Il World Political Forum nasce da un’idea originale del Premio Nobel per la Pace Mikhail Gorbaciov, con una vocazione specifica: promuovere contatti fra politici, scienziati, personalità di alto profilo della vita culturale e religiosa di differenti continenti, fedi, lingue e culture, con il fine di analizzare la questione dell’interdipendenza, ma soprattutto con l’intenzione di suggerire soluzioni per i problemi di governance, della globalizzazione e per i problemi cruciali che affliggono l’umanità oggi. L’attuale ordine internazionale è diventato confuso ed instabile. Le istituzioni politiche ed economiche sovra-nazionali sono oppresse da conflitti e disaccordi fra i loro stessi membri. La cooperazione fra stati ed il nuovo ordine mondiale in cui si sperava alla fine della Guerra Fredda non si sono realizzati. Al contrario, gli affari internazionali sono oggi caratterizzati dal disordine mondiale, ed i recenti eventi hanno esacerbato le fondamentali differenze di opinione da un capo all’altro del globo. Il World Political Forum si propone di esaminare il miglior modo di organizzare il coordinamento delle istituzioni internazionali e di individuare i modelli auspicabili e possibili per un ordine mondiale futuro, in maniera da ridurre gli squilibri e le differenze e di ricercare un nuovo spazio politico dove le civiltà possano incontrarsi e trovare un accordo per gestire il disordine internazionale. Solo un risoluto e ben concertato sforzo multilaterale e trasversale degli attori internazionali può prevenire questa spirale di disordine. Il World Political Forum vuole diventare un punto d’incontro di culture, religioni e leaders, un forum aperto all’intero mondo, che, attraverso l’analisi e la discussione, possa dare indicazioni e fornire nuove soluzioni ai problemi globali e sforzarsi per il raggiungimento di una Nuova Civiltà Mondiale e di una struttura per un ordine internazionale democratico. Ho partecipato alla sessione del 2009 del World Political Forum, dal titolo "Twenty Years after: The World(s) beyond the Wall" (9-10 October 2009) a Bosco Marengo in Piemonte. Ecco il testo del mio intervento:
One merit of the present crisis, if there is any, is that it has finally put an end to the Post-Cold War Triumphalism/”End of History” discourse. The Cold war, like any other conflict, was a complex set of interconnections and power relationships, which served many functions. It was not ”a long peace”, as it is sometimes described. The list of opportunities squandered during the Cold War is long. In almost every part of the globe, in almost every human activity, we can trace the negative impact of that forty-five-year conflict. Of course, we could never praise enough the end of a bipolar confrontation that marked a historical turn in the way we think of international relations. The last century was one of big contradictions: it witnessed the parossistic transformation of war in terms of extermination and at the same time the slow but successful “re-invention of peace” (from the League of Nations to the United Nations, to the European Union as a new brand of economic and political integration). On the one hand, we had the immense tragedy of a sort of global civil war with 60 million dead, two thirds of whom were civilians; on the other hand, never were more true the following words written in the 18th century by Sir Henry Maine: ”War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention”. But the end of the Cold war did not herald a new Golden Age at all. Fukuyama hoped that ”the idea of a universal and directional history leading up to a liberal democracy may become plausible to people, and that the relativist impasse of modern thought will in a sense solve itself”. This hope has not been confirmed by recent events. At least the idea of a universal history on a global scale has not been complemented with a clear sense of direction. However, it would be a mistake to go in the opposite direction, embracing the international narrative of the New Century Deception (the ”Clash of Civilizations” discourse). There is no doubt that this is a difficult era, in which so-called ”hard universalisms” (”forcibly universalized particularisms”) try to impose a single agenda, formulated in a monolithic and monological way according to the value system of one culture and to the exclusion of others. What we need instead is to develop a strong sense of mutual commitment and shared comprehensive responsibility without insisting upon uniformity of values and ideals. It is a new kind of universalism, one we could call “universalism of differences”, or “pluralistic universalism”, a universalism “through dialogue with diversity”. Dominique Moïsi has written that what shapes the world today are above all emotions. The three most important emotions of the present international situation are fear, hope, and humiliation. These three feelings rest on one element: confidence. “Fear is the absence of confidence. Hope, by contrast, is an expression of confidence. Humiliation is the injured confidence of those who have lost hope in the future; your lack of hope is the fault of others, who have treated you badly in the past.” In this analysis, Asia appears