The conference “Morocco in the world: challenges and perspectives” led by Professor Simon Serfaty is the focal point of the Marrakech meeting. Professor of American Foreign Policy at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and Emeritus Professor of Zosigniew Brzezinski in Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic Studies and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, he answers questions from journalist and host Hanane Harrath.
In reference to the theme of this meeting, for Mr. Serfaty “the Moroccanity that we share » is conjugated with the simple past. Morocco was our first world before going to shape another elsewhere, not with the intention of becoming someone else but another someone.
Mr. Serfaty develops his intervention around three major points: in a changing world, does America continue to count? What is Europe’s place and what are its fields of action? Then, in a devaluation of Western influence, does emerging Morocco, committed to action, have a role to play?
At first glance, ” America still counts as a powerful pole, the most powerful in the world by the way, but there is a temptation to retreat and inefficiency. Undeniably, Europe is very strong vis-à-vis its members but weak vis-à-vis the world. Reason why Morocco can play an efficient role with more effective diplomacy since 20 years, but must be understood by the world powers.
After a twentieth century “where we lived a first half of the war making 165 million victims and a second half more positive where we believed in a Kantian peace,” we learned a few lessons, because their application defines the pole of our future.
There are four essential lessons to keep in mind, according to Mr. Serfaty: “unilateralism does not pay, because it helds in a narrow nationalism and says no to development; military power no longer has the efficiency of the past, because it allows wars to begin but not to end them; we can no longer limit the essence of the world around us to one dimension since all the cases come together: the problem ignored today will appear tomorrow and finally there is no easy solution since no one is able to say in one statement what it takes to solve one problem or another “.
Answering to the question “Do we have the language to name those new paradigms to describe the world? Mr. Serfaty replied that “the unipolar era is over, the bipolar era is no longer appropriate and the multipolar era remains to be defined” but calls our era “the zero polar era, because no pole is relevant and effective, and alliances are increasingly difficult to form and shape. “
About Europe, Mr Serfaty states that “the United States and Europe complement each other in their means and therefore in their actions”. “Even with the rise of a rebellious populism against immigration and excessive austerity, it has no alternative to the European Union because the states separated from this union are very small and limited.”
A prominent was dedicated in this conference to Morocco, this southern country closely linked to the Atlantic.
Mr. Serfaty remains “positive with respect to the potential of the kingdom in many respects, because it is the most comprehensive of all emerging countries.”
“There is an ability to reach Europe, Africa, America and the arable countries in addition to the special dimension in Morocco and specific to Morocco, the one that its means and its power are complete: it is not limited not to an oil resource or commercial market “.
Another essential asset for Morocco, its geography and demography which are more and more autonomous and an economic dynamism. Mr. Simon Serfaty also mentioned a major advantage : credibility due to the “nature of Morocco’s reputation in a number of countries around the world based on its history and stability.”
For all these reasons and for its thousand-year-old cultural and historical wealth, its pluralism and its multilingualism, for Mr.Serfaty it is a question of a sustainability in Morocco that it “does not find in other emerging countries”.
The conference of Professor Serfaty concluded the program of the work of this meeting held under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, which brought together practically 200 members of the Moroccan Jewish community from around the world.
CCME
