![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article analyses the role of Italy in international policing, focusing on the reasons, specific features, multifaceted character and value of its contribution. The argument is made that participation in such operations has become a distinctive character of Italy’s international projection and ideally suits its security culture and foreign policy objectives. Italy’s role is positively appraised because it responds to the international community’s demands for a more robust, specialized and highly trained police force that is needed to meet the complex challenges of the contemporary global security environment.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
About the Author
Paolo Foradori is Associate Professor in Political Science at the School of International Studies and the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, Italy. From 2009 to 2011, he was Marie Curie fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, and until 2014 an associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on international relations, security studies, arms control and non-proliferation. Prior to his academic posting, he worked with the United Nations in Russia, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
Notes
1 The term ‘international policing’ refers to the use of external police personnel in countries that are host to peace support and other similar operations, or in other state-building exercises (such as invitations to undertake police reform efforts) that similarly involve external agents. See Greener, The New International Policing, 3.
2 This study engages with the literature on Italy’s foreign and security policies, particularly the flourishing sub-field on Italy’s participation in peacekeeping and military interventions abroad. It also takes into account an extensive, although randomly scattered, grey literature including newspapers, reports, white papers, documents produced by civil-society and non-governmental organizations as well as government departments and agencies. In addition, the analysis is supplemented by semi-structured interviews with Carabinieri officers conducted at the Carabinieri General Headquarters in Rome, at the Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units (CoESPU) in Vicenza, via email with personnel deployed in Iraq, as well as direct observation of the Carabinieri international policing activities in Kosovo. Carabinieri General Headquarters provided the author with the data on the Carabinieri’s international missions (). The author would like thank the Carabinieri General Headquarters and in particular Col. Pietro Carrozza of the Plans and Military Police Office, for his generous cooperation and support.
3 Hansen, From Congo to Kosovo.
4 For an overview and history of international policing, see den Heyer, The Role of Civilian Police; Greener, The New International Policing; Hansen, From Congo to Kosovo; Bellamy, “Policing”; Holm and Eide, Peacebuilding and Police Reform.
5 Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics.
6 Kaldor, New and Old Wars; Münkler, The New Wars.
7 Durch, Twenty-first-century Peace Operations.
8 Mackinlay and Chopra, “Second Generation Multinational Operations.”
9 Bellamy and Williams, Understanding Peacekeeping, 4.
10 Richmond, “UN Peace Operations and the Dilemmas of the Peacebuilding Consensus,” 97.
11 For Day and Freeman, from the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, one could even make the argument that ‘policekeeping’ should be the main focus for the intervening forces. Day and Freeman, “Policekeeping Is the Key.”
12 United Nations, Police in Peacekeeping Operations.
13 Ibid.
14 Hartz, “CIVPOL.”
15 Greener, “The Rise of Policing in Peace Operations,” 186. Muigg similarly divides police tasks in two broad categories: ‘police peacekeeping’ (including monitoring, mentoring and training of local police forces), which is aimed at increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the police work; and ‘police peacebuilding’, which includes further-reaching measures such as reform, restructuring or total rebuilding of local police units and police institutions according to democratic standards and the rule of law in a lasting and sustainable manner (Muigg, “Police in International Peace Operations”). Den Hayer describes the evolution of policing by three categories of missions: traditional, transformational and executive (den Heyer, Role of Civilian Police); Bellamy talks of four different types of operations, on the basis of the activities that they undertake: executive policing, multidimensional policing, traditional policing, capacity-building (Bellamy, “Policing”).
16 Greener, “The Rise of Policing in Peace Operations,” 190.
17 Dobbins et al., Beginner’s Guide to Nation-building, 47.
19 Walston, “Second Republic?,” 91.
20 Tercovich, “Italy and UN Peacekeeping,” 681.
21 Whereas the Carabinieri are, as discussed in detail later, a military police force governed by the Ministry of Defense, the Polizia di Stato (State Police) is the civil national police of Italy, governed by the Ministry of Interior, tasked with patrolling, investigative and law enforcement duties. Another police force is the Guardia di Finanza, which is a fiscal or customs police, concerned mainly with preventing financial crimes and different types of cross-border economic crime, such as contraband and tax evasion, and is under the dual authority of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Over the years, a limited number of civil police officers and ‘financial guards’ have also served in peacekeeping missions.