to be the continent of hope, the West the region of fear and the broader Middle East the place where humiliation took place, creating resentment and frustration.I think that this representation of today’s world is useful only for academic purposes, since the reality is much more complicated and the above-mentioned emotions are all present at the same time in every region and culture. In our world it has become clear that the old division between inside and outside has virtually vanished. This does not mean that the state is no more the fundamental actor in the international relations, and the prophecy about the end of the nation-state has not proved true. But it neither means that what awaits us is a new version of the classical balance of power, a confrontation between great “liberal” powers and great “authoritarian” powers. The international system is not something that we find in nature; it is rather a social and political construction. More than the inside-out argument in the Kantian style, that is, the “theory of democratic peace” (according to which democratic states do not wage war on each other) it seems to me that it is the international system’s features that increasingly influence the way governments act (outside-in). This is particularly true for the European Union. The EU for two decades after the end of the Cold War developed a new kind of power, very different from hard power, soft power or even smart power: it is “transformative power” that induced voluntary changes in the political and economic systems of candidate countries, bringing about the biggest and deepest stabilization strategy on the continent in many decades. At the same time, the European Union is about enhancing rather than destroying national identities. Europe can be seen either as a mythological “Beast with Twenty-Seven Heads”, or as a network of powers and levels of governance: something very difficult to run or to tame, but it is also a laboratory for reinventing democracy. On a larger scale, there is a way of looking at the G20 or G-something as a sort of comprehensive and inclusive global coalition for fostering recovery and development, and also for making governments actually implement their official statements. What I want to stress is the fact that in an open system of international and trans-national actors there is a level of cross-fertilization and interaction between different economic and political frameworks. For instance, if we look at the economic policies in the world, we discover that the so-called European social model of the “Market Social Economy” needs more liberalization and an injection of competitiveness taken from the Anglo-Saxon economic system, whereas American liberalism is now actively including some elements of the European welfare system. Overall, the idea of sustainable development is becoming a central feature of any economic program. It is not that there is a lack of trust in a particular economic and political model; it is the idea itself of a “model” that is seen as a sort of hegemonic attempt to shape or re-shape the world. This is not to be regarded as the revenge of post-modernism in political science; it is rather the result of the failures both of the Proletarian State and the Welfare State.But the answer will hardly be found in the idea of a Minimal State. One attempt to find a middle ground between Big Government and the anarcho-capitalism (as the economic form of the libertarian ethics), is the proposal of the Hollow State: a metaphor for the increasing use of third parties, often nonprofits, to deliver social services and generally act in the name of the state. From “l’Etat providence” to multiple providers? The normative question there is what sort of effect does government contracting with third-party providers have on the perceived legitimacy of the state? The current crisis shows that after all it is very difficult to dump once and for all any possibility of a direct intervention of the State in the economy. In a situation of crisis, the State is the ultimate decision maker, no longer the market. Capitalism under stress has to take on board some elements of the state-based political economy. In a word, economy becomes again, a least for emergency purposes and causes, a political activity. But we should be clear on that point. A more proactive role of the state does not imply that Governments should actually run the economy. Rather, Governments should act as facilitators, enablers and regulators with regard to the economic system; their core role should be that of setting political priorities and encouraging solutions rather than direct management.As the international crisis showed us, governments cannot do everything by themselves. This is a valid statement both for internal policies (the right mix to be found between public institutions, private sector, non profit organizations) and the international political and economic system. This is the ultimate meaning of “responsible sovereignty” at a domestic and international level. It allows participation, inclusion, care. The real “mix” that we need in global governance is a synergic and smart combination of markets, governments and communities.
