The name of Stephen Pontecorvo, former ambassador to Pakistan and senior NATO representative in Afghanistan, where he personally coordinated the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of civilians after the Taliban took Kabul, has been a full-time minister for days. There is talk of a possible deployment in defense – he was already a diplomatic adviser to three ministers – or in the Farnesina. “La Meloni? I hear it on TV every day. I have no idea about the figure of the foreign minister, but I do know one thing: he took a party with 4 percent and led it to 26, he certainly knows what he is,” says he journalists on the fringes of Italian conservatism, the event organized by Nazione Futura, Fondazione Tatarella and The European Conservative magazine, a week after the vote that sanctioned the centre-right party’s victory.
Unlike Guido Crosetto and Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, who, also in the rumor of the ministry, canceled their participation at the last minute for personal reasons, the diplomat attended the meeting and indicated what the address of Italian foreign policy should be the upcoming ones Years. “European Union and Born They are two Italian anchorages and indispensable “, he clarifies. “And this – he notes – is also the orientation of the new management towards Italian “. They are not “cages” but organizations” where Italy counts if it wants counting “.
“We must find a way to pursue our interests, which are now mainly of a vigorous nature,” stressed the ambassador. “To do this – he explained – it is necessary to have clear ideas about what foreign policy we must pursue by all means: the soft power, which is very important, the industrial system, our enviable military tool, a diplomacy that works “. “A government which has a strong popular mandate like the next one,” he is convinced, has what it takes to assert itself in Europe, where “the Franco-German locomotive has been replaced by community institutions stronger than in the past”, and within the Atlantic Alliance.
“Italy has not always behaved like a serious country – the diplomat said – but the potential is there, the others see it and we have to see it too”. It is not true that outside our borders they want a “flattened” Italy. On the other hand. There are nations like Libya “that want us to take initiatives”. Among the priorities is therefore also the “revitalization of relations with the countries of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Asian countries that are looking to us”. On the sanctions The ambassador is clear about Russia: “The debate between sanctions yes and sanctions no goes against the national interest. We must not discuss this, but how to minimize the impact of sanctions on the Italian system with measures such as the gas price cap or the cap “decoupling of gas and electricity prices”.
Likewise Michela Mercury, professor of geopolitics at the University of Padua and an expert on the Middle East and North Africa, is convinced that Italy must make up ground on the other side of the Mare Nostrum, where the withdrawal of the West has brought actors such as Russia and Turkey, gaining more and more space . “Libya has a gas pipeline going out, the Greenstream, which could bring 12 percent of our gas needs to Italy and which now only transports 3 percent because there is a war that nobody could stop,” explains the analyst. “Italy could be a big force in the Mediterranean, but in recent years it has been a Ferrari driven by an inexperienced driver. Let’s give this Ferrari a driver and we can win.”
The journalist from La Verità also took part in the debate, Francesco Borgonowoand the newspaper’s war correspondent, Fausto Biloslavo, which in recent months has boldly documented the Russian-Ukrainian conflict along the entire front line and tells readers about the war without a filter. He, too, did not hesitate to describe the Western intervention in Libya as “the gravest strategic mistake since World War II”. And he warned of the risks of exporting democracy: “It has thrown Afghanistan into chaos, created the Libyan crisis and created fertile ground for the birth of ISIS in Iraq, so we have to be careful because in certain cases it doesn’t work.”