22 These reasons considerably overlap with those explaining Italian activism in military peacekeeping and in the broader and undifferentiated category of ‘military operations abroad’, which have been the object of much more extensive analysis. See Ignazi et al., Italian Military Operations Abroad; de Guttry et al., China’s and Italy’s Participation in Peacekeeping Operations, in particular chapters 1 and 3; Tercovich, “Italy and UN peacekeeping”; Carati and Locatelli, “Cui prodest?”.
23 Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni internazionali,” 34.
25 Tercovich, “Italy and UN Peacekeeping,” 690; Nardone and Sinconi, “Un mondo che cambia”; Coticchia et al., “Securing Italy’s Energy Supply and Private Oil Companies”. On the role of police in the fight against terrorism and insurgency, see Bayley and Perito, Police in War.
26 Ministry of Defence, White Paper, 38.
27 Interview at the Carabinieri General Command, 12 October 2017.
28 Coticchia, “A Remarkable Evolution,” 14. On the evolution of the Italian security policy, see also Davidson, America’s Allies and War; Giacomello and Verbeek, Italy’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century; Croci et al., “Italy as a Security Actor.”
29 Interview at the Carabinieri General Command, 3 April 2017.
30 Tripodi, “Operation Alba.”
31 http://www.difesa.it/OperazioniMilitari/op_int_concluse/Fyrom_EUPAT/Documents/18520_SchedaEUPATvers16giu06CONCLUSAIL14GIUGNO2006.pdf. The Carabinieri are tasked with the responsibilities of monitoring, mentoring and advising, to contribute to the actual implementation of the global reform of the Ministry of Interior, including that of the Police, to consolidate public order and to fight against organized crime.
32 Davidson, America’s Allies and War.
33 Ignazi et al., Italian Military Operations Abroad, 47.
34 http://www.difesa.it/OperazioniMilitari/op_int_concluse/Palestina_MIADIT/Pagine/Missione.aspx (author’s translation).
35 Coticchia, “A Remarkable Evolution,” 10.
36 http://www.onuitalia.com/2015/12/02/coespu-vicenza-10-anni-di-eccellenza-formazione-peacekeepers/ (author’s translation).
37 For a strong Italian argument in support of the moral, political and legal necessity to intervene in a country, even without its explicit consent, in case of gross and systematic violations of human rights, see Sinconi, Missioni di supporto alla pace.
38 Carati and Locatelli, “Cui prodest?,” 10.
39 Rosa, Strategic Culture and Italy’s Military Behavior, Ignazi et al., Italian Military Operations Abroad. Italian public opinion is also supportive of the national involvement in such operations (Battistelli et al., Opinioni sulla Guerra).
40 This interpretation of the role and identity of the Italian Armed Forces is indeed deeply rooted, and widely accepted across the political spectrum and by both the government and civil society sectors. It can be traced back to the post-WWII period, when the myth of the ‘compassionate Italian soldier’ gradually emerged and became associated with the basic ‘goodness’ of the Italian people as a whole, reluctant to pursue and glorify any kind of warrior or warlike behaviour. In the immediate aftermath of the war, with the ultimate objective of overcoming the legacy of Fascism and the Italy’s humiliating defeat, Italian politicians and historians attempted to sterilize Italy’s 20 years of Fascist rule by emphasizing its episodic nature, and the fact that it was altogether alien to the country’s political and cultural traditions above and beyond the true spirit and temperament of the Italian people (Rosa, Strategic Culture and Italy’s Military Behavior, 77–8). This strategy also includes the so-called mito autoassolutorio (self-justifying myth), whereby the war crimes committed by the Italians were downplayed, and the legal proceedings brought against those who had been accused of war crimes generally resulted in nothing (Focardi, Il cattivo tedesco e il bravo italiano). It is interesting to note that the dynamics of this peace narrative mainly affects the external dimension of Italian security, while it has a relatively limited impact on the domestic front. Indeed, Italy has one of the most militarized law enforcement systems in Europe, as evidenced not only by the hybrid nature of parts of its police forces, as in the case of the Carabinieri, but also by the far-reaching role of Italy’s military in domestic operations (Ignazi et al., Italian Military Operations Abroad, 167–9; Head and Mann, Domestic Deployment of the Armed Forces, 8–9).
