Page 8 - Coespu Magazine 2017-2

moment they will be required. This principle is valid also for the International Organizations, which
sometimes change too often and too rapidly.
Nowadays we could say that we are facing security challenges coming from two arcs of crisis and
instability lapping on NATO and Europe’s borders: the southern one from the Middle East invests
North Africa and sub-Saharan/Sahel region, and the eastern one, which encompasses the Black Sea
and the eastern Mediterranean
from the Baltic Sea.
Italy, whose strategy is focused
on the Mediterranean for obvious
historical and mostly
geographical reasons, promotes
in all international fora as well as
in terms of domestic policy, the
development of strategies to deal
with the security challenges
emerging on this so-called
“Southern Flank” of NATO and
Europe. In the meantime, we do
not shirk our responsibilities, as
an active and engaged member of the most relevant International Organizations, wherever asked to
intervene.
The “Southern Flank” presents a great complexity and evokes a multi-shaped threat that is not limited
to the countries facing the Mediterranean, but includes other areas, namely the Arabic Peninsula,
Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa. But not only, because the two arcs of crisis
merge in the Black Sea and the Balkan regions.
All of these have direct and indirect influence on the security of the Mediterranean basin. More
specifically, this wider area is where multiple phenomena converge, such as institutional fragility,
uncontrolled migration, faith-
inspired terrorism and the
proliferation of transnational
criminal organisations that
thrive on illegal trafficking, first
and foremost of human beings.
In this scenario, a “triangular”
relationship emerges, which
requires the need to act
simultaneously and
synergistically - at the political,
diplomatic and military level -
on three variables: the fight
against terrorist phenomena, the
contrast to the criminal network
that draws profits from migratory flows and the contribution to the stability of the countries of
Northern Africa and Middle East. Only an informed action taken by governments and the international

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