The new Giorgia Meloni government and Italian Geopolitics (I): the roots of Italian foreign policy
10/12/2022
New Italian government and new political cycle.
The new Italian government led by Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the right-wing Fratelli d’Itàlia (FDI), represents a historical political shift. Her arrival at the executive has begun a new political cycle in the Italian Republic that could represent a new era, comparable to the arrival of Silvio Berlusconi in 1994.
Italy voted in the ballot for its 19th Parliament, electing the most right-wing government since World War II. Moreover, Meloni is the first female Prime Minister in the country’s history.
Italy has been through a decade of technocratic governments and broad coalitions, with the last Parliament lacking a clear majority ending up producing three governments: first the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) alliance with Salvini’s Lega, then the M5S government with a centre-left coalition, and finally a national unity government with a technocratic Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, which included all the most major parties in Parliament except for Fratelli d’Italia, who decided on the tactical manoeuver of remaining in opposition.
The last decade has been characterised by political instability that has led to the growth of anti-establishment movements such as the M5S. There has also been an increase in nationalist right-wing parties and a growth in Euroscepticism, temptations of “Italexit” and projects to exit the euro. These postulates have been defended by Salvini’s Lega and sporadically, though more for reasons of political opportunism than conviction, by Meloni herself.
The FdI is the only party that, over the last decade, has always been in opposition, an outsider role that has allowed it to capitalise on broken consensus and present itself as a political alternative, making its political narrative consistent and free of the electoral costs that government action entails. It has been seen in the eyes of a significant part of the electorate as a novelty, and as an alternative to the parties that have managed power and the numerous crises over the last five years for which they have ended up paying politically.
This is not the first time that the Italian radical right has been in power with ministerial quotas, but it is the first time that an Italian centre-right coalition executive has been led by a party from this part of the political spectrum. The governing coalition will therefore consist of three parties: Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, Salvini’s Lega and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. This circumstance adds complexity, and is one of the causes of the permanent instability of the Italian political system. In the second part of this series, we will analyse the risks of cohesion and the points of fracture which are closely linked to the foreign policy carried out by the Italian government, and above all, to its position in relation to the war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion.
The new government is conservative, but with ministers of a markedly moderate nature. All its members are in favour of NATO and there are no Eurosceptics. It is composed of experienced politicians, many of whom were ministers in the last Berlusconi IV government (2008–2011), technocrat ministers and representatives of the economic and business world.
Its domestic agenda will inevitably be marked by the energy crisis as a priority and its main challenge. Italy will have to diversify its energy sources, build new infrastructure, especially for regasification plants, and fight for the cap on gas prices. As to economic policy, it plans to introduce a series of fiscal reforms aimed at reducing taxes. Regarding social policy, there is a conservative agenda based on the preservation of traditional values, and as regards security, the new cabinet fosters a law and order approach, with a strong hand on crime and immigration.
Before addressing the Meloni Government’s foreign policy direction and agenda, it is interesting to take a step back, to go over the topography of Italian foreign policy over the last few decades, and to identify its geopolitical coordinates to know where the starting point is.
In the first part of this article, we will focus on analysing the roots of Italian geopolitics. In the second instalment, we will go into Meloni’s foreign policy analysis.
Historical geopolitical coordinates of the Italian Republic
The Italian geopolitical coordinates are anchored at the following points: Washington, Brussels, the Paris-Berlin axis, Vatican City and the Mediterranean Sea. Although these cardinal directions are clearly defined, Italian foreign policy has sometimes tended to swing with ups and downs towards the eastern front with Moscow as a topographic reference point. Since the late 1980s, Italy has also been unsuccessful in seeking a strategy with the emerging People’s Republic of China (PRC). This strategy saw its most important milestone in the last legislature, specifically during its first executive, the Conte I government, formed by the M5S-Lega coalition.
The United States of America is and has been the guarantor of Italian foreign security and its main strategic ally, particularly during the Cold War. Italy is a founding member of NATO. Seven months after the adoption of its constitution and during the first government of the first Republican-era legislature, it adhered to the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, and requested membership of the Atlantic Pact on January 6, 1949. In April, it signed the Washington Treaty and in July 1949 the decision was ratified by Parliament. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has had an important military presence in Italy, with seven bases, among which is the headquarters of the Naples-based Sixth Fleet, as well as a notable political influence.
