I have been welcomed on other occasions to this distinguished Institute, including by Ambassador Boris Biancheri, who is always present in my memory, to take part in meetings and debates - all of which, I may say, of a high quality and distinction. But this time, in accepting the cordial invitation extended by the President of the ISPI, Ambassador Giancarlo Aragona - whom I have long esteemed for the impeccable manner in which he has performed the missions entrusted to him - I prepared myself for a more demanding challenge. Because I realised that here today what is expected of me is a reflection on my experience in the sphere of international relations, on the assessments and stimuli I have drawn from it. I am referring here to my recent experience during the mandate that is drawing to a close. But I refer too, in some ways, to a longer experience that started a long time ago and that, for me, encompassed other political and institutional roles.

As you know, in our legal system the President of the Republic does not hold executive powers: in any field, not even that of foreign and security policy.

But as Head of State, whose role first and foremost is to represent national unity, the President performs according to his own inspiration the natural and mandatory functions - set out in art. 87 of the Constitution - of "accrediting diplomatic representatives" of the countries with which Italy has official relations and "ratifying international treaties". Other functions are to meet heads of State and members of the governments of friendly nations, carry out missions abroad, and make public pronouncements on international policy questions.

The inspiration I refer to is that of strengthening and transmitting positions broadly shared in our country's representative institutions. In other words, the unified national approach that is essential if we are to develop Italy's role to the full in the sphere of international relations.

This has been my constant inspiring principle during the seven years of my mandate. In the full knowledge, too, that the agreed foreign policy and security policy positions that I felt I could interpret and cultivate have gradually gone through a difficult maturation process during Italy's decades as a Republic and now need to be brought up-to-date and to undergo significant refinements.

Our Republic, its institutions and its most representative political forces soon experienced - notwithstanding the extraordinary achievement of the Constituent Assembly, with the approval by a very large majority of our fundamental law - a radical fracture. From 1948 onwards, the division of Europe and the world into two opposing blocs, based more on ideological than on military principles, was mirrored in the unyielding antagonism between the two main political groupings. And the opposition led by the Socialist and Communist left identified with a double, initial rejection: of the European integration project and of the alliance with the United States of America.

That rejection, that choice of allegiance at the international level, was to be a fatal leaden weight dragging at the heel of the party that had become the leading force of the left, and long blocked any normal dialectic in political relations and in the country's prospects for governance. However, from the 1960s onwards, the Italian political forces gradually began to draw closer together in their commitment to Europe and most notably in their participation in the European Parliament. It took another ten years, however, for the left to abandon its hostile stance towards NATO. But a substantial review of its position gained ground in the left. This was largely a response to Soviet leadership's increasingly blatant and harsh refusal - from the 1968 military intervention in Czechoslovakia - to countenance any democratic progress within the Eastern Bloc and the negation of any sovereignty and freedom of self-determination in the Warsaw Pact countries.

Those processes of review and rapprochement culminated in the truly "historic" resolution approved by the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies in October and December 1977: that is, during the government of "national solidarity". The resolution was signed by the representatives - and was approved by the parliamentary groups - of all the parties in the "constitutional arc". Those parties identified jointly, for the first time, "with the framework of the Atlantic Alliance and our Community commitments, a framework", and I quote, "that represents the fundamental term of reference for Italian foreign policy".

That common term of reference was subjected - including in the 1980s - to tensions and tests that were by no means negligible, but it was never again obscured. Of course, we must observe, in general, that imprinting what we might define as the two pillars of Italy's place in the world, did not - and does not - rule out the possibility of distinct and diverse views on individual, concrete foreign policy choices and decisions.

But the question today is a different one. It concerns the profound change in the global framework within which Italy's foreign and security policy is required to operate, albeit in continuity with the solid foundations approved 35 years ago by the broadest range of our political forces.

And it is this profound change, and its implications, that I wish to talk about to you this evening. The inevitable starting point for any discussion of this subject is the decisive watershed of the disintegration - from 1989 to 1991 - of the Warsaw Pact and then of the Soviet Union itself. A period then opened up that was to last until the end of the 20th century and even into the early years of the 21st. We can safely say that never before had we seen a similar affirmation of the leading global role of the West, a similar expression of the force of attraction of its political and economic stance and indeed of its ideals, together with the survival - from the long challenge with the Soviet super-power - of the United States as the sole military super-power.