41 den Heyer, “Filling the Security Gap,” 463. According to Dziedzic, the ‘security gap’ is the result of three gaps: a deployment gap, in which intervening forces are mismatched to public security requirements; an enforcement gap, in which international police elements lack the authority or capacity to enforce law and order; and an institutional gap, in which the host nation lacks capacity to perform key law and order functions (Dziedzic, “Introduction”).
42 Bellamy, “Policing,” 381.
43 For a critical discussion about the blurring of the police-military divide, see Greener-Barcham, “Crossing the Green or Blue Line?”.
44 Lutterbeck, “Between Police and Military”; Armitage and Moisan, “Constabulary Forces and Post-conflict Transition”; Perito, “Police in Peace and Stability Operations”. The value of gendarmerie forces for filling the ‘security gap’ remains controversial and is questioned by some observers, including Hills, “International Peace Support Operation and CIVPOL”; Friesendorf and Penksa, “Militarised Law Enforcement in Peace Operations”; den Heyer, “Filling the Security Gap”.
45 Dobbins et al., The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-building, xxvi–ii. In addition to the Italian Carabinieri, such forces include the French Gendarmerie Nationale, Spanish Guardia Civil, Austrian Federal Gendarmerie, Portuguese Guarda Nacional Republicana, Dutch Koninklijke Marechaussee and Romanian Jandarmeria Româna.
46 For an overview of the Carabinieri, see Comando Generale Arma dei Carabinieri, Arma dei Carabinieri.
48 Pallida, “Les forces de sécurité en Italie,” 248–51.
49 Pasqualini, Le missioni all’estero dei Carabinieri 1855–1935; Pasqualini, Le missioni all’estero dei Carabinieri 1936–2001.
50 Art 3, Act 2/3, D.Lgs. no. 297/2000; see http://www.carabinieri.it/multilingua/en.
51 http://www.carabinieri.it/multilingua/en/english/operation-areas-security-of-diplomatic-seats-and-international-cooperation. See also Paris, “Lo strumento militare italiano in operazioni di polizia.”
52 Carrozza, “La Polizia di Stabilità,” 121; CoESPU, The Future Roles for Stability Policy Unites Workshop. For a key NATO document on ‘stability policing’, see NATO, “Allied Joint Doctrine for Stability Policing.”
53 In 2017, the ‘State Forestry Corps’ was militarized and absorbed by the Carabinieri, who can now call on an additional 7000 highly specialized personnel to deal with illicit agro-foodstuffs, engage in environmental and biodiversity protection, combat poaching, and address any and all criminal organizations that, through their illicit activities, affect the environment in negative ways. By September 2017, the Carabinieri conducted its first course on ‘Environmental Protection’ (in favour of the Kosovo Police [KP]) as part of the KFOR mission (https://www.difesa.it/EN/Primo_Piano/Pagine/Kr.aspx).
54 Van der Auwera, “Peace Operations and the Protection of Cultural Property During and After Armed Conflict”; Van der Auwera, “Contemporary Conflict, Nationalism, and the Destruction of Cultural Property During Armed Conflict.”