The European Union is the other focal point of trans-Alpine multilateral relations. Italy is also a founding member of the former EEC, it is the third largest economy in the European Union after Germany and France, and has been a member of the single currency since its creation. Its relationship with Brussels is of great economic significance. Italy has a sick economy: a public deficit of 5.4%, a structural deficit of 5.7% and a huge public debt of 147.3%, and it has an economic interdependence with the Eurozone and the European Central Bank, since any tricolore bankruptcy would also drag down the German economy, which at the same time has an industrial system closely linked to northern Italy. The main German business groups have large businesses and investments, which together with the local economic fabric of small and medium-sized enterprises make Italy the second largest manufacturing country in Europe.
Three sovereign entities lie within the Italian peninsula: the San Marino rock, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and the most important of all because of its global projection, the Vatican City. The Vatican, a microstate in the heart of Rome, houses the Holy See, the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church that has been a Permanent Observer at the United Nations since 1964. The Holy See projects the city of Rome around the world and the Pope, its head of state and absolute monarch, is considered a moral leader, not only by Catholics, but also by Christians and many members of other religions. Despite its small size, the Vatican is an actor that retains the ability to have its own thought and political action, with a global impact. Italy, which maintained a privileged relationship regulated by the 1929 Lateran Treaty harvested geopolitical fruits at a global level in terms of image, culture and language. At the same time, hosting the See of the Church means having to maintain a number of domestic balances, given its great influence on much of the Italian population. A good balance between Italy and the Vatican is an important factor in the country’s domestic political stability and social cohesion.
The Italian peninsula is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. Its waters bathe 7,914 km of its shores and it is a key dimension for the stability of the country in many respects. For Italy, talking about the Mediterranean is, firstly, talking about Sicily and North Africa, and secondly talking about the Adriatic Sea and the Balkan area up to the Black Sea. This first area, the quadrant where the Italian islands of Sicily, Pantelleria and Lampedusa are located, as well as other countries: Malta, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, and which we can extend to Cyprus and Egypt, is an area without a single centre of gravity at geopolitical level and therefore contested by various actors. Italy’s strategic importance in this area lies in the fact that four of the 12 Mediterranean chokepoints are under its influence: exclusive control of the Strait of Messina and strong influence on the Strait of Otranto, the Sicily Channel and the Malta Channel. Italy also has in the Eastern Mediterranean a guarantee of its energy security, headed by the strong presence of the ENI, the main Italian energy company, and one of the crown jewels for gas and oil supplies. Algeria is the second strategic gas supplier for the Italian market via the Transmed pipeline, which also passes through Tunisia. Until the start of the military invasion of Ukraine, the foremost provider of gas had been the Russian Federation.
If the U.S. was essential for the survival of Italy as a state and the maintenance of its national unity after its defeat in World War II, the relationship with the Russian Empire played its part in the birth of Italy as a nation state. This was because Camillo Benso de Cavour, then President of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Sardinia, sent an expedition of Sardo-Piedmontese soldiers to the Crimean War (1853–1856) in support, above all, of Franco-British troops, entering the war against the Russian Empire. France and Britain fought Russia for its strategic access to the Mediterranean. In return, the Piedmontese had the support of France to expel the Austrians from the north in Lombardy and Veneto, and British naval and logistical support for the military expedition that annexed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in southern Italy, plus the island of Sicily. At the same time, Cavour won the approval and recognition for the creation of the new unitary peninsular state, the Kingdom of Italy.
As regards the subsequent links with Moscow, Italy has always sought to have a privileged relationship with Russia, despite being one of the US’s main partners in Europe, and a member of NATO. It should be remembered that the Iron Curtain, the ideological, political and military barrier described by Churchill in his famous speech in Missouri, fell over Trieste and that Italy had as an actor within its political system the PCI, the largest Communist Party in the whole of the West.
