https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7893-1433
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ABSTRACT
A significant engagement in military missions is probably the most distinctive feature of post-Cold War Italian foreign policy. In the last three decades, Italy has participated in an extensive number of operations across the world, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Several studies have described Italian troop deployments abroad, providing alternative explanations of the Italian military activism. However, despite a recent growing attention on the topic, mainly focusing on specific peacekeeping operations, a comprehensive investigation of the evolution of Italian interventions is still missing. In other words, a detailed picture of main trends, data and patterns – since the end of the Second World War – is lacking. This article aims to fill this gap, using the most detailed and complete data on Italy’s participation in peace and security operations to date. We show that Italian involvement steadily grew between 1990 and 2010 and decreased in the following ten years. Our empirical findings also indicate how Italy’s efforts were increasingly directed in the Mediterranean and North Africa region in recent years. The article contributes to the existing literature on military operations abroad by offering a broad quantitative perspective on the post-Cold War defence policy of a ‘middle power’.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WHAJBQ
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Ignazi, Giacomello and Coticchia “Italian military operations aborad.”
2 6,600 troops on average. Chamber of Deputies, 15 July 2021, available at https://www.camera.it/leg18/410?idSeduta=0541&tipo=alfabetico_stenografico.
3 Giegerich and Terhalle, “The Reponsibility to Defend”.
4 Abbondanza, “The West’s Policeman?”.
5 Tercovich, “Italy and UN Peacekeeping”.
6 Costalli and Ruggeri, “Italy and its International Relations,” 22. This is mainly because of the Italian involvement in the UN mission in Lebanon. See: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/troop-and-police-contributors
7 On middle powers see Cooper, “Niche Diplomacy: Middle Powers after the Cold War”; Gilley and O'Neil “Middle Powers and the Rise of China”. On Italy as a middle power: Santoro, “La Politica Estera di una Media Potenza”; Dentice and Donelli, “Reasserting (middle) Power.”
8 Karlsrud “From Liberal Peacebuilding to Stabilisation”.
9 On the political and cultural reasons behind the limited scholarly attention paid to Italian defence, see, among others: Panebianco, “Guerrieri Democratici”; and Labanca, “Le Armi della Repubblica.”
10 For recent reviews see: Carati and Locatelli, Carati, “Cui prodest?” and Coticchia and Moro, “From enthusiasm to retreat”.
11 Exceptions are: Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni internazionali”; Tercovich “Italy and UN Peacekeeping.” For a comprehensive quantitative analysis of missions and public opinion see Olmastroni “Framing War”; on drivers of interventions Rosa et al. “Neoclassical Realism”; on parties and operations see: Coticchia and Vignoli, “Italian Political Parties.”
12 Tercovich “Italy and UN Peacekeeping”, Ceccorulli and Coticchia, “I’ll take two”; Dentice and Donelli, “Reasserting (middle) Power.”
13 On such debate see, among others: Coleman and Williams “Peace operations”; Karlsrud “From Liberal Peacebuilding to Stabilisation”; Biddle et al “Small footprint”.
14 Coticchia, “Italy”.
15 The most recent reviews of this debate are provided by Abbondanza, “The West’s Policeman?”; and Coticchia and Moro, “From Enthusiasm to Retreat.”
16 On the relationship between missions and Italian foreign policy see, among others, Santoro, “La Politica Estera”; Isernia and Longo, “The Italian Foreign Policy”.
17 Panebianco, “Guerrieri democratici.”
18 Coralluzzo, “Le Missioni Italiane.” The role played by economic and commercial interests, as well as the influence exerted by the defense industry, has so far attracted limited attention in the academic debate.
19 Davidson, “America’s Allies”. On Italian foreign policy and the search for status see Santoro “La Politica Estera”.
20 Ratti, “Italy as Multilateral Actor.”
21 Pirani The way we were”; Lombardi, “The Berlusconi government.”
22 Pirani, “The way we were”; Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, “Italian military operations”; Rosa, “The accommodationist state.”
23 Ignazi, Giacomello, and Coticchia, “Italian Military Operations.”
24 Rosa, “The Accommodationist State,” 90.
25 Authors have looked at domestic variables to explain Italian military activism, examining how sociopolitical features and the contingencies of the domestic political scene have affected the decisions to deploy troops abroad. See: Panebianco, “Guerrieri Democratici”; Carbone, “The domestic foundations”; Tercovich, “Italy and UN peacekeeping”, 679.