It did not seem unreasonable then to speak of a "unipolar" world, and even of the "end of history". But in the first decade of the 21st century the global stage has seen transformations and further trends in development, to the extent that quite different categories of judgement and forecasting are needed. The emergence of major new forces and players, starting with but not just in the economic sphere - China, India, Brazil -; the new dynamism of the countries of Southeast Asia and of a great country like Turkey in the vast region straddling Europe and Asia; the recovery of its position and the consolidation, including at the political level, of Russia, strengthened by the exploitation of its energy resources. These forces have ratified a process that has seen the centre of gravity of global development shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and in particular have underscored the ascent of Asia - where in the last century the power of Japan had already been established and Korea's capacity for advancement had already emerged.
And so, even in the most sophisticated American analyses, attention has increasingly been focused - looking to the world from the West - to "the rest", as it has been defined. A less and less simple and secondary "rest", but a decisive segment of our changing world. The accent has gradually come to be placed on the limits of American power and on the difficulties of a Europe that is still only weakly integrated and is losing productivity. The image of a "post-American world" has been evoked. And the projections of the decline - already under way - of the demographic and economic weight of the West have been taken up with alarm.

Nor can we ignore the impact of a more complex phenomenon, the dramatic diminution - with respect to the last decade of the 20th century - of America's global standing, of its presidential and national credibility, and of the external sharing of its security concerns.

This severe assessment was explained, by a personality of the standing of Brzezinski, through a drastic criticism of the reactions of George Bush's Presidency to the terrible blow struck by Al Qaeda to the heart of America on 11 September 2001. A drastic criticism of the setting up and conduct of the admittedly legitimate, immediate military response in Afghanistan. A criticism of the grave unilateral decision to wage war on Iraq. And a criticism of the inability to express a strategy to isolate extremism and Islamic terrorism from the wider Muslim world, not least by striving to attain a peaceful solution in the Middle East.

With respect to the improvident course that had been followed by the international policy of the United States, President Obama embarked on a far-sighted change of direction. In his book "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?", published in 2001, Henry Kissinger noted that "on the dawn of the new millennium, the United States is enjoying a pre-eminence unrivalled by even the greatest empires of the past". But he then developed a highly problematic line of thinking that can be summed up in the question he put to an America at the apex of its power: "Empire or Leader?". And he concluded that "the ultimate challenge for America is to transform its power into moral consensus". Eight years later, in a situation that had seen a serious deterioration and significant increase in complexity, we can say that the new President prepared to grasp that challenge by aiming to recover or build a moral consensus that had been lost or seriously undermined. But he was now wrestling with a new, and extremely grave, challenge.

The financial crisis that erupted in the United States in 2008. A crisis that erupted as an effect - I am following, here, the first and perhaps most penetrating analysis, the one elaborated by Tommaso Padoa Schioppa - of "the day of reckoning for the US external deficit" and the "bursting of the housing bubble", both of which gave rise to a wave of "widespread fear" that spread to Europe and introduced an "overall disruption in the body of the global economy". The element that failed to stand up was the "'growth-without-savings' model of the United States economy" (another definition by Padoa Schioppa): the biggest and richest economy in the world still in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century. The "overall disruption" triggered by the crisis produced a further, marked acceleration in the changes in the relationship between the West and the "rest" of the world that was already a feature of the globalisation process.

We are in effect - it is, I would say, self-evident - living in a world that rests on far more numerous pillars, and which at the same time can be defined, as Charles Kupchan puts it, as "no one's world". A world characterised by the gradual re-distribution and, above all, the dispersal of global power. A world swept by a sort of "global political awakening" (Brzezinski), but which is also exposed to growing numbers of breeding grounds of crises and threats to collective security. The need therefore arises to seek out new fora and choices of global governance, especially at the economic level; a new and more advanced multilateral perspective; a new framework of cooperation and solidarity. In my travels and meetings as the President of Italy, I formed the impression that there was a widely shared awareness of this reality, this experience. And those visits and meetings took in Asia - from Japan and South Korea to China - Russia, Turkey, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the new Latin American leaderships and many other interlocutors.

