Alcune note dall'intervento di Kissinger alla Global Strategic Review con un interrogativo finale:

"The United States remains the strongest single power in the world; constrained in its unilateral capacities, it is still the indispensable component of any collective security system, however that system is defined.  However, it is no longer in a position to be the sole dominant country. It must henceforth practice the art of leadership, not as the sole leader, but as a part of a complex world.  The United States will have to share the responsibility for global order with emerging power centres.
Some observers have forecast a multipolar world, with regional heavyweights, like China, Russia, India, Brazil, or even Turkey, grouping their smaller neighbours and building power blocs that can potentially create a global equilibrium somewhat on the model of the European systems of the 18th and 19th century.  I do not believe that it is possible to compartmentalise the international order into a system of regional hegemons.  The United States is a Pacific country; it cannot be excluded from East Asia.  China or India cannot be excluded from the Middle East and other resource-rich regions.  Issues like energy and environment cannot be regionalised at all.
Niall Ferguson has coined the term of an ‘apolar world’, in which the United States gradually recedes from its hegemonic role and is replaced by…nobody. That cannot happen, because it is the nature of the political world that it abhors a vacuum.  That is the international system.  Chaos may occur, but when it does it will sooner or later settle down to some new order. It is the task of statesmanship, and of groups like this, to try to generate the possibility, so that what must happen ultimately will happen soon, and save humanity from untold suffering (…).
America’s relations with many countries are, of course, vitally important.  My initial experience was the importance of the relationship with Europe, and I continue to believe that a strong Atlantic relationship is essential for many of the objectives I have described.  However, in this period, the relationship that is in flux is produced by the emergence of China as a great power.  It raises the issues that the world confronted before the First World War, when Germany attempted to enter the international system, and partly through its short-sightedness, and a little bit through the lack of imagination of the countries it was confronting, did not manage this process.  In our period the problem is even more complex, because China is not a nation-state, but a continental expression of an ancient and great culture.
How America and China manage their relationship is the key to many of the issues that I have discussed here: whether it is confrontational or adversarial; whether it is based on mutual containment, or some concept of cooperation that may not have been invented yet.  Within the American debate I have favoured a huge effort behind the cooperative effort, and in China there are many signs that indicate that leading elements of the society have the same objective.  I have an impression that some of the discussions that have taken place this week in Beijing between the American delegation and the Chinese leaders indicate that both sides realise that in this period, on a global basis, we cannot afford a confrontational set of arrangements, and that we need, and will make a big effort, to achieve a cooperative set of solutions.  In fact, the word solution is misleading, because it implies there is some terminal point. We are part of a process that reshapes the international environment and that will not end at any one point."

E l'Italia? Quali saranno ruolo e rango del nostro Paese?