Italian attempts to build privileged and stable relations with Moscow have been numerous, regarding both the different political actors involved and the results obtained at different degrees, levels and scopes. Relations intensified especially with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War and with Berlusconi’s coming to power. Vladimir Putin’s personal friend, Il Cavaliere has always sought to become a mediator and bridge between Russia and the West. This geopolitical adventure is at the same time a clear strategic deviation which Washington has always looked at with reluctance and without any kind of sympathy, and has found its inevitable end with the Russian military invasion and the war in Ukraine.
With regard to the relations between the PRC and Italy, which have been fruitful in terms of trade since the 1960s, experts in this field have often highlighted four occasions when Italy has tried to establish a new dimension in external policy, taking advantage of China’s emerging global power. The most important and noteworthy regarding the subject matter in hand, is that which refers to Beijing’s geo-economic and geopolitical star new Silk Road project, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It should be noted that this initiative, which was initially drawn up and pondered at strategic level in the late 1990s, has at two key moments had a very close relationship with Italy:
The first is at its birth as a geoeconomic project. In 2000, the English-language magazine Heartland, Eurasian Review of Geopolitics was launched in Rome and Hong Kong. The first issue was already then titled “A New Silk Road?” and was presented in Beijing. The Italian side featured Romano Prodi, who at the time was no more and no less than the President of the European Commission. After a very short editorial opening the magazine, Prodi also signed the first article titled ‘Building bridges between Asia and Europe‘. From the geopolitics point of view, the name of the magazine cannot be more explicit, nor can its intentions: Heartland is the name of the theory developed by one of the classic authors and fathers of the discipline, the British geographer Halford Mackinder. His geopolitical theory is based on the opposition between the land and the maritime powers and argues that no thalassocracy will contest the global hegemony of a terrestrial power that dominates this heartland, namely the Eurasian space: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heart-land; who rules the Heart-land commands the World-Island; who ruless the World-Island commands the World”. Thus China’s thellotellurocratic project of global geoeconomic hegemony has an important contribution of strategic thinking Made in Italy.
The second key moment is when in the last parliamentary term, during a new state visit by Xi Jinping to Italy, the two countries signed three memorandums of understanding: one for E-Commerce, one for Startups and the third and most important, for the Belt and Road Initiative, with the title ‘Memorandum of understanding on cooperation within the framework of the silk road economic belt and the 21st century silk maritime road initiative’. Italy is the first G7 and NATO country to sign such an agreement with the PRC. This gesture has been read by Europe and the US as an endorsement by Italy of Xi Jinping’s universalist project. At the same time, the fact that the People’s Republic of China might manage sensitive infrastructures, particularly in the field of telecommunications , in a country that houses numerous American military bases, together with the arrival of COVID as well as subsequent changes of Italian governments, has for the moment left this memorandum on ice.
Along with these coordinates and reference points, mention must be made of the risks and threats facing Rome. The Italian peninsula is at the very geographical midst and at the centre of gravity of a series of crises that require a proactive strategic attitude, both by the Italian government and its allies, in foreign and security policy in order to cope successfully. These are crises within a few kilometres of its borders and which have a potential impact on security and domestic social cohesion with immigration, which likewise jeopardise energy security and create tensions in the Italian government alliance systems, and which have come to jeopardise the stability and cohesion of the EU. The most serious of these is the so-called Southern Border. With the fall in 2011 of Gaddaffi’s government in Libya, a former Italian colony, there are two new actors: Russia is present in the Cyrenaica area, and Turkey is present in the Tobruk region, where there is the center of influence of the Qatar-Muslim Brothers’ Turkey axis.
Under the new Meloni government, these geopolitical coordinates and strategic swings towards the PRC and Russia may take a different direction, along with the policies being promoted to face the strategic threats at the Southern Border. But this will be covered in the second part of this series.
Narcís Pallarès Domènech is a political scientist and geopolitical analyst resident in Italy. He holds a Master in Geopolitics and Economic Security from SIOI-UNA Italy, and a graduate degree in Geopolitics and Global Security from Roma University La Sapienza. He is co-author of the book “Calcio & Geopolitica.”
