Parterre level at the round table held in recent days in Montecarlo di Lucca (LU), as part of the Cerruglio festival 2016, the traditional Lucca literary competition now in its seventh edition, organized this year in the splendid setting of the "Fattoria del Teso" from the local UNUCI section and from Walter Cassar, historical director in charge of the periodical "Defense Information".
"What future for security in Europe?" the theme chosen for the debate, on which prominent figures from the world of defense and academia were confronted, such as General Vincenzo Camporini, former Defense Chief of Staff, Admiral Ferdinando San Felice di Monteforte, former Italian Representative at the NATO, prof. Luciano Bozzo of the University of Florence, Gianandrea Gaiani, director of Defense Analysis, Antonio Selvatici journalist and university professor and Rachele Schettini expert in geopolitics and community law.
Moderator of the meeting was General Antonio Li Gobbi, former commander and inspector of the weapon of Genius, with a long international experience in the UN and NATO - (on the sidelines we publish an interview) -, which began underlining “like the theme of security, already little popular in our country, risks leaving the bewildered listener for the profound upheavals of the international framework ".
And inviting us to reflect on how in a few years the bulwarks, even conceptual ones, that have reigned unchallenged for the last century have disappeared: from the alliances, formed today not to be permanent but as coalitions of states that share limited objectives (coalitions of willing) ; to the global multipolar balance system, with a single superpower - the USA - increasingly reluctant to exercise its natural function as a global hegemon.
It is natural to ask ourselves who our friends are today: "the USA, whose recent administrations have created the current situation of chaos in the Middle East, now inclined to assign greater strategic interest to the pivot of the Pacific? "O Russia, to which "It binds us a common cultural heritage as well as important energy interests".
Numerous issues were addressed, also in light of the UK's recent exit from the European Union, an event considered by most to be an opportunity, albeit with some distinctions, because - as Camporini points out - “if there is no common policy, there can never be a common defense and a shared military instrument ".
In fact, the military has been demonstrating for some time “Knowing how to work with shared procedures and structures, creating ad hoc Commands; but some of these in the past, such as EUROFOR, despite the fullness of their operational capacity, were not employed in the theater due to the lack of political will on the part of some nations that expressed them ”.
Even Prof. Bozzo has remarked on the chronic lack of a common European political vision, caused, according to him, by the "Diversity of interests among States, which is the daughter of geostrategic and geographical reasons at the same time".
Brexit, on the other hand, as an opportunity not to be wasted by Admiral San Felice di Monteforte, who approves the recent political initiative of Italy in the field of Defense (in Ventotene ed), an obligatory road because the rip of the Channel represents "a reduced loss of GDP, but a sharp decrease in the EU's military capacity ". Therefore, it is necessary "do everything to prevent the Union losing, even in the field of defense, what it has achieved to date".
And to the question whether the conditions still exist to strengthen collaboration between states, the admiral is firm in maintaining that the conditions must be sought at all costs, as they "Europe is a forced necessity in a world of giants, and because no security order can be based on the power vacuum"
The theme of collaboration between European states has aroused a great deal of interest above all for the possible prospects for collaboration, on which Professor Bozzo, for whom "qWhen we talk about directories, Italy is much more attentive to rank than role, and this means that when it comes to spending, it is not available. "
He said Europe will never evolve as a federation (the interests of the states are too different), but rather as a Swiss-type confederation; Here because, "Of the three pillars on which the European Union is based - Shengen, the Euro and the common market - only the common market will survive".
Identical opinion for Giananadrea Gaiani, who recalls the treatment given by the EU to Greece (which weighs for 1% of the community budget) exclusively aimed at "Ensuring the due dividends to German banks".
The director of AnalisiDifesa sees a German Europe in the near future. "The Europe of Napoleon, where a hegemonic power imposes its will on others". A trend that clearly emerges from the reading of the recent Berlin White Paper, in which "we can see the ambitions of a nation ready to assume, in the defense field, growing responsibilities consistent with its economic weight ".
All agree, finally, to indicate Islamist terrorism as the threat of the moment.
For Camporini, however, "the problem of terrorism is magnified by us Europeans, being more an event inside the Muslim world, which lives a situation equal to that which Europe experienced in the 1620 with the wars of religion".
For Antonio Selvatici - (his book: Moriremo cinese? - 2016), instead, it is necessary to distinguish between security threat and economic threat: " The Chinese have recently begun the construction of an alternative channel to Panama in Nicaragua and have allocated around 4 billion for the construction of a new silk road, which will end at the port of Venice (for which they already have allocated two billion euros). By now they hold the control of Porto Said, Piraeus and Djibouti, and their presence in Africa, especially in the sub-Saharan Africa, is no stranger to the even social tensions that are developing in that area, including migration ”.
At the end of the meeting, everyone agrees in confirming the importance for Europe of a stable Middle East and of collaborative relations with Russia, beyond the urgent need for a generation of politicians, who are true "leaders", that is, with a vision long-term policy on the challenges ahead.
An obligatory route if you want to prevent the Europe of tomorrow from being - to use the words of Camporini - “in the same situation as the Italian states of the 1848, which had state-of-the-art institutions and living conditions, but were not masters of their own destinies, which were decided elsewhere, in the main European capitals of the time ”.
