Translator: Marica Farini Reviewer: Robert Tucker
You've certainly asked yourselves this,
but I should tell you that I've also asked it myself:
What does empathy have to do with international politics?
Where does it belong in a world of conflicts:
Libya, Yemen, Iran at the moment,
Israel and Palestine, Trump and Huawei, Trump and Iran, Trump and China,
where does it belong in this world, empathy,
that ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes,
that ability to accept that a same fact, or a same event,
will be read, seen, differently by someone else, by another person,
and that that way of reading it, seeing it,
is legitimate, and I should consider it, I should take it into account.
Where does empathy fit in, you might wonder, in this world?
Where does it fit in, in a world
where the prevalent understanding
to be found in theories of international politics
is that the relationship between states, like that between people,
goes according to "homo homini lupus",
according to "might is right", underhand dealing,
according to own interest, strength, position,
all quite the reverse of putting oneself in someone else's shoes,
all quite the reverse of accepting that others see things differently.
And so in this world,
the immediate impression we get -
and thence the question: Where does it fit in? -
is that this notion of empathy, somewhat optimistic, a little romantic,
that can or could or should have a role in international politics
seems very far off from it.
A world where we accept others, accept their point of view,
where we get on well with each other, and everyone lives happy and contented,
is very far from what we experience in our daily lives,
and very far from reality.
And so a few words like those of Obama
when he met the Pope and said to him
"It's the lack of empathy that makes it easy to plunge into war",
seem to us a hope, an expression of optimism, of our dreams,
but it's certainly not something we see in reality.
Just as some other words from an American sociologist, Rifkin,
who said that only through global empathy,
empathy throughout the world,
will we succeed in confronting all the bad things in the world,
economic crisis, environmental degradation, wars.
But Obama with the Pope, Rifkin with what he said,
are they incurable optimists, fantasists, delusionists,
or, in empathy, is there really a panacea, the solution,
a way to confront the problems of our world that is off course?
Let's try to position ourselves between these two extremes:
empathy as a solution to everything,
and empathy, as realists would say,
as something useless,
since power, supremacy, and aggression, are what rule in the world.
We can definitely say that the desire for empathy,
to put oneself in the shoes of others,
is a trait always to be found in relations between states.
You've probably seen these images -
funny, they make us smile -
they are G20 summits,
or Europe-Asia summits,
or Europe with African countries.
We see these world leaders -
here's Putin with Bush, a picture from years ago -
in these funny clothes.
Why do they do it?
They do it because they literally put themselves in someone else's shoes,
in the shoes of the country hosting them.
It's a symbolic way of saying:
I share your culture, I'm like you,
I seek to be like you.
A symbolic deed that we see on many occasions.
But trying to put ourselves in someone else's shoes,
and trying to accept that any given event will provoke different impressions,
helps, would help, would be very useful,
in many crises.
I'll briefly cite you some of them.
Let's begin with Iran.
You all know that Iran has been in a difficult situation for decades,
and has created difficult situations,
beginning with the revolution,
then the attempt to become a nuclear power,
the accord struck with Iran by Obama,
and then Trump comes along, cancels the accord,
and now Iran simmers with war.
Americans and Iranians could - no one wants it -
come again to a sharp confrontation.
Let's do the empathy exercise together,
try to see the situation in this crisis from the other's point of view.
Try to be Iranian for a second.
You are Iranian,
and in that red country surrounded by blue.
That red country is Iran, a Shiite country,
which has a certain system of government
that we don't like,
that isn't democratic as we would like it to be,
but it's a Shiite country surrounded by blue,
which are hostile Sunni countries.
Iran is hostile to blue;
the blues are hostile to red.
And in these hostile countries -
Among these hostile countries -
not all are Sunni,
Israel is quite definitely not an Islamic country -
some of them, Pakistan, India, Israel,
are nuclear powers,
and live in tension with Iran.
And among them there's one,
the archenemy, Saudi Arabia.
And this country, Saudi Arabia,
since Trump has been in power,
has become best friends with America,
together with Israel.
That is, two enemies of Iran are best pals with America.
If you were Iranian,
you'd see the development of nuclear power,
to have, you too, the bomb,
as the best way of assuring your life in this very difficult situation.
Now try to do it as an American,
try to assume an American's point of view.
A 50-year-old or a 45-year-old American,
when he was a kid,
saw images every day of people who worked in the American embassy
being held prisoner in Iran.
And every day there was talk of this:
so Iranians are those who kidnap my colleagues,
my friend's dad,
the soldiers that are there.
