AESI PRESIDENT “GEOPOLITICS AND NEW CHALLENGES”
SALA CENACOLO. 19 JULY 2024
LOCANDINA GEOCRAZIA – MUTAMENTO GEOPOLITICO E NUOVI SCENARI INTERNAZIONALI
INTERVENTION PRESIDENT AESI
Prof. Massimo Maria Caneva
Cenacolo Room
Italian Parliament
July 19, 2024
As the President of the European Association of International Studies, better known as AESI, at the conclusion of this first session, I wish to fundamentally draw attention to a theme that concerns the cause in its deepest root of this geopolitical change and consequently in the new international scenarios. I am referring to a widespread culture of the provisional, of getting everything now and without thinking that others might need what I am asking for, of a diplomacy entrenched in positions of personal privilege and a politics that has now forgotten what is its most important mission: the defense of the dignity of the human person and his natural law.
Europe no longer has a foreign policy and is locked up in itself unfortunately. It is fundamentally dependent on a game of military economic and financial occult powers that profoundly limit its cultural aspirations and defense of its truest values. Besides denying its Judeo-Christian roots, it has lost its deepest values by selling out to a pragmatic and opportunistic relativism.
Is there fear for democracy in Europe ? Actually what is happening with populisms is just a reaction to a lack in the institutions of clarity and widespread lack of attention to the human person and his values. And all this in the name of an exaggerated ideological cultural relativism that leads the person to no longer recognize himself in his dignity as a human being.
Everything is possible everything is guaranteed! Yes, we are faced with unhinged reactions that result in sovereignisms, it is true often dangerous ones, which cannot even understand what they claim to defend, but this is only the beginning of a collapse of democracy because if man and his dignity are not protected, it is getting closer and closer.
I still remember during my doctoral study periods in social medicine and humanitarian affairs as well as being a visitor to the University of Oxford at Queen Elizabeth House at the Refugee Studies Program as an expert in emergency natural disasters and crises in conflicts crises, because I had just returned from humanitarian relief in Armenia. Arrived in the United States I found out in a lecture at Harvard University , I was in the last row of the desks in that large university lecture hall where a professor in the center of the same lecture hall said “Competition competition competition is a way to get a good result because you compare people and their quality” while the faces of the students who were watching were puzzled : I raised my hand shyly with an ostentatious English because I was still also a novice I said “Professor maybe it is better to talk about cooperation and collaboration and the product will be better for everyone” . The students’ faces turned toward me with great approval while with ire the professor could not stand this spectacle in his lecture. Moreover, returning from the lecture hall to my rooms where the tutor was waiting for me, he said and took me back “but sorry who made you do that?”
I still remember even in my travels in St. Petersburg the faces of the rector of those many students meeting my students and sincerely trying to free themselves from the deadly consequences of that Marxist Leninist ideology that had flattened their lives for many many many decades and now had reduced a society with so many cultural roots to the lowest of lows They wanted to rehabilitate themselves they wanted to take back some of their true dignity and they approached us sincerely.
It is time to expose this way of doing foreign policy of going to conflict of always bringing weapons as the first solution especially by abandoning what is the real straight of defending the dignity of the human person of democracy which is not to do whatever one wants but what is man and his dignity demand. Without violence.
Democracy alone does not have its power to respect man but it is not enough on its own and it becomes empty and it takes dignity. Let us also remember that the great dictators in history have that caused world wars were precisely democratically elected.
I’m speaking to you at a time from which I’m returning very tried from a mission to Sarajevo in the Balkans in which I’ve been trying to bring about a continuity of university cooperation peace between Serbian Muslim and Croatian students for well over 25 years since the Dayton Accords were signed and a military flight I was the only Civilian took me there To meet with Ambassador Klein of the United Nations the Supreme Command of the peacekeeping forces and all the rectors of the various parties. There is there is disorientation there is a need for continuity in keeping in mind their situations but there can be no peace without justice and justice without forgiveness and all this is a cultural discourse of promoting among the youth of solidarity let us not delude ourselves there are difficult times ahead in this in this our time To put back at the center a man who is truly a man with his rights to be put in in practice in foreign policy.
AESI the European Association of Internationals aims to promote and prepare young people with these characteristics truly actors of peace in the dignity of the human person.
photogallery https://aesieuropa.eu/galleria/aesi-president-geopolitics-and-new-challenges-sala-cenacolo-19-july-2024
Geopolitics Changes and new Challenges