55 Foradori and Rosa, “Expanding the Peacekeeping Agenda.”
56 Rush and Benedettini, The Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Property, 1.
57 Ibid.
58 Russell, “Efforts to Protect Archaeological Sites and Monuments in Iraq,” 34.
59 Rush, “Military Protection of Cultural Property,” 170–1.
60 Rush and Benedettini, The Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Property.
61 UNESCO, “Resolution 48,” 41. The urgency of the issue was also taken up by the UN Security Council, which approved Resolution 2437 on 24 March 2017. With the unanimous vote of its members on a text introduced by Italy and France, the Resolution highlights the links between the trafficking of cultural property and the financing of terrorist groups, and between terrorism and organized crime; it explicitly criminalizes attacks against cultural heritage – which may constitute, under certain circumstance a war crime – and for the first time ever it acknowledges a direct connection between cultural heritage and maintaining peace and security, paving the way for the inclusion of culture in humanitarian actions, global security policies, peacebuilding and peacekeeping operations (United Nations Security Council, “Resolution 2347”).
62 http://www.unesco.org/new/en/member-states/single-view/news/unesco_director_general_protecting_culture_is_a_moral_responsibility_and_a_security_issue/#.Vwz-kxy22Jg. On the Italian Task Force, see Foradori, “Protecting Cultural Heritage During Armed Conflict.”
65 Durch and Ker, “Police in UN Peacekeeping.”
66 Bayley, Changing the Guard. Democratic policing is based on the belief that in a democratic society the police must be not only professionally competent but also (1) accountable to the people for the manner in which they exercise their authority; (2) reliant on popular support as they carry out their duties; (3) transparent in their practices and not given to operating as a state within a state and (4) welcomed as legitimate agents of the duly constituted civil authorities. To be so, police must have an ethic of serving the community – and not merely the state and its rulers – and consulting the public (Wiatrowski and Goldstone “The Ballot and the Badge,” 81).
67 Pasqualini, “The Italian Carabinieri Corps Abroad,” 83. In line with the analysis conducted in the previous section, the Carabinieri provision of police training and mentoring is also instrumental in Italy’s foreign policy as a sort of military diplomacy that supports the Italian Government in addition to politico-military authorities engaged in dialogue with foreign counterparts (Carrozza, “La Polizia di Stabilità,” 125).
68 Del Sette, “Dall’Iraq all’Africa,” 25.
70 For an interesting Washington Post coverage of the Carabinieri training activities in Iraq, see Ryan, “How the Italian Police Wound up Having a Significant Presence in Iraq.”
71 Ibid.
75 Perito, “Police in Armed Conflict,” 447–8.
76 This quote is from Mc Gurk’s intervention during the conference, ‘La collaborazione tra il Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale e l’Arma dei Carabinieri per rafforzare la sicurezza dei cittadini e promuovere gli interessi italiani all’estero’, organized at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Rome, 30 May 2017. See Piccirilli, “Parola d’ordine stabilità.”
77 Email interviews with Lieutenant Colonel Arrigo Gareffi, POTRAI Project Facilitator/Senior Police Adviser, March 2018.
78 Ibid.
79 Del Sette, “Dall’Iraq all’Africa,” 25.
80 Perito, Afghanistan’s Civil Order Police, 9.
81 Ibid. For an interesting and largely favourable assessment of the Carabinieri training activities in Afghanistan, see also the coverage by Newsweek magazine in Miller et al., “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
82 By 2010, the Brahimi Report warned that the doctrinal shift in the use of police to focus primarily on the reform and restructuring of local police forces:
will require Member States to provide the United Nations with even more well-trained and specialized police experts, at a time when they face difficulties meeting current requirements. As of 1 August 2000, 25 per cent of the 8,641 police positions authorized for United Nations operations remained vacant. (http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/55/305)
83 United Nations, United Nations Police in Peacekeeping Operations and Special Political Missions, 3.
84 Muigg, “Police in International Peace Operations,” 19–20.
85 Greener, “The Rise of Policing in Peace Operations,” 190.
86 The information of this section is based on interviews conducted at CoESPU in June–August 2017, the centre’s web-page (http://www.carabinieri.it/arma/coespu/introduzione) and open-source documents such as ‘CoESPU Magazine’; CoESPU, The Future Roles for Stability Policy Unites Workshop.
87 Carrozza, “La Polizia di Stabilità,” 129.
88 Caferri, “Il generale Petraeus,” 7.
89 Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni internazionali,” 24.
90 Tercovich, “Italy and UN peacekeeping,” 698.