Two Points on Stereotypes

1In his remarkable study about the Italian European policy, meaningfully entitled La Cenerentola d’Europa? L’Italia e l’integrazione europea dal 1947 ad oggi [A European Cinderella? Italy and European integration from 1947 to nowadays], Antonio Varsori deprecated the widespread use of stereotypes concerning Italy. They make often difficult—if not impossible—for many Europeans to understand the role and the relevance of Europe for Italy, and of Italy in Europe.

21. Varsori denounced the relevance of the constant “underestimation, shared by major European actors, although slightly changing in time, of the role that Italy should and could have played in the international scenario, and therefore also in the European context […] The opinion of our community partners was often influenced by a perception of Italy largely based on deeply-rooted stereotypes on our country and on its relationships with its European neighbours: from the ‘clean hands’ to the ‘rounds of waltz’, from Caporetto (1917) to September, 8 (1943). As a matter of fact, the use of these stereotypes often influenced decisions made in Paris, in London, in Bonn-Berlin and in Brussels, thus allowing to underestimate or to neglect a partner whose presence would have introduced new variables in an already complex context of relationships”.

3Sometimes stereotypes are not opposed by those they refer to. They can even reflect reality. For instance, in the case of Italy in Europe, it is clear that some policies carried out by Italian governments or institutions supported the suspicions felt by major European countries. Following Varsori’s thought, it is then easy to notice that the European choice represented an “element of continuity, a kind of constant in the foreign policy of Republican Italy”. But it is also true that the huge “engagement shown by the Italian authorities” with regard to Europe was often burdened with the Italian obsession for “the acknowledgement of its parity with main (traditional) European partners, such as France, Great Britain and Germany”, both when this parity did not exist—namely before Italy’s economic miracle—and when it was no longer relevant. This originated a position that, in general, on one hand “always assigned to our country a decidedly smaller role than those of the two “major” countries, namely France and West Germany, and that of the main candidate to the community, namely Great Britain; on the other hand Italy was not always or not only pro-European—in Italy we say “Europeista”—, just like many other countries, or maybe even more; on the contrary, its Atlantism and, even worse. Its USA alignment was and is still central, because, in the end, the decisive element in Rome was “the Italian wish, in the course of the last 60 years, to maintain a privileged relationship with the USA […] Washington always represented, no matter if truly or not, an ally which helped Italy to overcome its relative weakness in comparison with its European partners. However, this introduced new elements of contradiction and doubt in the attitude of some member countries, like France, towards our Peninsula”.

4When Italian Atlantism found itself in contradiction with pro-European attitude, it always won, for several different reasons. Just think of when, in 2003, major European countries, with the exception of Great Britain, would have had a chance to join their forces against the decision of the US administration of G.W. Bush to attack Iraq. On that occasion, although with some objections, the Italian centre-right government chose Washington. But, apart from this clarification, Varsori was right to stress the relevance of those anti-Italian stereotypes tending to discredit the pro-European engagement of Italy which, for different and changing reasons, has always been remarkable, and certainly not smaller than that of other powers considered the “locomotive of united Europe”.

52. These introductory remarks seem a necessary starting point to debate, with a comparative approach, the state of Italian strategic culture. The question mark which appears at the end of the title (Does an Italian strategic culture exist?) does not wish to strengthen the aforesaid stereotypes, but tends to evaluate, in a comparative and self-critical perspective, size, characteristics and orientations of the Italian strategic community.

6If we think of James J. Sheehan’s interesting book on Why Europeans hate going to war, about the downfall of European trust in war and armed forces as an effective tool for the resolution of conflicts, one of its weak points is that it does not sufficiently distinguish the different European national cases—it is difficult to deny that the Utility of force, and of strategy, as stated by General Rupert Smith’s title, after World War II was more recurrent for the English, and slightly less for the French, than for the Italian, not to talk about the German, who were fully employed in Afghanistan only in recent years. Sheehan’s work can also be criticized because it does not sufficiently distinguish between different historical periods in this long post-1945 age that is in this half-century of bipolar system and in the following twenty years of post-bipolar one. By summarizing the history of Italian military policy from 1945 to nowadays in a work which objectively is the first collective effort of a relevant number of Italian historians of studying military policy and relationships between armed forces and society in our Republic, I even listed seven periods or phases. Each of these periods in the relationship between armed forces and politics does not necessarily correspond immediately, as we will see hereinafter, to a change in nature of Italian strategic community but I would like to stress that each answer to my question should be very diversified and time-differentiated.

