Italy Foregin Policy

ITALY’S HISTORY ON FOREIGN POLICY



INTRODUCTION

In order to understand Italy’s current foreign policy, we will review their history from the period in which Italy (the Roman empire) fell and became a unified Peninsula, it’s participation in various wars, the rise and fall of Mussolini, and how that has affected the foreign policies recognized in Italy today.

I. The History of Italy

Let us recognize that the history of Rome is largely the history of Italy. The Holy Roman Emperors, Roman Catholic popes, Normans, and Saracens, from 800 on, all fought for control over different areas of the Italian peninsula. Numerous city-states, whose political and commercial rivalries were intense, such as Venice and Genoa, and many small principalities, flourished in the late middle ages. Italy became the cultural center of the Western world from the 13th to the 16th century, even though it remained politically fragmented for centuries.

II. Italy Becomes a Unified Peninsula

After the War of the Spanish Succession, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia, in 1713, were handed over to the Hapsburgs of Austria. In the 1800s, Napoléon crowned himself king and unified Italy. Austria, in 1815, once again became the dominant power in a disunited Italy. Austrian armies crushed Italian uprisings throughout the early 1800s, but in the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini, a brilliant liberal nationalist, was able to organize the Risorgimento (Resurrection), which laid the groundwork for Italian unity.

The architect of a united Italy, Count Camille di Cavour (1810–1861), prime minister of Sardinia in 1852, joined England and France in the Crimean War (1853–1856). He also assisted France in 1859 in a war against Austria, thereby obtaining Lombardy. In 1860, Modena, Parma, Tuscany, and the Romagna voted to join Sardinia, while in the same year, Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Naples and turned them over to Sardinia. Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia, was proclaimed king of Italy in 1861. In 1866 the annexation of Venetia and of papal Rome in 1870 completed the unification of peninsular Italy into one nation under a constitutional monarchy.

III. The Rise and Fall of Mussolini

Upon the outbreak of World War I (WWI), because Italy felt as though Germany had embarked upon an offensive war, Italy declared its neutrality. Italy entered the war in 1915 on the side of the Allies but obtained less territory than it expected in the postwar settlement. A former Socialist, Benito (“Il Duce”) Mussolini, organized discontented Italians in 1919 into the Fascist Party to “rescue Italy from Bolshevism.” He transformed Italy into a dictatorship when he led his Black Shirts in a march on Rome and, on Oct. 28, 1922, became prime minister. As he embarked on an expansionist foreign policy with the invasion and annexation of Ethiopia in 1935 and aligned himself with Adolf Hitler in the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936, the allies invaded Italy in 1943. Mussolini's dictatorship collapsed; he was executed by partisans on April 28, 1945, at Dongo on Lake Como. Italy joined the war against Germany as a cobelligerent following the armistice with the Allies (Sept. 3, 1943). In June of 1946 a plebiscite rejected monarchy and a republic was proclaimed. The Italian renunciation of all claims in Ethiopia and Greece and the cession of the Dodecanese islands to Greece and of five small Alpine areas to France was required by the peace treaty of September 15, 1947. The Trieste area west of the new Yugoslav territory was made a free territory (until 1954, when the city and a 90-square-mile zone were transferred to Italy and the rest to Yugoslavia).


IV. Italy Moves to Stabilize Its Economy

As it successfully rebuilt its postwar economy, Italy became an integral member of NATO and the European Economic Community (later the EU). An outbreak of terrorist activities in the 1970s by the left-wing Red Brigades threatened domestic stability, but by the early 1980s the terrorist groups had been suppressed. Political instability, scandals, corruption, and “revolving door” governments characterized Italian politics in the 1980s and 1990s.

Italy adopted the euro as its currency in Jan. 1999. In May 1999, the Treasury Secretary, Carlo Ciampi, who is credited with the economic reforms that permitted Italy to enter the European Monetary Union, was elected president. When Italy joined its NATO partners in the Kosovo crisis, Aviano Air Base in northern Italy was a crucial base for launching air strikes into Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

V. The Four Pillars of Italy’s Foreign Policy

Since WWII the Italian foreign policy has been based on four pillars. Each pillar responds to one or more domestic needs as listed below:

European integration: which, undoubtedly, is the major pillar of the Italian foreign policy –initially responded to the need to ensure economic reconstruction, secure the country’s newly formed democratic institutions, and, last but not least, allow the reinsertion of Italy on the international stage.

Atlantic integration: initially ensures economic reconstruction (the Marshall Plan) but is essential to allow Italy to maintain low defense expenditures.

USSR/Russia: good relations with Moscow, to contain the left parties’ (Socialists and Communists) opposition to European integration and to Transatlantic relations, were initially needed domestically. Russia also became a major energy provider for Italy, as time passed, as it still is today.

The Mediterranean/Middle East: given its geographic position, this is a natural endeavor for Italy, as well as major energy suppliers. Recently, due to the illegal flows of immigration, they also emerged as a source of possible domestic instability.

The Balkans, which has been, historically, a troubled neighbor for Italy.

Even though there is the fact that these five policy domains have been given top priority by all Italian governments, at times attempts to privilege either one over another and even to use them alternatively in other ways in order to rebalance Italy’s influence on the European and/or world stage. The government’s attitudes, in some, cases towards one or several of these areas of interests, has been an important part of domestic confrontation (that is something different from “debate”).

For the first time, in Italy’s history, there are only six parties in the Parliament and both the more extreme left and right parties have been left out. As a result of this, there has been a major change in the domestic rules of the political game, which includes an evolving discourse over European and foreign policy. Notably this brings a less confrontational and more diplomatic way of defining the Italian foreign policy.

Frattini confirmed the impressions of those who noticed the fundamental impact his time spent as European Commissioner had on his action and values when he presented Italy’s foreign policy to the Italian Parliament (July 2nd 2008). Frattini’s speech was in fact, devoted to the future of European integration and the role of Italy within the EU even though he touched upon the role of Italy in the rest of the world – namely concerning the four pillars. Frattini demonstrated Italy’s willingness to end the longstanding dispute between the two coalitions over European integration.

CONCLUSION

The conclusion that has to be drawn from the previous text is that it is not the domestic instability that negatively impacts the conduct of a country’s foreign policy (in this case European policy), but rather it is the lack of agreement amongst the country’s political leaders on the goals to be achieved in their foreign policy.