Dear director, just yesterday I learned that many foreign defense officers in Italy were invited by the Italian defense ministry to a briefing explaining the contents of the Defense White Paper.
I find it a gesture of grace on the part of Italy to make foreign colleagues understand how the Italian armed forces will change from here in the future, precisely on the basis of the strategic indications described in the document.
A source close to me who had the privilege of listening to what was reported brought me back to a certain convinced attitude on the part of a general who said that the Minister was extremely positive and confident about the parliamentary passage of the White Paper that would have been painless and without obstacles.
I wonder if it is normal to present a document to foreign military personnel (therefore abroad) and then speculate on how the Italian Armed Forces will be reorganized, before this incredible White Paper does not even receive a sort of approval by Parliament. Or you are a little creative. as they say here in Italy, or they don't care about what Parliament will do or say and therefore the Italian people about their Armed Forces. Always the same source told me that the general speaker had anticipated to the attendees an indiscretion on the part of the minister to consider and to consider the TUOM Consolidated text of the regulatory provisions on the subject of military order, in accordance with Article 14 of the 28 law November 2005, n. 246, from the legislative point, less important or in the background than what is indicated and redesigned in the White Book. This would certainly flatten out the parliamentary path of the LB, which would find no opponent.
It seems strange also that today an article is published, signed by General Vincenzo Camporini, former Chief of Defense Staff and today vice-president of the IAI Institute of International Affairs, written in total support of the idea of interforces and rationalization of expenditure and in complete criticism of the individualistic pressures that according to the general the single Armed Forces would have.
In fact, General Camporini reports in his article: "... From these premises then follows a clear analysis of how it is necessary to modify rules, structures, procedures in order to satisfy the requirement in terms of financial sustainability. And here the radical nature of the document, which proposes to initiate a governance reform that constitutes a full realization of the 1997 reform, the Andreatta reform, substantially betrayed by its implementing regulation: a drastic downsizing of the spaces of the individual components, in full compliance with their specificity, which no one wants to question, in favor of a strengthening of the powers of the Chief of the Defense Staff, with a view to an indispensable inter-force integration that allows great savings by reworking unnecessary superstructures in favor of a necessary spending efficiency Hence the vision of integrated logistics (it would be crazy to maintain two logistic chains for the NH90s of the Army and Navy, just as it would be crazy to maintain a similar set-up for the F35s) and a pooling of training and training activities already overlapping and kept separate only by short-sighted parochial interests. ".
An article then, the one signed by General Camporini, not insignificant if you also think that perhaps in the drafting of the White Paper there will also have been some IAI researchers. I believe that thinking in terms of efficiency and rationalization of spending, one cannot disagree with what the general writes but what I really cannot tolerate and that I have always expressed on this issue is the absolutely undemocratic method with the which has come to produce and make public a document of such importance. I do not think it is correct to dismiss and belittle the criticisms of the White Paper by stating that they are the expression of partisan interests expressed by the individual components. I believe that the utmost attention should be paid to them, perhaps addressing them and resolving them in a broad inclusive debate in which one cannot but come out with a shared and democratic solution. The problem is that at the end of the work this document was not exposed to the shared observation and perhaps even critical observation of the heads of the individual components. Whoever writes on this subject today is very often a former soldier who for the most part was the head of at least one armed force, if not the entire defense.
I wonder how it would have felt the general in question to feel excluded from the phase of thought and realization of a document of great strategic importance for the country?
Now it would be interesting to have an interview with some foreign military attaché, who took part in the meeting, to which to ask the tones with which everything was explained and presented. It would be interesting to understand if the thing had been presented as something already done. Certainly in this case it would mean that of the Parliament and therefore of the Italian people the minister and therefore the government does not care or rather does not consider significant the opinion of the institutional body on which democracy is founded. Then I think about the Italian history of which I am passionate since I was a student abroad and I saw Italy as the beautiful country. A beautiful country that has always been crossed, however, a dark period in which the liberties were denied and began with the Government of that time that did not consider the Parliament in the least indeed occupied it and from there they left twenty blacks.
I sincerely hope that the ways and the attitude taken by some leaders of the Defense, supported by a political behavior a bit 'too smart or cabriolet, not to say superficial, do not allow the occurrence of an unpleasant situation, certainly not dangerous, but certainly annoying in its aesthetic manifestation.
I believe that knowing how to listen and then discussing in a fruitful debate, without prejudices of any sort, always leads to an optimal and shared solution.
That of the White Book of Defense seemed to me a somewhat messy story, perhaps due not only to apical responsibilities but to many not-so-attentive employees of the form, which I then learned here in Italy to be a manifestation of substance.
Gabriele Baracca
