NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8 – “While the virus is a magnifier of pre-existing divides, it has shown us that we are all inextricably connected. Without international cooperation we are all losers. We are as strong as the weakest one. We all need the weakest one to become strong”, the Italian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mariangela Zappia, said during a conversation with retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who was President Trump’s national security adviser from February 2017 to April 2018 and now is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Zappia was featured in the third episode of McMaster’s Battlegrounds video series, which aims to inform viewers about US foreign policy from the perspectives of America’s allies and strategic partners. “We must cooperate to fight COVID-19. We are conscious that the international architecture needs to be reformed. The way to fix it is to engage, to make multilateral organizations more efficient and delivering on their mandate, especially now that we need them the most”, said the Ambassador, arguing that, because of history and geography, dialogue is for Italy a strategic necessity: “A reflection of this complex geopolitical environment and also the acknowledgment of the huge potential benefits of a cooperative approach in the Mediterranean”.
Zappia reminded that the European Union and Nato are the pillars of Italy’s foreign policy: “They represent what we are, what we believe in and where we invest for our future. As a contributor to the UN peacekeeping, EU and NATO missions, Italy’s engagement as a security and stability provider is massive”, she said.
“We must fight for our values and we are respected if we fight for them. The COVID crisis has demonstrated that the EU is capable of finding the right responses and that it can play a crucial role as an engine for dialogue and multilateralism”, said the Italian Ambassadors. Referring to another multilateral effort, the Global Coalition against Daesh “is one of the most successful examples of how we can work together, as Allies and through enlarged partnerships, to fight a common enemy such as terrorism”.
The situation in Libya is a priority for Italy: “There is now a window of hope for peace we must all push for. At the same time, Libya is at the core of a broader arch of instability: security challenges arising from the Sahel threaten not only Africa and Europe but all of us”, she said, stressing that Italy has always put the “enlarged #Mediterranean region” at the core of its policy and projection: “A hallmark of our foreign policy is the ability and willingness to engage in dialogue with all actors”. (@OnuItalia)