7Provided that some elements of continuity are undeniable, I think, for instance, that the whole debate about different styles of war-making in different nations or civilizations contains a high percentage, too high in my opinion, of national or cultural stereotypes. I seriously doubt that, beyond some general observations, talking about a “ways in warfare” or national strategies, or even, following Victor Davis Hanson, of a Western one, has much sense. In spite of some general characteristics, strategy, war and peace are made, adjusted and changed by their protagonists according to contingent historical conditions. Beyond historical understanding and strategy what we find are stereotypes.

8Therefore, it can be stated that, beyond stereotypes, only the lack of knowledge of the language could lead to the idea that an Italian strategic culture does not exist, and that an Italian strategic community does not exist. But which were its characteristics in time?

9We cannot discuss here about those who really create the strategy of a country like Italy: diplomats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, military of the Operations Office of the General Staff, entrepreneurs of FIAT, Unicredit or Telecom. But we can examine, and it is a major point of this debate, whether these decision-makers are surrounded by counsellors, inspirers, imaginative and informed prompters; whether they debate in public and whether they care to create or impose a certain consensus around their ideas; whether they are, or have become pro-European— “Europeisti”—, and, if possible, to which extent. All this should demonstrate if there is and how is a strategic culture, a public debate about strategy in Italy. The integration of Atlantism and Europeism represents perhaps the biggest challenge for Italian strategic community.

Six points on Italian strategic community

10But which are the main features of this community? We can outline a few points.

111. First of all, the Italian strategic culture and community is rather young and narrow, pokey. The Institute of International Affairs was founded in 1965—several years after the International Institute of Strategic Studies, 1959—, and it always remained a relatively small institute, scarcely independent from the government. We lack a “Fondation pour la recherche stratégique”, because international studies are not deeply rooted in Italian universities and, if we certainly do not lack a capital city—Rome—, our hundred towns played a disturbing role. Military milieus did not succeed in creating a centralization and a quality comparable to the “Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’École Militaire” (Irsem), because our Cemiss, founded in 1987, has always been simply a Defence research institute led by the military, even if it was initially open to a cooperation with independent civilians. Therefore, it is not surprising that it progressively lost its smartness, funds and relevance. If centralization was missing, rationalization was imposed by facts: only the Institute of International Affairs is accredited and obtains public funds by all major ministries, by both Chambers, etc. However, this community is relatively young because the major research institutes/ study centres/think tanks were created in the Eighties, and among them many of the most “alternative” ones were cancelled or downsized in the following years. As a matter of fact the Nineties saw some increase of academic posts/ jobs; in particular, “international relations” scholars in the field of political sciences multiplied. Therefore, this community actually went into action in the Nineties, and was immediately confronted by the problems of the post-bipolar age.

122. Although in the Nineties universities registered an increase of jobs and competencies relating to international issues, the growth was not quite relevant in absolute terms. The Italian strategic academic community remained narrow and, above all, divided. Its divisions concerned not only the traditional branches of Kantianism, Realism and Neo-realism, but also regional rivalries and individualisms: one of the few academic reviews which gave a certain relevance to international-strategic themes— “Teoria politica”, founded in 1985—was closed by its own founder when he retired in 2009. Also in television news and programs we saw an increase of ‘experts’. But, together with a few serious analysts, a crowded but comic series of these vocal civil ‘experts’ appeared, that makes us regret the old very few—often retired—officers there was once upon a time. Due to the number of these civil experts, in front of the very few professors in this field, Italian strategic community looks not so much academic but rather journalistic— “pubblicistica”. An interesting and revealing Italian peculiarity is that it was the magazine Limes which, in the ‘strategic field’, has made a name for itself, and not an academic or a think-tank review. Founded in 1993, Limes is today more important for the Italian reader the equivalent of the British academic Journal of strategic studies and of the American Foreign affairs or the British Survival: Global Politic and Strategy or Adelphi papers, unofficial, but authoritative and influential. Public opinion-oriented, Limes had realized that in the previous decade a new Italian strategy-interested market had been created, and fully exploited it. A bi-monthly, Limes sells about 10,000 copies, bur special issues (for Kossovo or Iraq wars) sold up to 100,000. This reveals that in Italy a new and large public of interested readers, heir of the great mobilizations on the international themes of the previous years an decades—since times of Vietnam, Third World national liberation wars and against Reagan’s Star Wars—was waiting, wanting to know what was going to happen to a border country like Italy in the new post-bipolar phase. On this nation success, Limes went also abroad, publishing a French edition, a Russian edition, and one for the Chinese-Far Eastern market. In conclusion, compared to the success stories of improbable television experts and of Limes, the academic section of the Italian strategic community seems to have difficulties to improve and to enlarge, with probably a scarce impact on the public opinion and on the public debate about national strategy.

