Lorenzo Maria Pacini highlights Carlo Terracciano as a pioneering Italian thinker who transformed geopolitics from a closed, Atlanticist military field into a visionary Eurasian, anti-globalist science of sovereignty, tradition, and civilizational destiny.
In the Italian landscape, Carlo Terracciano (1948-2005) was undoubtedly one of the initiators of geopolitics as a science, a great scholar, teacher, and popularizer, at a time and in a context in which geopolitics was still the preserve of a select few in the armed forces and strictly Atlanticist in nature.
A Brief Biography
To get to the heart of the matter, we first need a brief biographical presentation of Terracciano, a figure whom many already know and who has had an impact even beyond national borders. Born on October 10, 1948, as a young man he was active in the political Right, joining the Youth Front, the youth organization of the Italian Social Movement, and in the 1970s he became involved in the Nouvelle Droite [New Right] movement that originated in France and Italy, represented by Stenio Solinas with the magazine Elementi (correspondent of the French Éléments), which, however, ceased publication in 1979. The ideas of the Nouvelle Droite marked Terracciano’s intellectual path, pushing him to reject extreme nationalism, chauvinism, and supremacism, and instead open up to a European federalist perspective that was multipolar ante litteram and, above all, anti-Atlanticist, thus in stark contrast to the positions of the Italian institutional Right, which was aligned with the wishes of London and Washington.
In the mid-1980s, he began collaborating with the national-communist magazine Orion, before joining the editorial staff of Eurasia, where he remained until his untimely death on September 3, 2005. This was the mature phase of his thinking, in which he explored and consolidated his vision of a defined and original Eurasianism, characterized by acute analysis and forward-looking visions considered by many to be almost prophetic. Indeed, Terracciano managed to look beyond the century, glimpsing the guidelines for a change in the international chessboard, as well as the critical points that would characterize the years to come.
The Doctrine of the Three Liberations
A central element of his thinking is the Doctrine of the Three Liberations, which still holds value today as a theoretical compass. It is a genuine adoption of an existential stance that is an alternative to the materialistic and dehumanizing vision of liberalism. The three liberations — national, social, and cultural — constitute the pillars for an authentic path for the emancipation of peoples, especially those subject to the domination of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and its utilitarian logic.
The first is national liberation. It starts from the awareness that there can be no individual or collective freedom if the national community is deprived of sovereignty and influenced by external powers. Although today the concept of the nation is being superseded by that of the state-civilization, Terracciano’s assertion regarding sovereignty as an essential element remains valid. The second, social liberation, recalls Marx’s idea of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” and translates into guaranteeing fundamental rights — food, health, education, housing, security, dignity — understood not as mere materialistic welfare but as the basis for full human and spiritual fulfillment in the community, in an almost Platonic political idealism. The third is cultural liberation, which is the most decisive. It implies the reconquest of one’s identity and tradition against the process of uprooting imposed by globalist ideologies and postmodern trends that aim to dissolve community ties and reduce man to an isolated individual, vulnerable to the domination of capital.
Terracciano, while criticizing internationalist Marxism, observed how in different contexts it had been adapted to national and civil interests, giving rise to experiences of national communism (think of Cuba, China, North Korea) that slowed the advance of globalism. Hence the idea that the struggle for liberation must be global and based on large continental units, in particular on a Eurasian alliance stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in full accordance with the thinking of Carl Schmitt and, later, Alexander Dugin.
Tradition is Revolution
Taking up Evola’s traditionalist philosophy, Terracciano argued that tradition is revolution, not sterile conservation. The goal is not to maintain outdated forms but to open a new historical cycle capable of overcoming modern globalism, understood as a degenerate and terminal expression of American-centric capitalism. In this view, Europe must rediscover its natural geopolitical unity with Russia and the Eurasian space, rather than identifying with the Atlantic West.
This far-sighted and radical vision is still extraordinarily relevant today, at a time marked by the crisis of the unipolar order, proxy wars, and growing pressure from the United States on Europe. Hence the urgency of a new cultural revolution of liberation, aimed at rebuilding a traditional, organic, and vital culture, as opposed to globalist thinking.
The Commitment to Geopolitics
Terracciano’s exposition on what geopolitics is — and what it is not — remains masterful, perhaps the first true definition in Italy, beyond the manuals of General Carlo Jean reserved for the military.
We quote the author’s words, taken from the book Geopolitica (AGA, Milan 2018):
GEOPOLITICS is precisely the doctrine that studies all this: that branch of anthropic geography that analyzes the relationship between man and the earth, between civilization and nature, between history and geography, between peoples and their Lebensraum (Leben = Life; Raum = Space; Lage = Position), that is, the living space necessary for the state community, organically understood, to live, grow, develop, expand, and prosper: creating well-being, civilization, and values for its members, living together on the same soil and united in a single COMMUNITY OF DESTINY. Or, to put it in Luraghi’s more technical terms: ‘Geopolitics is the doctrine that studies political phenomena in their spatial distribution and in their causes and environmental relationships, also considered in their development.’ And again: ‘Geopolitics is synthesis: a broad view in time and space of the general phenomena that connect the perception of geographical factors with states’ and peoples.
Terracciano’s formulation was particularly brilliant in deciphering the enigma hidden behind Halford Mackinder’s words on the eternal struggle between Land and Sea: it is not simply a question of geopolitical physiology, whereby the two models of civilization are constantly in opposition, but rather it is the United Kingdom’s desire to bring down all the great terrestrial powers, starting with Russia, but not only Russia. This desire is, for Terracciano, evident if one tries to apply classical geopolitical doctrine to the events that were already changing the global map in the 1990s.
This line of thinking is echoed by Nicholas Spykman, who expanded on Mackinder’s theories, believing that it was not the “heart” of Eurasia (Heartland) that was decisive, but the peripheral belt, the Rimland, the real ring of containment around Russia. His famous formula — he “who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia, who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world” — sums up the centrality of this vision, which deeply inspired US strategy during and after the Second World War. Following Spykman, American geopolitics has focused precisely on controlling this marginal belt: from Western Europe to Eastern Asia, passing through the Middle East, with the aim of encircling and containing Eurasian power. This approach has continued to influence US foreign policy well beyond the Cold War period.
In this context, Terracciano explains, Europe plays a crucial role: as a peninsula of the Eurasian continent and a natural bridge between land and sea, it becomes a privileged ground for confrontation between continental and maritime powers. Its central position, extensive coastline, demographic density, and economic wealth make it the strategic prize par excellence. For this reason, his commitment to training scholars and political activists was tireless and continuous. Europe needed to reaffirm its position in the world in order to rebalance the fortunes in the epochal battle between Land and Sea.
This was truly prophetic, and today it is still little understood and developed.
Terracciano’s thinking is a theoretical and practical tool for those who want to work for the spiritual, cultural, and political rebirth of Europe and its peoples, with a view to resisting globalism and recovering their historical roots and identity.
I've always been curious about the work of Terracciano. Thank you for this.