Brussels, 26/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 25 May, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini stressed that the military response against the so-called Islamic State was a “necessary choice, but an insufficient one” (our translation throughout).
“Islamic State will never be truly defeated unless we tackle the deep-seated reasons for its rise to popularity”, she stated in a speech in Italian at the IPSI. In other words, IS will only be defeated if there is a “solid, inclusive and democratic” Iraq, a Syria “on the road to political transition and national reconciliation” and if “we can show and demonstrate that words such as rights, development and peace are not the privilege of the few”, she added. She went on to argue that, although the use of force is vital in some cases, it is “never conclusive”.
Mogherini said that the conflicts in the Middle East are not a “Thirty Years' War” between Sunnis and Shi'ites, but a “power struggle for regional hegemony”. She is “convinced” that the solution can only be regional. “We will only be able to move forward if the regional powers recognise each other as such, stop feeding wars by proxy and agree to sit down around the same table to talk, finally starting to build a new regional order based on cooperation”, she added.
“No power in the world” has a “toolbox” like Europe's in terms of foreign policy, Mogherini went on, referring to diplomacy in the broadest sense, humanitarian aid, development aid and the reinforcement of the state. “The EU can be a world power. It must be. It can give new strength to 'multilateral hope'. It must do. It can be at the centre of a new world order based on cooperation”, she added.
“The many - too many - crises we live through in our part of the world give us enormous responsibility. It is also an opportunity. A dangerous one. As the Ventotene Manifesto, states 'the road we must travel is not easy or safe, but be travelled it must'”, Mogherini concluded. (Camille-Cerise Gessant)