If I watch Fox News on the television in the United States,
every time they talk about Iran,
even when it's about an earthquake in Iran,
they show the archive images
of the burnt American flags from the Ahmadinejad era.
And I'm American,
and I see a country, a people,
who destroys, burns, my flag.
And if I go on Netflix,
and I watch Homeland, one of those series,
there the enemy of Americans,
that wants to kill the American president, wants to kill all the deputies,
is Iran.
Iran is also presented as being responsible
for the Twin Towers attack,
which was actually committed by people linked to Saudi Arabia -
just think, Saudi Arabia and Iran are enemies, and here ...
So, I'm American, I grow up anti-Iran;
I'm Iranian, I grow up in fear.
Well, in this situation, we have escalation
that can lead to confrontation.
Empathy is what Obama exercised for a short while,
seeking, instead, to reach an agreement,
by looking at how Iran saw things,
and how we saw things.
But do the same for the Russian question:
Russia invaded Crimea a few years ago.
A very serious matter, breaking international law,
but let's try to understand, not to justify, Russia's reasons.
In 1990, Russia was surrounded -
look at the central part,
where there's Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria -
all the countries at its boarders were allies,
they were Warsaw Pact countries,
all friends.
Little by little, these countries -
look at this slide -
have all turned blue,
because they have all, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, become European countries.
And once they entered Europe, they became NATO countries.
And NATO was created to stand in opposition to Russia.
From the Russian point of view, therefore,
it feels surrounded.
The only country missing is the pale blue one.
And that one is?
Ukraine.
And what did Ukraine do three years ago?
It decided to look towards Europe, to ask to join Europe.
And what does Russia see unrolling before her eyes?
Ukraine joining Europe, in NATO within a year,
while she becomes surrounded by blue, totally encompassed.
So, from the Russian point of view, that was the only way -
not justifiable, unfair -
to maintain her own interest and protect herself.
But think whether there was any empathy in Brexit -
before there was talk of Brexit.
The disaster of Brexit, which seems like a game of Snakes and Ladders,
demonstrates the incapacity of all English people in the UK
to understand the other's reasons.
Those wanting to leave don't know for what reasons others want to stay.
The government doesn't understand European reasoning.
It wants impossible things,
but it doesn't understand that Europe cannot agree the conditions it seeks.
[Theresa] May can't even put herself in the shoes of her Conservative MPs,
half of whom want to leave, half of whom want to stay.
Beyond that, the London government fails to understand
the frustrations, dramas, and reasoning,
of Scottish and Irish people,
who could have more problems after Brexit.
So the result is that there is a crazy game of Snakes and Ladders
because no one can put themselves in someone else's shoes
and find a way to mediation, the point where they can agree.
But there's an example where we understand how important it was at some point
for someone to get out of the snapshot take
and put themselves in the shoes of others.
Some of you will remember this.
In 1983, a Korean plane
passed, as a result of error, we knew afterwards,
over Russian territory.
We are in the middle of the Cold War,
the Russians take it -
height of the Cold War, great tension,
there was Reagan talking about Star Wars,
about Russia as the Evil Empire -
the Russians see it coming, they shoot it down.
It's a passenger plane with 269 people on board.
Immediately, the Americans react all out,
since the Russians don't even say what happened,
they deny the incident.
The Americans respond.
Within two months, they plan a NATO exercise,
a very mighty one.
The Russians see this NATO exercise as an attack on Russia.
They give the order to prepare the nuclear missile launch pads,
and they brush with nuclear war, as over Cuba 20 years before.
Why do I say that empathy served here?
Because we know now, years later,
that it was the ability to understand how others were perceiving events,
by those who used spies,
the British secret services,
that put an end to this great drama that was developing.
How?
The British realized that there was no ill will on the part of the Russians.
They didn't want to shoot a plane down
to start a war:
they acted in error.
They acted in error
because the Soviet Union was already in crisis,
there was very little money,
the radar was faulty,
so that the plane appeared over Russian territory at the last moment,
and it appeared over Russian territory
where there was a Russian missile test launch pad.
So, the Russians said a plane is coming,
it's coming right where we have a launch pad,
and the long chain of command of the Russian hierarchy
sends out messages that go from captain to colonel to general,
to ultimately reach Moscow.
In Moscow, Andropov, the president, is unwell,
he's in hospital:
there's a little chaos.
The order to shoot down is given,
and then, as in all dictatorships, they cover everything up for five days.
