“Black Friday”, with terrorist attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait did not spring from an order from a terrorist super-HQ. Not a single, unified command but a single crisis links the episodes of that day and requires a global approach to tackling the challenge. This is particularly true for Italy, which through geography and history is at the centre of the theatre of crisis, the Mediterranean. This was not a sudden flare-up of terror. From 7 January to 26 June 2015, the dates mark the rhythm of the attacks and of our horror and dismay. A broad-ranging political and cultural recognition of the extent of the historic challenge we are facing is, therefore, increasingly necessary.
This year the challenge posed by Da’esh (ISIS) is emerging with new force. Da’esh controls a significant part of the territory of Iraq and Syria, and this is one of its dangerous new developments. The other is that it reasons first and foremost as a media actor and thus enters our lives. It is strong when it succeeds in capturing our attention, as well as territory; it is strong when its “brand” succeeds in recruiting and influencing, when its “symbols” (including the symbol of Rome, which is intended to strike us directly) succeed in instilling fear and generating political and social effects.
For this reason too, the battle against Da’esh requires a multi-level strategy in which military action is of course decisive, and sees us involved on several fronts. But military action must be accompanied by prevention initiatives and countermeasures that have an impact on the new forms of recruitment. We need to see the increasingly close involvement of the Muslim communities around our shared values and against the message of intolerance and hatred sent out by terrorism. We also need to dry up the sources of Da’esh funding through international collaboration, in which Italy is playing a leading role as co-chair of the Counter ISIL Finance Group.
Taking the question to a deeper level, we need a conceptual “compass” which required a historic awareness of the balance of power and the conflicts in the Middle East, as well as a multilateral approach. The heart of this conceptual compass is a recognition of the crucial challenge of the Mediterranean question. Indeed, the Mediterranean is, today, much more than Europe’s southern border. It is, increasingly, a border of civilisations and the meeting-place of three continents, with cultural, political and security implications of unprecedented significance.
The Mediterranean’s leading role in Italian foreign policy is a very real principle for a country with 8000 kilometres of coastline and which is exposed to nearby tinderboxes of instability, with all their economic and energy implications. We also consider the Mediterranean, as the crossroads of both the crisis and the opportunities of the 21st century, as being the space in which Europe can and must leave self-interest behind to overcome the most dangerous crisis of recent years, a crisis that has undermined the mutual trust of Europeans themselves. Today the Mediterranean question takes the form of 3 principal themes which demonstrate this central role.
The first concerns terrorism and instability. We are faced with a huge “arc of crises” stretching from the Gulf of Guinea to Pakistan and with several epicentres of instability in the Mediterranean itself. These are caused, most notably, by clashes internal to Islamic communities and by the fragility of certain states after the collapse of numerous nation-states that emerged from the disintegration of empires and the decolonisation process. States that today have become failed or fragile states. Analysing the Middle East in his latest book, Henry Kissinger says that in no other place is the challenge to the international order more complex.
State fragility – the most obvious feature of the current map of the Mediterranean and in part a result of short-sightedness in the last period of intervention – is the greatest gift to extremists wishing to exploit internal conflicts and tribalism to their own advantage. For this reason, the need to stabilise the most sensitive regions through carefully considered and broadly agreed solutions deserves our full attention. Dealing with legitimate counterparties who are in a position to exercise an effective “state capacity” is, in fact, the only way to tackle the common problems in a lasting and realistic manner.
This aspect concerns Libya first and foremost. Its stabilisation is decisive to the stability of the entire Mediterranean region and to our own national interest. Our bilateral and international action in Libya is focused on achieving the broad consensus that is needed to destroy the criminal economy of people trafficking which threatens the security of Europe as a whole. It is focused, too, on achieving a unified political agreement and compromise on the Libyan government, which Italy is ready to support with its resources and with a leading role.
Libya, Syria and Iraq: states whose very survival is today at stake. Addressing the crisis is important, as is battling to prevent other states from falling into the same spiral of instability. Today, the first in line is Tunisia, the land that kept the promises of the Arab Spring.
