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ABSTRACT
Since the end of the Cold War, Italy has taken part in several multilateral military operations. Many, if not all of them, have implied significant political and human costs for the country. Indeed, the very same contribution to multinational missions in terms of troops deployed bears witness of the importance the country attaches to multilateral missions. In particular, Italy displayed considerable commitment to R2P-inspired interventions. The aim of the paper is then to investigate on the deep causes that drive such an apparently value-oriented foreign policy course. In doing so, it firstly analyses the Italian contribution to multilateral missions. Secondly, the paper discusses which factors can explain such behaviour: international norms, economic and/or security interests, and followership. The paper presents a preliminary test of the drivers of the Italian engagement in multilateral military operations. In this view, it investigates empirically the public debate on Italian participation to relevant R2P-like operations like Kosovo and Libya.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 9th EISA Conference, Giardini Naxos (Italy). We are grateful to all the participants for their penetrating comments. We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback and constructive critiques.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
About the Authors
Andrea Carati is an Assistant Professor at the University of Milan (Department of International Legal, Historical and Political Studies) and Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of International Political Studies (ISPI - Milan). His research interests include military intervention, R2P and just war theory.
Andrea Locatelli is an Assistant Professor at the Catholic University in Milan, Italy. His research interests include International Relations Theory, European Security, and Defence Policy. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Florence, Italy.
Notes
1 Trubowitz, Goldman, and Rhodes, eds, The Politics of Strategic Adjustment.
2 Coticchia and Moro, The Transformation of Italian Armed Forces.
3 Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è; Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, Italian Military Operations Abroad; Bonvicini et al., “L’Italia e la trasformazione dello scenario internazionale”; Ceccorulli and Coticchia, “Multidimensional Threats and Military Engagement”; Calossi and Coticchia, “Le missioni italiane all'estero”; and Giacomello and Verbeek, Italy’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century.
4 Walston, “Italian Foreign Policy in the ‘Second Republic’?” 91.
5 In less than five years, the main parties (the Christian Democratic Party, the Socialist and Communist Parties) either split or disappeared, while new ones emerged (the Northern League and, most importantly, Forza Italia); finally, the electoral system was also reformed in 1993, with the aim to shift towards a Westminster model. See, among others, Scoppola, La Repubblica dei partiti.
6 Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, Italian Military Operations Abroad, 2.
7 Bonvicini et al., “L’Italia e la trasformazione dello scenario internazionale.”
8 Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è, 1–2.
10 After the Israeli intervention in Lebanon against Hezbollah in 2006, the UN called for a ceasefire and, after the end of the hostilities, the Security Council extended the mission’s mandate and decided an increase of the troops strength. From the very beginning, Italy played a prominent role, it offered the largest military contribution and took the command of the mission. See the UNIFIL’s official website (http://unifil.unmissions.org/).
11 Similar results hold with reference to NATO’s missions for the period 1996–2009: looking at the burden-sharing in the three major military peacekeeping missions in NATO’s history, Carati and Clementi revealed a partial over-contribution from some non-US member states and Italy is among them. Looking at Italy’s contribution to major IFOR-SFOR, KFOR and ISAF, its fair-share index is constantly above 1 (meaning an overcontribution relative to its GDP ratio over the cumulative GDP of all NATO members). Carati and Clementi, “La Nato e la distribuzione dei costi della forza.”
12 Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War.”
13 Snyder, Alliance Politics; Olson and Zeckhauser, “An Economic Theory of Alliances”; Davidson, America’s Allies and War; and Ratti, “All Aboard the Bandwagon?”
14 Bonvicini and Silvestri, L’eredità del passato.
15 Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security.
16 Santoro, La Politica Estera di una Media Potenza.
17 Ceccorulli and Coticchia, “Multidimensional Threats and Military Engagement.”
18 Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è; Bonvicini and Silvestri, L’eredità del passato.
19 Ibid.
20 The traditional lack of long-term defence planning has been partially mitigated by the recent release of the White Paper by the Italian Defence Ministry in 2015. See Coticchia, Locatelli, and Moro, Renew or Reload.
21 Bonvicini et al., “L’Italia e la trasformazione dello scenario internazionale,” 11–42; Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è.