133. Young and scarcely academic, the Italian strategic community is moreover rather divided. As already mentioned, the traditional divisions among idealists, realists and neo-realists are not the only ones. The principal reason of division seems political, between pro-government institutes and experts and alternative ones, although the number of these latter is progressively decreasing. Another reason of division is between those analysts who are financially supported by the Ministry of Defence, and those who are not. All this seems to be, without many variations, a long heritage of the Cold War period, when suspicions and secrecy could often prevail on competence and study, due to the fear of enemy infiltrations. This seemed particularly true in Italy, a country with the strongest Western Communist Party and a particularly brilliant New Left. The heritage of suspicions of the Cold War represses the originality and vivacity of the national strategic community and must be almost integrally attributed to institutions and governments, introducing and strengthening divisions which could have been overcome in the new post-bipolar atmosphere.

144. The concentric effects of these elements—the more journalistic-media than academic nature and the persisting suspicions on the side of Defence and of Foreign Affairs administrations/departments—gave the Italian strategic community a reduced institutional profile: the ‘alternative’ research institutes do not care about governmental problems, the pro-government think tanks often hope to do without the intellectual and innovative yeast of the original analysis of the alternatives (as well as of the academics). This involves a certain division between the institutional world, on the one side, and a relevant part of the strategic community on the other side; in the IAI only 5 persons out of 27 are academics, in ISPI 3 out of 11. The situation seems quite the opposite in Great Britain, whose IISS is formed both by experts and academics, and in France, where the State tries to centralize the academic dispersion and even to control it. In Italy, on the contrary, the State seems to like keeping itself at distance from the academics. Generally speaking, this creates and amplifies divisions among different sections of the Italian strategic community, thus weakening the national foreign policy, above all with regard to the new challenges of the post-bipolar era.

155. Another feature of the Italian strategic community is that it seems to be scarcely militarized. What is lacking is not a plurality of single military experts and analysts, but a general attention to the military aspect of national and international events. There is a deficit of military culture in the Italian strategic community. This seems to be a further heritage of the Cold War, when the right abandoned the military policy to the military, the centre made more or less the same in some secrecy in cooperation with the General Staff, and the left exhausted itself in the denunciation of the military policy of the government. The result, at least up to the Eighties, was that Italy, in spite of its being located on one of the borders of the Cold War, suffered a deficit of (public) military culture. The above mentioned general distance and the suspicions nourished by the government towards academics could be confirmed (in a specific case) with regard to military historians. Even if the latter are, together with the very few sociologists of military organization, the only academics with a solid knowledge of this field, with very few exceptions, government/institutions/departments never really turned to military historians working in the Universities to ask for or to accept their consulting. At the most, they preferred make use of the armed forces’ Historical Offices—while no academic/civilian historian teaches military history in military academies.

166. Italian strategic community seems to have little space for historians and for historic knowledge. Individually, many Italian strategists declare to be readers of history books, but just a very few of them are historians. The major institutional makers of Italian strategy (Foreign Affairs, Defence) no longer seem consider useful the historical method—and this is remarkable news, if you think of the role that in the past history reading and history knowledge played for instance, for diplomats’ education— Although Italian strategic community looks much more journalistic than academic, this loss of relevance of history could be related, also in Italy, to two interacting factors: a. the rise of a post-bipolar era which, with its novelties and its “end of history”, illusorily seems to make superfluous the knowledge of the history—of Italy and of the whole world—; and b. the diffusion, not only in the universities, of social and political sciences, in competition with historical science. Even in military academies, the place once covered by military history is now largely occupied by sociology and “strategic sciences”.