All this, at the time -
there not being the will or the capacity
for them to put themselves in the position of the other,
the position of a dictatorship at the end of its run -
looked like leading to a very false interpretation:
the Russians were attacking the West.
And it was the British working for Thatcher's secret service
who ran to Reagan saying:
"We don't understand a thing!
They made a mistake.
They don't have the courage to admit it.
Let's stop everything."
And this is empathy.
Empathy, therefore, that helps,
and above all, empathy -
the putting of oneself in the shoes of others -
that is a fundamental condition for something crucial in our world,
in that moment of great crisis:
multilateralism,
which is the condominium of the world,
which is the UN.
The prerequisite to operate within the UN
is that one accepts
that even the smallest state in the world
that is powerless, economically and militarily,
has its own reasons, its own raison d'être.
When the UN was born, it started from that principle,
recognizing the more important states as the more powerful, of course -
the Security Council, the right of veto -
but accepting also that the condominium of the world
has to take everyone into consideration a little.
And without the UN,
without the condominium of the world,
we are not able to deal with global issues:
climate, migration, terrorism,
problems that a state dealing with alone might mitigate but not resolve.
Think about migration.
Migration has countries of origin, transit countries,
and destination countries.
Countries of origin are glad if migrants leave:
less unemployed, and people sending back money,
so they are better off and have every interest in encouraging it.
Transit countries,
such as Chad,
are countries that thrive on the migrant racket.
They come, eat, sleep, seek bus transport:
their people survive by it.
Destination countries -
we're one of them -
they don't want them, want them anymore; they want to select whom they admit.
So between them, they have completely different objectives.
But if some minimum common denominator is not found,
trying to understand the reasoning of the other,
we won't get far.
We go to African countries saying
"I'll give you half a million, a million, euros in domestic aid",
but if I don't reason with the mentality of the president of that country,
which is that if migrants leave, they'll send back home 75 million,
that president will say to me, "Yes, right, OK", straight out,
but he won't do anything because he has a totally different logic.
What can be concluded?
Conclusions -
We started with empathy, what it's about.
Empathy, where do we see it in this world, where is it?
Looking at the world, the real world,
whoever tells me that empathy is the solution to everything
lives in another world.
There's a pendulum between who believes that empathy is pie in the sky
and who thinks that empathy is a panacea, the solution to everything.
On what can we try to agree?
Empathy is a necessary prerequisite
in helping the world stay out of trouble,
but it is not enough.
There is empathy, empathy serves,
but always what governs us, what carries weight,
are interests, supremacy, and power.
But, indeed, empathy is a necessary element,
even if it's not sufficient.
So how do I cultivate empathy,
and how do I destroy empathy,
not overglorifying it,
but thinking that it can be useful?
How do I cultivate it?
First of all, I cultivate it by getting to know,
studying, with curiosity,
the curiosity of knowing other countries, their cultures, their habits;
travelling;
getting to know, intriguing myself with, others,
about what is different,
taking in the food, the traditions,
not restricting myself to Sicilian pasta versus Milanese risotto,
but also taking in really different things.
So, first of all, it's curiosity.
The second way to cultivate empathy is to go from numbers, from the masses,
to individuals.
We all know the tragedy of the Holocaust,
but those millions tell us little,
they've told us little,
until we've known the story of Anna Frank, what she and her family experienced.
We all know the tragedy of migration,
but those are numbers until we see the image of little Aylan
on the coast of Greece,
and then we understand that it could be a child like our grandson, like our son,
like the son of our friends.
So passing, as Mother Teresa said, from the masses to the individual
is the way to go from greyness, darkness, to empathy for the individual.
And how, on the other hand, do we destroy empathy?
Empathy is destroyed when we generalize.
Empathy is destroyed when we say
"Blacks",
"radicalized Islamists",
"homos",
when we use words
that try to give even vast communities
a general and common label.
How is empathy destroyed?
It's destroyed when I exaggerate,
underlining my own importance,
national identity,
my own identity, traditions, culture, roots, what's mine, "my country first".
That which creates a thoughtless "us" and "them"
is a way to destroy empathy.
We create empathy when we start saying,
"Yes, Blacks, migrants, are a problem,
but I know that guy at the stand there,
he is a good guy",
and I change my attitude;
when I say "The Muslim religion is different to us, it's a problem,
but that guy from the stall over there
who sells handbags,
I've known him for ten years, he's a good guy."
When we start little by little, without demeaning the other -
no one wants that -
but understanding that the other is not black and white,
but that there's a grey zone,
then we're on our way.
Thank you.
(Applause)