Let me be clear: I do not want to give an over-simplified, over-optimistic view of the impressions I have drawn from my experience of years of great change (including some changes that were abrupt and sudden) that coincided with the period of my mandate. It would be ingenuous, first of all, to fail to note the considerable diversity of interests and ambitions that accompanies the shared recognition of common challenges and global responsibilities. The domestic affairs of crucial regions and countries have also shown themselves to be complex and changeable.

The more open stance to rights and democratic political debate that I had noticed in Russia, in its leadership of the time, in 2008, suffered a slowdown, while in the international arena symptoms of suspicion and defensiveness again become evident in the Russians, in spite of the reassurances extended to them. China's progress towards a more multi-faceted exercise of power that is more sensitive to the issue of human rights remains problematic. The political renewal I welcomed in Tokyo in 2009 soon became blocked. Asia has become a theatre of extraordinary advances in the sphere of economic and social development, but also of dangerous tensions between its major States.

It is in the Middle East and North Africa that the "global political awakening", as Brzezinski called it, was revealed most strongly, but with quite different outcomes and developments. Common to various communities in the Arab world was a people's revolt to overthrow autocratic regimes that had long clung on to power, even though some of them, as in Egypt, had played a constructive role in international relations. But the demands for freedom and social justice with respect to police regimes and powerful and corrupt oligarchies could no longer be held back.

In Syria, just a few years ago the leadership seemed sensitive to the need to free itself from burdensome external protection, draw closer to Europe and, following a secular political tradition, ensured respect for religious pluralism. But that same leadership reacted in the most brutal, aggressive and bloody manner to all forms of opposition and popular protest. Even where the Arab Spring movements were crowned by undoubted success, however, and have given rise to a process of political-institutional renewal, they have been followed by a chaotic backlash, as in Cairo, or periods of difficulty on the pathway to consolidation, interwoven with social problems and unrest, as in Tunisia. And we can well see that the situation in Libya remains anything but stabilised.

With respect to these situations of arduous, non-linear and by no means brief transition, our position, as Italian institutions, has been to follow an agreed historic strategy of attention and commitment to the Mediterranean and friendship towards the Arab world. This is a side of our foreign and European policy that we can in no way neglect, but which we must cultivate all the more carefully in the framework of the newly drawn map of global equilibria. At stake here, in our relationship not just with the Arab world but also with the broader Muslim world, is not just our success in overcoming a radical, devastating backlash. Also at stake is our success in establishing a climate of mutual respect between the Western and the Muslim worlds, in identifying common principles and values, and in recognising the tolerant, peaceful and cooperative face of Islam as a reality whose affirmation we should appreciate and foster.

President Obama's historic speech in Cairo in June 2009 remains emblematic in this respect: also in view of the balanced way in which he defined in that context the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in terms that were by no means a-critical with respect to either side, but rather strongly urging a solution based on the co-existence of two States in peace and security. It is with this approach that Italy has identified and continues to identify. I have reiterated our country's commitment in Jerusalem in recent years, in my meetings with my friend, President Peres. I have reiterated that commitment in my meetings with the Palestinian authorities. And I reiterated it most recently in Rome, on Remembrance Day, an occasion that obliges us to strive to overcome all forms of anti-Semitism and all forms of ambiguity with respect to the right of the State of Israel to exist in security. And at the same time, it commits us to promoting a peace agreement with the representatives of the Palestinian people. This is another significant component of that "agreed foreign policy" that I have tenaciously sought and cultivated for Italy.

But let me return to the subject of the general trend that can be seen in the transformation process, with all its aspects and facets, currently taking place at the global level. A trend to a new sense of aggregation and responsibility that involves States and regions, whose influence may be growing or diminishing, but which, taken together, are decisive to our common future and destiny. The repercussions of the crisis that erupted in 2008 and has still not been overcome, the "overall disruption" it caused in the global economy, have certainly differed from one continent to another. The United States and Europe have suffered heavy repercussions on production, revenues, income and employment. While the emerging countries have only seen reductions - of greater or lesser import - in their high rates of growth.