26 Coticchia and Davidson, “Italian Foreign Policy.”
27 Coticchia and Vignoli, “Italian Political Parties”; Curini and Vignoli, “Committed Moderates.”
28 Ertola, “Democrazia e Difesa”; Coticchia and Moro, “Peaceful legislatures?”
29 Isernia, “Dove gli angeli non mettono piede”; Battistelli et al. “Opinioni sulla Guerra”; Olmastroni “Framing War.”
30 Verbeek and Zaslove, “The impact of populist”; Coticchia “A Sovereignist Revolution?”
31 On Italian military transformation see: Coticchia and Moro, “The transformation”; Ruffa, “Cohesion, political motivation and military performance”; Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni.” From an historical perspective: Labanca, “Le Armi della Repubblica.”
32 Foradori, “Cops.”
33 Coticchia and Giacomello, “In Harm’s Way”; Cladi and Locatelli, “Why did Italy”. On Italian PKO see also Ruffa, “What peacekeepers think.”
34 See: Moro et al., “Through Military Lenses”.
35 Foradori et al., “Reshaping.”
36 Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni.”
37 Tercovich “Italy and UN Peacekeeping”, Ceccorulli and Coticchia, “I’ll take two”; Dentice and Donelli, “Reasserting (middle) Power.”
38 Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini, before the Chamber of Deputies, July 7 2021. On Sahel and Libya as strategic priorities see also: AGI, “Guerini: il nostro impegno militare in Sahel per la sicurezza in Europa”, March 19, 2021.
39 Dentice and Donelli, “Reasserting (middle) Power”, 16.
40 Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni.”
41 Ceccorulli and Coticchia argue that the drawdown ‘reflects the winding down of earlier significant operations, the dramatic failure of others, and the effects of the financial crisis, which saw large cuts in Italian public spending’. “I’ll take two”, 177. Others - Coticchia and Moro, “From Enthusiasm”, 7 - have floated the ‘return of national interests’ as a possible driver, as illustrated in national strategy documents (e.g., the ‘White Book’ in 2015).
42 Coticchia and Moro, “From Enthusiasm”, 7.
43 Marrone and Tessari, “Il dibatitto italiano.”
44 Angelucci et al., “Afghanistan.”
45 Cladi and Locatelli, “Keep calm.”
46 Destradi and Plagemann. “Populism and International Relations”.
47 De Perini, “Italy and international”; Coticchia, “A sovereignist revolution?”
48 Abbondanza, “The West’s Policeman?”, 129.
49 Forte and Marrone, “L’Italia e le missioni”; Tercovich “Italy and UN Peacekeeping.”
50 As noted, existing studies that aim to provide a general picture the Italian missions abroad fail to cover our time period, nor do they examine troops, areas of deployment, or multilateral frameworks all together. Indeed, Abbondanza - “The West’s Policeman?” - lacks data on financing, Olmastroni - “Framing War”- only focuses on the 2000–2014 period, Rosa et al. - “Neoclassical Realism” -rely on secondary sources, and Tercovich – “Italy and UN Peacekeeping” - leaves out bilateral and multilateral variables and analyses only the Mediterranean and the Balkans in detail (and even then only up to 2015).
51 Costalli and Ruggeri, “Italy and its International Relations,” 21.
52 Coticchia and Moro, “From Enthusiasm”.
53 Ibid. 7.
54 We set 1990 as the starting point of our analysis as it coincides with the first year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the beginning of the Gulf War and a marked shift to Italian military dynamism. The year 2020 is a forced end point as complete data for 2021 are not yet available. We decided to combine the first two decades of the Italian post-Cold War military operations because they have been marked by a constant military commitment in high-intensity operations: from Somalia to Iraq, Italy has been involved in increasingly demanding interventions. Moreover, the party system remained relatively stable after the end of the “Prima Republica”, altering centre-right to centre-left governments. On the contrary, in the third decade, despite a never-ending military involvement, the “war on terror” gradually came to an end with its complex operations, while the financial crises deeply hit the country. After Libya, Italy did not start any missions comparable to the high-intensity missions undertaken in the past (Iraq, Balkans, Afghanistan, etc.) with thousands of troops. Moreover, the domestic context changed, with the vanishing of the previous “bipolar” confrontation and the emergence of new parties.
