‘I’ll take two.’ Migration, terrorism, and the Italian military engagement in Niger and Libya

ABSTRACT

In January 2018, the Italian parliament approved a new military operation in Niger and an extension to the existing deployment in Libya. Italian leaders explicitly cast this as a ‘pivot’ to Africa, a ‘relocation of troops’ from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Sahel and Northern Africa. What factors underlie this strategic shift? Despite the importance of this question, to date, little analysis of the decision-making process underpinning the recent change has been forthcoming. The article seeks to address this gap through an analysis of the parliamentary debates on the missions. Specifically, it examines the ‘relative importance’ of the two threats/challenges motivating the interventions: irregular immigration into the E.U. (and the related smuggling phenomena) and transnational terrorism. The article contributes to the ongoing debate on the evolution of the Italian foreign, security and defence policy in the broader Mediterranean, offering insights for comparative analyses with other states engaged in those contexts.

RIASSUNTO

Nel gennaio 2018, il Parlamento italiano ha approvato una nuova operazione militare in Niger e un’estensione dell’impegno in Libia. I leader politici italiani hanno espressamente fatto riferimento a un ‘ri-orientamento strategico’ verso l’Africa, un ricollocamento di truppe ‘dall’Afghanistan a Sahel e Nord Africa’. Quali sono i fattori alla base di questo cambiamento strategico? Nonostante l’importanza di questa domanda, ad oggi, sono poche – o assenti – le analisi del processo decisionale alla base di tale recente cambiamento. Il paper cerca di colmare questa lacuna attraverso un’analisi dei dibattiti parlamentari sulle missioni, esaminando in particolare l’’’importanza relativa’ delle due minacce/sfide alla base delle stesse: immigrazione irregolare verso l’U.E. (e i relativi fenomeni di traffico di esseri umani) e terrorismo transnazionale. Il paper contribuisce al dibattito in corso sull’ evoluzione della politica estera e di difesa italiana nel ‘Mediterraneo allargato’, offrendo spunti per analisi comparate con altri stati impegnati nell’area

KEYWORDS:

• Italian defense policy
• terrorism
• immigration
• Libya
• Niger
• Mediterranean

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• politica di difesa Italiana
• terrorismo
• immigrazione
• Libia
• Niger
• Mediterraneo

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Silvia D’Amato and Stefano Recchia for comments on earlier versions of the article.

Notes

1. See https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/irregular-migration-return-policy/facilitation-irregular-migration_en.

2. Author’s interview with Roberta Pinotti, former Italian Minister of Defence, Genova, March 2018.

3. Author’s telephone interview with Domenico Rossi, former Undersecretary of Defence, 26 June 2017.

4. Author’s interview with E.U.-Navfor Med – Sophia Command (Spokesperson and Chief of Media Cell and the Legal Advisor). Rome, 10 July 2017.

5. The nine-month window applied to all missions for one simple reason: financial support/authorization (‘copertura finanziaria’) extends only to this length of time and no longer.

6. Varvelli and Villa (2018) talks about logics of ‘competitive collaboration’ with allies such as France and the U.S.

7. Author’s interview with Stefania Panebianco, Italian Professor of Political Science, expert on migration, 24 May 2017.

8. Author’s interview with Roberta Pinotti, former Italian Minister of Defence, Genova, March 2018.

9. Locatelli (Socialists), Chamber of Deputies, General Assembly, 17 January 2018.

10. The Mediterranean was ‘the strategic goal of Italy’. Author’s interview with Domenico Rossi, Undersecretary of Defence, 26 June 2017.

11. Author’s interview with Andrea Manciulli, former Deputy-President Defence Commission, Italian Parliament, Florence, February 15, 2016.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michela Ceccorulli

Michela Ceccorulli, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna. She is also Adjunct Professor at the Dickinson Center for European Studies (Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA) in Bologna. Her research interests lie around migration, security and security governance. She has widely published on security governance and migration in many academic publications and journals, among which European Security, The International Spectator, Contemporary Security, Mediterranean Politics and West European Politics. Among her works, ‘Framing irregular immigration in security terms: the Libya case, Florence, Firenze University Press, 2014; with Nicola Labanca (eds), The EU, Migration and the Politics of Administrative Detention (Routledge, 2014).

Fabrizio Coticchia

Fabrizio Coticchia, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Genoa. His fields of research are foreign policy analysis, strategic culture, public opinion and military operations. His articles have appeared in Government & Opposition, Foreign Policy Analysis, Alternatives, Armed Forces & Society, Acta Politica. Among his books: Italian Military Operations Abroad: Just Don’t Call it War, with P. Ignazi and G. Giacomello (Palgrave, 2012); The Transformation of Italian Armed Forces in Comparative Perspective, with F.N. Moro (Routledge, 2015), and Italian Foreign Policy under Matteo Renzi: A Domestically-Focused Outsider and the World, with J. Davidson (Lexington, 2019).