And countries like Lebanon and Jordan, which are being subjected to almost unsustainable migration pressures. State capacity and institutional reconstruction are essential themes of the foreign policy of the 21st century. As David Miliband recently pointed out, half of the world’s population living in extreme poverty today (and in 2030 it will be two thirds) lives in states without the capacity and legitimisation to protect their citizens, who receive only 38% of humanitarian aid. We need to reverse this trend and help build institutional capacity. A new order in the Mediterranean, with broad multilateral involvement, must be the proof of this method.
The second major challenge of the Mediterranean concerns Africa, a continent with enormous growth potential. And a continent where Italy can and must be a leading player. We, who have extraordinary trading relations with the countries of the Mediterranean region – 50 billion in trade, 4th commercial partner after the USA, Germany and China – can grasp the potential of the Mediterranean as a springboard towards Africa.
For all too long we have viewed Africa as an unknown land. In this century we have already seen a different Africa, not just in terms of sustained economic growth (a projected 4.5% in 2015 and 5% in 2016) but also of human development, the role played in multilateral institutions, the far-reaching impact of the digital revolution through mobile technology. The challenge of EXPO 2015, “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life”, will be won in Africa first and foremost, and the creation of the infrastructure that Africa needs is an opportunity for Europe and for Italy. This government, since Prime Minister Renzi’s first visits abroad, has viewed Africa as an economic and political priority.
Africa, and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, is the focus of Italian international development cooperation efforts, which will be boosted with the implementation of Law 125/2014. Efforts which we will revitalise with the Prime Minister’s participation in the forthcoming summit in Addis Ababa on financing for development.
The third major challenge facing us in the Mediterranean theatre, and perhaps the most sensitive, is immigration. The issues grabbing the headlines are the tragedies at sea, the quarrels within Europe on taking in migrants and the humanitarian crises destabilising key countries in the Mediterranean. To address the challenge we need to reason in a manner that rejects partisanship and ambiguity. Migration flows will continue to be a key feature of Mediterranean policy. We need only consider the conditions of poverty and conflict affecting huge areas of Africa and the Middle East; and the imbalance between the young populations of the southern shores and the ageing populations in Europe. Today, 16% of Europeans are aged 65 or over, and in 2050 that figure will reach 27% (in Italy, one third).
Anyone who thinks they have a magic wand to resolve these era-defining changes is lying, and they know they are lying. The events of the new generation in the countries of the southern shore of the Mediterranean and of Africa, and the development of the next generation, require a radically different mental map. And for this reason they require proper governance of the phenomenon through close cooperation with the countries of origin and transit, and the utmost political awareness of the urgency of the problem.
This is a question of farsightedness. In recent months Italy, in addition to signing important bilateral agreements, has been engaged in a constant effort to increase its European partners’ awareness of the fact that immigration must be a shared European responsibility, through concrete decisions that also affect the financial contribution (as you would expect from an economic super-power), not an occasion for reciprocal divisions and vetoes.
We still have to demonstrate a true European “re-awakening” on the question, because it is on these issues that Europe will express, or fail to express, its role as a global actor. The chorus of adjectives on the relocation of asylum seekers (obligatory? voluntary? binding? consensus-based?) is not worthy of the situation. It conveys an image of a Europe that is worn out, relegated to the margins of history, clever at surveying the past and resigned to simply undergoing the present. Italy is not resigned to that and if we continue to fight for a dignified common migration policy we are doing so first and foremost for the future of the Union.
Europe’s Mediterranean identity takes us beyond the old conflicts of the continent and beyond the dross left by the Cold War. It forces us to address the crucial risks for our society in a new world, risks that range from terrorism to state fragility to environmental sustainability. At the same time, the Mediterranean and the opening up of Africa embody opportunities for growth and sustainability in the 21st century: in energy, research, commerce and human capital. Only a new Mediterranean order can bring stability to 3 continents.
Fernand Braudel wrote in his “Memorie del Mediterraneo” that the Mediterranean has never let itself be shut in by its history, but has rapidly moved beyond its confines. Today our sea continues to mark the confines of a new politics. It is up to us Italians and Europeans to express that new politics in full by overcoming our fears.