22 Miranda, “Striking a Balance Between Norms and Interests in Italian Foreign Policy.”
23 Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è; Coticchia, Qualcosa è cambiato?; Giacomello and Coticchia, “Esiste una ‘via italiana’ alla cultura della difesa?”; Calossi and Coticchia, “Le missioni italiane all'estero”; Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, Italian Military Operations Abroad.
24 Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è, 11–13.
25 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect.
26 Paris, “Responsibility to Protect,” 144.
27 ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect, xii.
28 On this point, see, among others, Buzan and Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies.
29 Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, Italian Military Operations Abroad, 47.
30 Calossi and Coticchia, “Le missioni italiane all'estero.”
31 Valigi, “Il comportamento delle medie potenze in ambiente anarchico.”
32 Scegliere per contare. Andreatta, “Italian Foreign Policy.”
33 Bonvicini et al., “L’Italia e la trasformazione dello scenario internazionale”; Santoro, La Politica Estera di una Media Potenza; Walston, “Italian Foreign Policy in the ‘Second Republic’?”.
34 Bonvicini et al., “L’Italia e la trasformazione dello scenario internazionale,” 50.
35 Ibid., 50.
36 Coticchia, La guerra che non c’è, 8–10.
37 Colombo and Greco, La politica estera dell’Italia, 171.
38 Tramballi, “La politica estera del governo Renzi,” 115–6.
39 Ibid., 116.
40 Cladi and Webber, “Italian Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Period”; Croci, “Italian Foreign Policy after the End of the Cold War”; and Romano, “Italian Foreign Policy after the End of the Cold War.”
41 See Byers and Chesterman, “Changing the Rules about the Rules?”.
42 On this point, see, among others, Caplan, “Humanitarian Intervention”; Todorov, “Right to Intervene or Duty to Assist?”
43 UN SC Resolution 1973.
44 Paris, “Responsibility to Protect,” 143.
45 Pastori, La Nato, la Libia, l’Europa.
46 See Bellamy, “Whiter the Responsibility to Protect?”; Bellamy, “The Responsibility to Protect and Military Intervention.”
47 Miranda, “Striking a Balance Between Norms and Interests in Italian Foreign Policy.”
48 Camera dei Deputati, Informativa urgente del Governo sugli sviluppi della situazione in Libia.
49 Peters et al., European Contributions to Operation Allied Force.
50 Cladi and Webber, “Italian Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Period”; Carbone, “The Domestic Foundations of Italy’s Foreign and Development Policies”; and Croci, “Italian Foreign Policy after the End of the Cold War.”
51 See Caplan, “Humanitarian Intervention”; Wheeler, Saving Strangers.
52 Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, Italian Military Operations Abroad, 66–71.
53 Davidson, “Italy at War,” 161.
54 Croci, “Italian Foreign Policy after the End of the Cold War.”
55 Quoted in Davidson, America’s Allies and War, 99.
56 For a more critical view, see Kuperman, “A Model Humanitarian Intervention?”
57 France launched Operation Armattan, Great Britain Operation Hellamy, Canada Operation Mobile and the US Operation Odissey Dawn.
58 Cordesman and Vira, The Libyan Uprising, 55.
59 Ceccorulli and Coticchia, “Multidimensional Threats and Military Engagement,” 310.
60 Ibid., 310.
61 Among the newspapers present in the dataset we looked through the most famous: Il Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, Il Giorno and La Nazione.
62 As for Lexis-Nexis, we searched for the string ‘Responsibility to Protect’ in English and Italian. Funny note: two documents also reported the term ‘Responsability to Protect’. We acknowledge that such a set of phrasing is narrow and may exclude documents implicitly referring to the principle. However, for our purposes, the lack of explicit reference to the doctrine evidences that the R2P has not entered the Italian political debate.
63 Camera dei Deputati, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 450.
64 Ibid.
65 Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 508.
66 Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 537; Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 575.
67 Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 564.
68 Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 633.
69 Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Commissione straordinaria per la tutela e la promozione dei diritti umani.
70 Senato della Repubblica, XVI Legislatura. Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea. Seduta n. 523.
71 Ceccorulli and Coticchia, “Multidimensional Threats and Military Engagement,” 312.