With today's oath, in front of the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, the Meloni government enters its full institutional legitimacy. With it we will have a new defense minister: Guido Crosetto.
Guido Crosetto is certainly not one new entry in the department of Via XX Settembre, in fact already in the last Berlusconi government (2008-2011) he had held the position of Undersecretary of Defense, distinguishing himself from his predecessors for a direct involvement in evaluating the equipment acquired by the Armed Forces (a photo immortal while testing the new beretta ARX-160 assault rifle in a shooting range).
In 2014 he left politics and was appointed president of the AIAD (Federation of Italian companies for aerospace, defense and security) of Confindustria. After a brief return to Parliament, he resigned to return to play his role as president of the AIAD, as he himself judged incompatible with the institutional position.
In a country where the conflict of interest is heralded by all the political arts as an attack on democracy, without any of them having ever made a law that limits it, Crosetto's gesture speaks volumes about the consideration he has of the republican institutions. It therefore seems surprising that the oppositions (the plural is a must) attack the new minister precisely on the role of now former president of the AIAD.
A minister must be judged for what he does in the execution of his mandate, this is absolutely obvious. It is also true that Crosetto has renounced millionaire remuneration as a private executive to hold a public office that is absolutely not comparable in terms of remuneration.
A precedent that comes to mind concerns the story of Rober McNamara, the Kennedy administration's secretary of defense in 1960.
When he was offered the position, McNamara was a Ford executive (he had reached the office of president) with compensation among the highest in the world.
He agreed to give it up to serve his nation which was fighting the Cold War.
Precisely the patriotism that you (Crosetto) has shown must be the beacon of your mandate, in the interest of our soldiers and the nation.
So, now that he holds the position of Italian Defense Minister, I hope he will pay attention, if he has not already done so, to the articles we have written about the updating programs of the heavy component of our Army.
During the next conference of Army Study Center (given that he has already participated in that of last July), we hope there will be an opportunity for a discussion on these issues.
Furthermore, we would like to see you "fight" so that our soldiers can again try their hand at real exercises combat, even at battalion level, without having to slavishly comply with Law 81/2008, designed for civilian workers but which is hardly suited to military matters.
In the hope that we will finally have a fleet capable of also expressing offensive capabilities (in terms of launching anti-ship missiles), Online Defense wishes you a fruitful work in the service of the Nation.
Photo: Department of Defense / US DoD