17In conclusion, a strategic community exists in Italy just like in other European countries. It has its research centres and its periodical publications. Therefore this latter deserve to be known, not ignored, as it too often happens for self-conceit or for linguistic ignorance. But, unfortunately, this is quite a recent community, scarcely academic, not always interested in the military dimension and scarcely interested in history, a community towards which government and institutions seem rather mean and suspicious.

Two Points on Military Italy and Europe

18In general, it is difficult to define how much pro-European is a national strategic community. For instance, the Italian foreign policy has certainly always had a pro-European attitude, thus balancing its strong Atlantism. But, in general terms, it remains difficult to say which of the two won. If we still think in terms of stereotypes, we can not ignore that in the coldest decades of the Cold War, the critics of Italian foreign policy severely judged the faithful Atlantist alignment of the “NATO Bulgaria”. But at the same time we should not forget that pro-European attitudes always complemented and corrected the Italian subordination to the powerful American ally.

19Similarly, it is not easy to say which contribution has been provided by the Italian military to the public debate on national strategy, and whether this contribution went in the direction of a European integration or not.

201. First of all, the question should be whether they gave a public contribution at all. In fact, the traditional discretion of Italian military, their reluctance to take public action and the scarce attention of Italian strategic community to the military dimension tended to limit their public contribution.

21But the military dimension was and is a substantial part of a European perspective, although in its most peculiar forms. And also to this regard the Italian engagement was not irrelevant. For instance, Italy is nowadays present in more than the half of all military and police operations of the European Union. Rome was a supporter (not uninterestedly) of the advantages of integration with regard to the European defence industry. This has a structural reason. Italy can only gain from a European military perspective. On the one hand this would boost the modernization of the military apparatus and the creation of further economies thanks to the integration with technologically, financially and intellectually more advanced and updated services. On the other hand, this would represent an international help in tasks that nowadays the Italian army carries out nearly by itself, not only for its country but for the whole Europe. (To make an example, think of Italian patrolling of Mediterranean waters seen as the ‘southern flank’ of Europe in respect of international migrants, and maybe terrorist threats from the South.) If we think how this has been done during years of evident decrease of the Italian military budgets, it should be easy to understand how Italy could profit from pro-European policies. In this sense, we could also wonder about the apprehension that in the very last days could be spread among Italian General Staff about recent declarations concerning an effective Anglo-French cooperation (even with regard to a nuclear sancta sanctorum…).

22However, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that, in the perspective of a European integration of the military, Rome could do (or could have done) more. And up to now, it is difficult to deny that in the national context, the military point of view worked more as a brake than as an accelerator for the Italian pro-European initiative. National interest and Atlantism, more than pro-European policies, seem to be the guiding stars for the Italian military decision-makers. It was this way from the very beginning. This had political, industrial and military reasons.

23When, between 1951 and 1952, the perspective of the creation of a European Community of Defence became concrete, the highest Italian military representatives presented to the government not two or three, but seven good reasons for not joining in. The list mixed reasonable worries and corporative requests. As known, the Italian politicians could overcome this military challenge, and the Prime Minister De Gasperi was a supporter of the integration, not only on a military level, with the CED, but also in view of the creation of a European political community.

24Similar oppositions to integration came also on the occasion of NATO creation. Recently, Federico Romero emphasized the benefits that Italy would have received by its integration in NATO and its international positioning during the Cold War. First of all it should be admitted that, together with the benefits, Italy also had some problems. For instance, it is not completely clear which concrete advantages, as stated by Leopoldo Nuti, Rome was given for housing on its national territory US nuclear devices, advantages which should have at least counterbalanced Italy’s inclusion in the Soviet targeting. Anyway, from the technical-military point of view, the inclusion of the Italian armed forces in NATO and its international integration with its European partners, as well as with the USA, represented for the Italian military the most extraordinary incentive to modernization and homologation. Nevertheless, above all at the beginning, some of the Italian military were decidedly reluctant to accept the NATO.

25A research on the Italian military reception of the perspective of European integration is still to be carried out. But if you look at Italian military press, for instance in some fundamental years for the European integration process (e.g. 1957, 1975, 1993, etc.), we do not read many enthusiastic commentaries. On the contrary, after a first nationalistic opposition to NATO, the fear that a possible European integration could jeopardize or hinder the integration reached by means of the Atlantic Pact seemed to prevail. In military reviews, the hypothesis of a European construction was generally felt for a long time as vague, scarcely concrete policies, a politicians’ stuff, when it was not considered a Trojan horse which could slyly transmit the Soviet influence. In short, in Italian military press European integration was presented, and opposed as an alternative to the Atlantic one for too long.

