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‘One Man Alone’? A Longue Durée Approach to Italy's Foreign Policy under Berlusconi1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Elisabetta Brighi
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Abstract

By adopting a longue durée approach this paper aims to move the debate on Italy's foreign policy under the leadership of Silvio Berlusconi beyond the presentism and personalization currently dominating it. It argues firstly that the equation of Italian foreign policy with Berlusconi – irresistible as it may be – does not ultimately hold, and secondly that Berlusconi's ‘new course’ in foreign policy has to be put in a broader context. A more historically informed reading of the subject can on the one hand confer meaning and substance to what otherwise could appear to be a supremely ephemeral foreign policy, and on the other help illuminate its current trajectory and future implications. Far from being the product of ‘one man alone’ and his surreal quirks, the recent change in Italy's foreign policy results from a particular dialectic interplay between structural and contingent developments, which have come to intersect at this particular time.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , 2006 , pp. 278 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2006

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Footnotes

1

Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the ‘Foreign Policy Workshop’, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, 28 January 2004, and to the Annual Conference of the Società Italiana di Scienza Politica (SISP), Padua, 15–17 September 2004. Thanks to all participants on both occasions for their critical and perceptive remarks. Filippo Andreatta, Michele Chiaruzzi, Alessandro Colombo, Christopher Hill, Dorothea Kast, Fabio Petito, Emanuele Raineri, William Wallace all deserve special thanks. Apart from a few minor updates, this article was put into the final form for publication in January 2005. Needless to say, I remain entirely responsible for what follows.

References

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3 Quoted in Charles Eade (ed.), The War Speeches of Winston S. Churchill, London, Cassell & Co., 1951, p. 322.Google Scholar

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5 Rather preoccupied views of Berlusconi's role in Italian politics have been offered by, among others, Paul Ginsborg, Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony, London, Verso, 2004; and Giovanni Sartori, Mala Tempora, Bari-Rome, Laterza, 2004. Media have, on the other hand, almost obsessively concentrated on the ephemeral; see for instance, Sebastiano Messina, ‘Aneddoti, gaffe e amici illustri. L’anno magico di Silvio in feluca’, la Repubblica, 14 November 2002.Google Scholar

6 The literature is divided between those who argue that Berlusconi has changed Italian foreign policy and those who, on the contrary, tend to see more continuity (typically conceding that the style and rhetoric have perhaps changed, but the substance has not). Among the former, see especially Ignazi, Piero, ‘Al di là dell’Atlantico, al di qua dell’Europa: dove va la politica estera italiana’, il Mulino, 2 (2004), pp.267–76;Google Scholarand James Walston, ‘Italian Foreign Policy: Light and Shade in the Second Berlusconi Government’, paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI), London, 26–7 November 2004. Among the latter, see especially Osvaldo Croci, ‘The Second Berlusconi Government and Italian Foreign Policy’, International Spectator, 37: 2 (2002), pp. 89–101; Osvaldo Croci, ‘Italian Security Policy after the Cold War’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 8: 2 (2003), pp. 266–83; and Roberto Aliboni, ‘Neo-Nationalism and Neo-Atlanticism in Italian Foreign Policy’, International Spectator, 38: 1 (2003), pp. 81–90. As should be clear from the rest of the paper, the argument advanced here takes issue with both lines of interpretation.

7 Togliatti is quoted from ‘Per comprendere la politica estera del fascismo italiano’, in Palmiro Togliatti, Lo Stato operaio, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1964, p. 270. Needless to say, history is not simply repeating itself: in the Italian debate, this is the unfortunate claim upon which many cling in order to normalize Berlusconi as ‘the next Mussolini’– it is a claim, one needs to add, that is as untenable as it is obscuring, as is often the case with the misuse of historical analogies for political purposes.Google Scholar

8 On this strategy see, among others, Filippo Andreatta and Elisabetta Brighi, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Berlusconi Government’, in Jean Blondel and Paolo Segatti (eds), Italian Politics 2002: The Second Berlusconi Government, New York, Berghahn, 2003, pp. 221–36. Naturally, the strategy of extreme personalization has been pursued at a cost: thus, the antagonism between Berlusconi and former Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero first, and the potential antagonism between Berlusconi and Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini now.Google Scholar

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11 For some episodes, see ‘ “Amico Vladimir, vieni a Porto Rotondo”, quel feeling tra due leader “imprenditori” ’, Corriere della Sera, 30 July 2003; ‘Berlusconi: “Sono amico di Israele” ’, la Repubblica, 9 June 2003; Ivor Roberts, ‘La entente cordiale tra Roma e Londra’, il Riformista, 13 July 2004.Google Scholar

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18 In Vigezzi, L’Italia unita e le sfide della politica estera, p. 285.Google Scholar

19 See Altiero Spinelli, ‘Problemi e Prospettive della politica estera italiana’, in Massimo Bonanni (ed.), La politica estera della repubblica italiana, Milan, Comunità, 1967, p. 70; and Antonio Missiroli, ‘Italy’, in Ian Manners and Richard G. Whitman (eds), The Foreign Policies of European Union Member States, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, p. 87.Google Scholar

20 Crispi is quoted in Federico Chabod, Storia della poltica estera italiana dal 1870 al 1896, Bari, Laterza, 1951, p. 548, translated by William McCuaig as The Statecraft of the Founders, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

21 See Augusto Minzolini, ‘Silvio da George, e prende il via Forza Italia “a stelle e strisce” ’, la Stampa, 20 July 2003. For a view from America, see George F. Will, ‘Italy's 59th Post-War Try’, Newsweek, 28 May 2001, in which the author writes: ‘Many Europeans are scandalised [by Berlusconi's electoral victory]. One reason? Berlusconi, a sort of citizen Kane, likes America’.Google Scholar

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23 For a clear theoretical treatment, see Glenn H. Snyder, Alliance Politics, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1997. For some passing remarks on Italy's bandwagoning strategy, see Randall Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy of World Conquest, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

24 For a recent and trenchant restatement of this position, see ‘Il Ministro Martino, l’euro e il Titanic’, il Riformista, 25 February 2004.Google Scholar

25 See respectively A. Farkas, ‘Buttiglione e la Ue: Italia verso la rivolta come fecero i coloni americani a Boston’, Corriere della Sera, 18 February 2002; and ‘Analysis: Italy Commissioner Under Fire’, BBC News, 12 October 2004. (accessed 15 October 2004).Google Scholar

26 Berlusconi, ‘Discorso alla Camera dei Deputati’, my translation.Google Scholar

27 See Gianluca Luzi, ‘Ue, lo strappo di Berlusconi’, la Repubblica, 18 April 2003.Google Scholar

28 For a balanced assessment, see Missiroli, Antonio, ‘Dopo Berlusconi: la presidenza italiana e l’Europa’, ItalianiEuropei, 1 (2004), pp.108–16.Google Scholar

29 In the 1930s, i.e. at the height of Italian nationalism, a journal called Anti-Europa became especially popular in Italy. As Giovanni Spadolini noted, these two developments were already at that time not unrelated; see his ‘Introduction’, in Giovanni Spadolini (ed.), Nazione e nazionalità in Italia, Bari-Rome, Laterza, 1994, p. 10.Google Scholar

30 For Berlusconi's twists, see respectively: ‘Berlusconi: attacco solo nell’ambito dell’ONU’, la Repubblica, 9 September 2002; ‘Berlusconi Distances Himself from Bush over Iraq’, Agence France-Press, 17 October 2002; and ‘ “L’Iraq non ha armi devastanti” Berlusconi afferma e si smentisce’, la Repubblica, 16 October 2002.Google Scholar