Nothing Will Be the Same Again

A conversation with Giulio Andreotti. The beginning of a grave world crisis, terrorism, the Middle Eastern question, and Europe. “Without God, peace cannot exist”

EDITED BY ALBERTO SAVORANA

Giulio Andreotti has traversed fifty years of world history as a protagonist. A half century of change, experienced from the inside as Prime Minister or Minister of Foreign Affairs. Today, he is the Italian figure best qualified to speak about what is happening, after the tragic September 11th that led him to say, “Nothing will be the same again.” We offer our readers Senator Andreotti’s answers as a contribution to a knowledgeable awareness of the new reality opening before us, and to a search for the path of a renewal that may ensure justice and peace to the world.

Senator, what did the attacks on New York and Washington mean for you?
Anguished surprise and the immediate conviction that a grave world crisis was beginning.

Faced with dismay at what has happened, how can we avoid desperate skepticism and the presumption of power?
For the government in Washington, there were–and in large part still are–two, or rather three, opposing needs. Confidence has to be restored to the American people who are shocked and upset by the attack. It is necessary to determine the responsibility of those who planned and carried out this diabolical attack. And there is an urgent need to set up international instruments for blocking and repressing terrorism. The concepts of power and inviolability were struck down in those twenty minutes on September 11th.

We do not know the extent of “Operation Enduring Justice,” announced by President Bush as a “war” on international terrorism. What can ensure the justice that everyone is invoking?
There must be an alliance of a new kind, the widest possible, to banish violence of every sort and to create an active solidarity against crime. The difficulty certainly remains of distinguishing political movements from projects that I shall call terrorist criminality. Even Arafat and Mandela were called terrorists.

What will happen now to the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Paradoxically, the great crisis now going on might even help them to find an equitable solution, giving rise to the Palestinian Republic and finding answers for the triple complexity of Jerusalem and the other open problems (the dispute with Syria, for example). But I don’t think this will happen.

In a recent article in the Corriere della Sera, Fr Giussani raised the question of what it is that can assure today’s man the chance to move about in confidence when violence seems to corrode relationships and actions. I turn this question over to you.
It is not easy to answer. Perhaps, remembering that God is love; without God peace cannot exist.

John Paul II said in Kazakhstan, “With all my heart, I beg God to keep the world in peace.” How can mankind be in some way active collaborators with God in this task?
They should reread the speeches made by Paul VI and John Paul II to the UN, structuring in this way–and no other–the reform of the United Nations.

You have said that the world is going though the most serious crisis in its history, to the point that one can say without danger of rhetoric that after September 11, 2001, nothing will be the same again. In this dramatic context, what role can and should Europe play?
The European Union can take an essential role by putting into action, in this moment, a truly unified foreign policy and security policy. Let me add that terrorism must be combated and prevented by removing at least the most iniquitous points of social injustice that are still too widespread. Reduction of the debt of the poorest nations is important, but it is only one of the many equalizing moves that must be made.