But the crisis, in view of its nature and scope, is also proof of how profoundly and closely interdependent we are at the global level, of how interwoven, in every way, are the relationships between all of the world's economies, and of how inevitable it now is to tackle together any issues and problems of common interest. Suffice to mention one emblematic fact. The G7, which since the late 1970s has grouped together the most industrialised countries - North America, Europe and Japan - has already seen its representativeness and leadership capacity weaken. This is true even though since 1994 the group has also included Russia, and had therefore been induced to open up informally to other participants. But it then became necessary to provide room, starting from 2008, to the G20, at level of Heads of State and Government level, as a new forum for consultation and decision-making. The involvement of the major emerging economies, not just in Asia but also in south America and to some degree in Africa (a continent marked by deep differences but not lacking in dynamism), potentially assigned a role to the G20 that corresponded to the changing equilibria of an increasingly interdependent world.

It may be bold to speak, as some commentators have, of "the dawn of a new era of multilateralism". But the outlook could be precisely that. Moreover, although the G20 has successfully met the challenges of reinforcing the multilateral institutions, starting from an expansion and strengthening of the International Monetary Fund, many other goals seem difficult to attain and the pace of progress slow or uncertain. Most notably that of the indispensable concerted action that is needed to create a new global financial regulatory framework.

And we know that in other fora, including those operating under the aegis of the United Nations, progress towards satisfactory responses to challenges of undeniable global import is slow and arduous. From decisions on how best to address climate change and ensure environmental sustainability, to bringing global trade regulations fully into line with today's changed circumstances.

As I come near to the conclusions I wish to draw from an overview that is perhaps too broad-ranging yet at the same time too brief, I wish to underscore one first, essential point of reference. In my work and reflections over the years on Italian foreign policy and security issues, I have sought to grasp the profound nature of the transformations that have taken place on the global stage. But I have never been tempted by the suggestion, even if it was fuelled purely by dogmatism, of a fatal decline of America and the West. A suggestion not just of an inevitable reduction in their influence, but of a fatal decay in their contribution to the development of our global civilisation.

We remain indissolubly bound from all points of view to our friendship and alliance with the United States. We see the gravity of the problems they have to tackle, but we know their strong points equally well. Not just their still unrivalled military power, but their formidable scientific and technological potential; their openness to innovation and their readiness to embrace the future; their resources of productivity and competitiveness; their capacity to recover and make a "new start", not least in response to the current crisis; their vibrant demographic dynamism.

As Italians and as Europeans, we are above all bound to a common historic heritage that can be translated into a unique baggage of ideals, principles and values, through which we can identify, side-by-side with America, with the West as a place of democracy and human rights. It is this vision and this experience that we can and must bring to bear in contributing to the governance of globalisation and in influencing its future shape.

As Charles Kupchan wrote, "If the West is to help guide the transition to multipolarity, it will have to rise to the occasion on two fronts: it will have to recover its political and economic vitality and retain its cohesion even if the era of its primacy draws to an end; it must embrace a strategy and a set of principles that forge a consensus between the West and the rising rest".

The point of arrival not just of my conversation here today but of the political and institutional road I have followed in the last seven years, after a much longer road of trials and errors, is the role that Europe must now play in fulfilling the potential for a renewed role for the West. And when I say Europe, I mean a united Europe. Our American friends look to us with well-founded expectations combined with persistent doubts, not with indifference, prejudice or distrust. In Munich, a few days ago, the American Vice President, Biden, focused on the importance of a comprehensive trans-Atlantic agreement on trade and investment. He reiterated, more generally, that "Europe is the cornerstone of our engagement with the rest of the world and is the catalyst for our global cooperation".