55 The authors wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
56 Karlsrud, “From Liberal Peacebuilding to Stabilisation”; Destradi and Plagemann, “Populism and International Relations”.
57 Camera dei Deputati 2010.
58 Camera dei Deputati 2020.
59 For the list of all ongoing international operations see the Italian defence ministry website: https://www.difesa.it/OperazioniMilitari/op_intern_corso/Pagine/Operazioni_int.aspx. For the list of past operations, see https://www.difesa.it/OperazioniMilitari/op_int_concluse/Pagine/default.aspx.
60 On the issue of the distinction between concepts and the blurring boundaries among them see: Bellamy et al “Understanding Peacekeeping”; Howard “Peacekeeping, Peace Enforcement, and UN Reform”, “Peacekeeping is Not Counterinsurgency”. For a discussion of the consequences of the discrepancies between the framing and the reality of the mission see especially Ruffa and Sundberg “Breaking the Frame”.
61 In addition, the official aims (which could elucidate some aspects for a detailed definition of the mission) have been rarely reported in the documents discussed before the parliament, because it was not legally required until 2016. See Coticchia and Moro, “Peaceful legislatures?”
62 In some cases, we were not able to retrieve precise data regarding the beginning and end of the missions. When the source vaguely referred to a month, we selected the last day of the month as the end date. In the few cases in which only the year was specified, we chose the last day of the year.
63 Using years instead of a smaller unit of analysis for the duration is more suited to examine trends over a long period of time. However, it has a major limitation, given the potential to overestimate the duration of missions spanning across two years. Therefore, the number of operations in a given year should be interpreted as an estimate of all the missions occurring in that year, rather than the effective number of interventions in the field at the beginning or end of that year.
64 Such data permits to calculate the duration of the missions and produce corresponding statistics on this measure too. For example, we find that on average a mission lasted roughly six years. However, we do not elaborate on mission duration as the initiation and (in particular) the termination of Italy’s involvement in multilateral interventions heavily depends on decisions taken by the international institutions and allied states that launch and run the operation. Furthermore, while post-Cold War missions are on average significantly shorter than those started during the Cold War (1739 versus 5308 days), differences across regions and institutional frameworks are negligible.
65 For maximum deployed troops, the sources refer to the maximum troops planned by the government regarding a single mission. The number of troops includes both militaries (Army, Navy and Air Force) and police forces (Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza). Data about allocated funds for real values are available only for the period between 1990 and 2009.
66 Chamber of Deputies 2010, 2020.
67 In a handful of cases, troops for different missions were reported jointly. When the two missions were run by two different organizations, we attributed all the personnel to the larger mission. For instance, the troops deployed in the EU-led operation EUPOL Afghanistan were calculated as part of the much larger NATO mission ISAF.
68 Unfortunately, data concerning yearly funds allocated to military missions were not as fine-grained: they were not disaggregated by mission, and, consequently, we were not able to divide them by region and institutional framework. The individual texts of the laws for the approval and refinancing of the missions contain information concerning the funds allocated to specific military missions and areas of conflict. However, they often report vague figures to the point of not being considered a reliable source of data. Nonetheless, we can reasonably expect a strong association between the number of troops and the amount of funds devoted to specific missions.
69 This data was drawn from the UN’s peacekeeping website: https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/troop-and-police-contributors.
70 Tercovich, “Italy and UN Peacekeeping,” 694.
71 Coleman and Williams “Peace operations”; Karlsrud “From Liberal Peacebuilding to Stabilisation”.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Valerio Vignoli
Valerio Vignoli is Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at the University of Milan. His research focuses on the role of domestic factors in shaping states’ foreign policy. He is also an expert of quantitative methods and teaches courses on multivariate analysis and quantitative text analysis.
Fabrizio Coticchia
Fabrizio Coticchia is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Genoa. He has been Jean Monnet Fellow at the EUI, Florence. His research deals with military transformation, Italian and European defence policy, strategic narratives, domestic actors (leaders, parties, institutions) and foreign policy. He holds postgraduate courses on Foreign policy analysis, EU political system, Security studies, and Comparative politics.