Yesterday Il Foglio published an article, signed by colleague Mario Sechi, which anticipates the presentation of the White Paper by Minister Pinotti, the next 21 April, to the Supreme Defense Council.
I find it very strange that the strategy to give the exclusive to the folio was chosen and to keep the big press in the dark and those dealing with issues related to the Armed Forces. A little elegant and very questionable choice.
However, from the article we learn that the geopolitical and geostrategic concept of the Enlarged Mediterranean, which meant an area of national interest outside the Suez Strait and that extended to the Black Sea, which we have always heard of, has gone down.
The White Paper as a strategic political document is praised but then we will look forward to the descending strategic document that will have to be drawn up by the General Staff of Defense and which will have to implement the drawn strategic policy. We will see how the Armed Forces will be redesigned.
If it is true that Italy needs a reorganization and a downsizing of the Armed Forces (opinion also shared given the new times), in Sechi's article, which seems to have been dictated by the political authority, there is no mention of the method by which these reorganizations and cuts will be carried out.
In the military environment, the criticism or fear that is spreading is not about cuts or the concept of inter-force rationalization, but about the method that is feared will be used for cuts in personnel and means.
Do we really need Army 101.794, 42.117 airmen and only 31.989 Sailors?
I also ask this question in the light of what has happened and is happening in the Mediterranean. In fact, from what we learn when reading Sechi's article, our center of gravity seems limited to the Mediterranean. When one thinks of the Mediterranean, everyone's imagination cannot fail to turn especially to the water mass that separates the different shores, even if they are not very calm.
Is the protection of merchant traffic by sea passing through Suez or Gibraltar no longer a national strategic interest?
If it still is, isn't it protected also outside the Mediterranean?
These issues do not seem to have been addressed.
Below is an excerpt of the article.
... (omissis) The pillars. They are four and correspond to a myriad of problems and possible solutions: where and how to use the military instrument, the organization, the personnel and the resources. The defense is that "the heart of the Italian military instrument is and will always remain the human element". But the job of weapons is also made of acronyms at first sight cold like this, I 3E3.
What does it mean? Inter-agency, international, interoperable; effective, efficient, economical. Let's go straight to the heart of the matter.
Where and how to use the military instrument?
This is the scenario of the present according to the White Paper: the Italian Armed Forces are engaged in about thirty military missions abroad, various types of operations, spread over three continents. It is a huge, very expensive projection of forces and materials, which no longer corresponds to Italy's geopolitical interests. We are leading coalitions in distant countries and in fact we have a military force designed to intervene in many regions of the world while not being a great power. We do not have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but we send soldiers everywhere. Better to concentrate efforts to weigh where it really serves the country. Immigration, terrorist threats, new acronyms such as ISIS that has territorial ambitions and destructive will never seen before, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, asymmetric wars that have the range of a normal ballistic missile. (Omissis)
... (omissis) Here is the first strong news of the White Book: "Give priority to interventions in the Euro-Mediterranean area". It is the end of missions everywhere and in any case, made to obey the principle of military cooperation and disobey our real strategic objectives, adventures almost always without concrete benefits for the country. Defense Minister Pinotti and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi have taken a specific direction: "In the Mediterranean, Italy is ready for a leading role". Our soldiers and peacekeepers will put their boots on the ground only where Italy has its interests. Not elsewhere. And out of the Mediterranean, Italy will never go alone, because it "contributes to international security together with its allies". It is a long-awaited change of strategy. ... (omitted)
... (omissis) Many analysts and professors called by Minister Pinotti to give advice during the drafting of the White Book (this is also a novelty) had asked in recent months for a reversal of foreign policy through the military instrument. They have been heard. Because Defense is a heritage of the whole country, it belongs to everyone.
Organization. It is a very delicate point, the permanent center of gravity between the reasons of politics and those of the military. But if we think, as General Carl von Clausewitz said, that "war is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means", then it is clear that the current organization had to be overcome by a new order of command.
Today "military policy and industrial policy decisions are inconsistent", individual Armed Forces have too much autonomy, "they tend to directly control military operations and investments", spending centers are endless, there is "redundancy of infrastructure and duplication of functions ". It is a situation that a country with two trillion public debt and an industrial future all to be invented can no longer afford.
Solutions?
What does the White Book say? He says that "all political decisions are under the responsibility of the minister". It is a passage that may seem logical and predictable, but so far the situation was not so. For this an interforce command is created that coordinates all military operations and plans them with European partners.
And the savings? The chain of command is rationalized, logistics is handled with the same criteria: "unit unification and unification of functions".
Here we are at the key point, the human element.
Staff. Everything must be changed, the picture is one of decline, poor meritocracy, indecent salaries. There is a "strong prevalence of permanent staff", senior and therefore "less and less operational", the military "has low salaries and high mission allowances", and this explains the reason for the many operations in places with little strategic interest : all on a quest for higher benefits. Voilà. Civilians have low, "non-competitive" salaries with those in the industrial sector or other sectors.
This is where we see whether the reform has courage or not. And Roberta Pinotti, having read the guidelines of the White Book, seems to have some to sell: there will be "more staff in fixed stops, more young people enrolled and with greater protection at the time of leave," the structure of the salary "will be changed and linked to military operations ": those who are in the office should not earn more than those who have rifles on their shoulders and risk their skin. Higher salaries also for civilians in order to have qualified personnel.
It is a very ambitious picture, but it is a revolution that is needed. Will our heroes succeed in the enterprise?
Where will they find the money to finance the change in the Armed Forces?
Resources. The present is a festival of accounting Dadaism applied to the craft of arms. High personnel costs, "scarce resources for maintenance", "new means not usable due to lack of spare parts", impossibility of planning interventions "due to a strong fluctuation of resources over time", wrong dialogue between the industry system and the Defense .
Crac. Here the dose of courage becomes enormous. Here is the solution of the White Paper: "Reduce the personnel to about 150 thousand soldiers" (today there are 190 thousand and the transition to minus 40 thousand must be done in less than ten years, in 2024), thus recovering resources for operations, " a single budget chapter for purchases and maintenance "," a multi-year law for military investments "," a strategic plan for the development of the industrial and technological base ".
It seems to read the tomorrow of a normal country. It is not a reform neither of the right nor of the left, but a plan to give the country modern armed forces, composed of young people (in Europe the 80 per cent is in firm short and the 20 per cent is permanent, in Italy the opposite) and concentrated on our natural, unique, indispensable dimension, the Mediterranean. It is finally a clear idea of Italy's future in the world. Now by Minister Pinotti and Chief of Staff Claudio Graziano.
Prime Minister Renzi will accelerate after the trip to the White House, the place where it all branches.
Full speed ahead?
Sebastian Nicci