As regards Italy, in a session of the American Congress's Joint Leadership Meeting in May 2010, I reiterated most clearly: "I do not think we can seriously state that trans-Atlantic relations will count ever less". The place we gave them 60 years ago in our foreign and security policy is not open to discussion. But as NATO itself has acquired new visions and missions in recent years, so too must we Italians and Europeans inject new sap to our trans-Atlantic relations, and give them their due place in a global scenario that has become much more complex and varied.

But in this world - this is the question I put to myself in Washington back in 2010 - will Europe, the European Union, "be able to fulfil its potential and meet its responsibilities"? This is a question that the current crisis of the Union, of the Eurozone and more in general of the European project, leaves us no room to avoid. On the contrary, our commitment to overcome the crisis by learning all possible lessons from it must be matched by the need to act, as a united Europe, in a way that befits our new responsibilities.

This involves an increased determination to proceed in all the directions identified by the European institutions to complete and thus strengthen Economic and Monetary Union and give it a new capacity to promote Europe's economic and social development. But more is needed. We need to make progress - serious progress - towards political union. Those who see the component parts of the European construction purely as the liberalised and competitive single market, perhaps without even going as far as the single currency, may not understand this need, or the very concept of political union.

But what we have built, or sought to build, in Europe over the last 60 years goes much further than that. It is a community of values, a community of rights, a unified, democratic and peaceful political player inspired by values of solidarity and social justice, even in the market economy. It is a political actor that plays its full role in international policy to establish, on that terrain, the same values and principles of law on which the Union is based.

It is only by developing this concept that Europe can play its part - as a vital element of the history of the West - in the world of today and of tomorrow, a world so deeply changed from that of the 20th century. And here lies the true crux of our disagreement with the British Prime Minister. Not in the fact that we would reject as "heresy" any criticism of the Union's institutional framework and modus operandi. But in the fact that we cannot accept a mercantilist concept of the united Europe. And yet Europe can play its part, in harmony with America, only on two conditions. The first: that it does not rule out the prospect of opening up the current borders of the Union even more. Towards the Balkans, since the entry of Slovenia and Croatia has been a decisive factor for peace and has paved the way in recent years for that reconciliation in the Adriatic region that Italy, including at my behest, has promoted. And towards Turkey, by confirming once again, and with strong grounds, as I myself did three years ago in Ankara - the commitment to negotiate its accession to the Union.

The second condition is that we must not, as the European Union or as individual member states, shirk our responsibilities in the crucial field of security. The threats we face are numerous. Terrorism, Islamic and otherwise. The tendency, most notably on the part of Iran, to further nuclear proliferation. The destabilising outlook (even piracy) produced by that singular, disturbing category of "failed states". The production and reproduction, in certain continents, of ethnic conflict and civil war. Global security, and the security of Europe itself, are also being tested in a region of Africa - Sahel - that does not seem so far away - and indeed is not.

The response to these threats - to which must be added the risk of a return to nationalism, even of a great strength - most certainly cannot be purely military. The approach to the issue of security must be strategic and, in all senses, political first and foremost. But Europe can no longer avoid addressing the question of military capacity based on, when necessary, the deployment of the personnel and equipment of the armed forces. And it can no longer delegate that question to the United States. Europe must- as I stated in London in 2009 at the Institute for Strategic Studies and in Washington in 2010 - combine its defence and security resources and structures and increase, thanks to effective integration, the productivity of its military expenditure.

Italy has provided concrete and positive proof of its awareness of its new duties in the security field. It has done so at the political level, by proposing firm plans for serious European integration in the defence field, as well as national military reform programmes. And it has done so at the operational level, with its participation and high-profile engagement in numerous crisis areas, under the aegis of the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO. The consensus that we have managed to build both within the country and in Parliament has been broad. The Supreme Defence Council, an institution of renewed vitality and efficacy, has undoubtedly played a part in this. Under our Constitution, the Head of State chairs the Council, with due respect for the Government's decision-making powers.

It is by recalling our successful experience on this last front - that of defence and security, a topic that was particularly controversial in the past - that I feel I can say that the conditions are in place to remotivate, update, and renew the choices on which the Republic's international policy is based. And that the conditions exist to restore them to their position as one of the cornerstones of that effort of cohesion in the general interest on which rests the future of Italy and its place in Europe and in the world.