. This regional coherence is primarily generated by two mutually rebalancing forces: first, structural force, or the geopolitical landscape, which encompasses both physical environmental configurations and the socio-economic and symbolic sedimentations embedded within a territory; second, voluntary force, namely purposeful political action, which actively alters the very landscape in which it operates while simultaneously navigating its systemic resistances and remaining subject to its material constraints.