262. Only the end of the Cold War and the deepening of the European integration were able to remove some of these military prejudices. It is maybe worth reminding that—even with no wish of making classifications—the review of the Defence General Staff, more concerned with political-strategic data and with government policy compared to other services’ periodical publications, was the most pro-European Italian military review among the official ones—that is more than Army’s and Navy’s reviews, much more than the Air Force’s review—a service completely integrated in NATO planning.

27It is not unlikely that concrete participation to European operations convinced some military leaders to moderate their anti-European preventions. Obviously, another relevant element was history itself starting from the Petersberg missions/operations (1992-1993) and the CJTFs (1993) to the Berlin Plus arrangements (2002-2003), that is the choice for Common Security and Defence Policy not to have a completely independent line of command and not to create European units alternative to NATO.

28But it must be remarked that the same process of deepening and widening of the Union probably increased the already existing doubts of the Italian military towards Europe: too many flags under the common European flag could have make them to wonder whether a common military perspective for the Old Continent could be realistic. Actually, Europe looks too many as a political, and not a military, matter.

29Also for this reason the retrained Italian military reviews have not shown any particular sign of regret for some recent political choices made by Italian governments—choices clearly not pro-European but Euro-sceptical if not even anti-European. We refer in particular to the policy of the centre-right Berlusconi government to differentiate itself from the French and German decision not to participate to the Iraq war in 2003. But a mention deserves also Italian decision in 2002 not to integrally found the renewal of its air force with the Efa-Eurotyphoon, but to accept both the European Efa and the US Jsf-35.

30As a matter of fact, on the latter point, it must be remarked that it is really difficult to establish whether a defence industry, in our case the Italian one, has pro-European attitudes. For sure, Italian defence industry forged strong bonds with the US defence industry, and is also closely related to Third World imports. Because of these elements, it could seem partially contrary to (or uninterested in) a deep and wide European integration. In any case, the integration process even at the level of defence industries—starting from the point of procedures, e.g. with regard to contracts and public tenders—have now made such a progress that it would really be difficult to reverse or to stop it. Moreover, it would be politically and economically disadvantageous (if not actually impossible) for the Italian industry to keep away from this process.

31But, of course, it is not only a matter of weapons. After more than 50 years of this process, up to nowadays the Italian military only seldom represented a pushing factor for European integration—unless considering the European integration as a subordinated part of the Atlantic integration. This happened during the bipolar decades, when the military had a considerable budget and when NATO had its barycentre in Europe.

32Nowadays conditions are different, and could change even more. Under the grip of the economic crisis, governments could reduce national military budgets. In the meantime NATO could be tented, or obliged, to remove partially if not completely its centre of gravity from Europe—if not definitively, at least as a response to crisis hotbeds which are increasingly extra-European. (It is too early to have a clear judgement about the recent ‘new’ NATO strategic concept and to take for true that decisions taken at Lisbon “will mean profound changes for the way NATO does business, making the Alliance more effective, more efficient and more engaged with the wider world”, as we can read on her official website.)

33Therefore, the European option could be an answer to the overstretching of national armed forces and international organizations. The very idea that European troops and missions could operate with European recruitment rules and European regulations, represent in some scenarios, a resource and not a waste of energies for a country like Italy which has no military resources and energies to waste. On the contrary, in the near future Italy could be obliged to save as much as possible on military budgets and institutions. For a country like this, a supernational process like that should be strengthened.

34Maybe the present economic crisis will help military Europe more than the Cold War. But traditional oppositions can always reappear.

Conclusions

35Now the three parts of this paper come finally together.

1. In Italy in many occasions, and for different reasons, the military have not represented a real thrust force for Italian participation in the European integration process.
2. But old stereotypes are not any more sufficient, or really useful, since the strategic context is presently changing. Should the military have no sufficient perception of this, signalling this change to decision-makers would be the duty of the national strategic community.
3. But will a relatively young strategic community, which is also scarcely attentive to the military dimension, be able to do this?

36Up to this point, we think, history has been decisive in clarifying the challenges Italy has to confront with. But the last question refers to the future, and not to the past: then, from this point on, the answer should be provided by scenario forecast analysts, and not by historians.