The international record of the United States, fresh from "lost decade" of the failure to implement Obama's "Pivot to Asia", the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the hegemonic challenge launched by Russia, China and Iran to the West, has been called into question. This factor requires European states to participate more actively in the collective security and defense mechanisms of the Atlantic Alliance at a time when the danger in the East has become real and Americans are looking with increasing attention to the Indo-Pacific.
The end or, in any case, the strategic downsizing of what was once defined as the American umbrella over Europe is one of the issues on which the NATO summit scheduled in Washington for the next few days will have to focus, even without explicitly discussing it.
The former Italian ambassador and deputy secretary general of NATO, Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, on "The paper" he explained that "Every year NATO has to deal with increasingly broader meanings of the term 'security'. Security is no longer a soldier with a rifle in his hand, but it means protecting oneself from disinformation, addressing the issue of population resilience, also talking about healthcare or climate change". Words that are very similar to those of the new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, the Labor Party David Lammy, who, theorising his doctrine "progressive realist", highlighted the centrality of broader themes, once decidedly distant from the military sphere, in the context of the challenge for "global security".
NATO seemed one of the last bastions of the Cold War world, defeated by the unipolar “end of history”. Today, however, Atlanticism has returned to being central not only as a value, but also as an instrument of the foreign policy of Western states.
Atlanticism, i.e. the idea according to which Western Europe and the United States must cooperate to achieve common military, political and economic objectives, is not questioned in Italy as one of the pillars of foreign policy, but, hand in hand, there is a tendency to interpret membership of the Atlantic Alliance always in "passive" terms.
In every NATO summit, the Italian representatives aim to carry forward their own political agenda with the aim of supporting the centrality of the so-called "southern front" of the Alliance, i.e. the geographical areas of the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East, which, pushed out from Euro-Atlantic radars - due to the evident weight that the war between Russia and Ukraine has assumed - nevertheless remain of primary importance for Italian stability and security policy.
But it cannot be expected that an Alliance whose main actor, i.e. the USA, has a strategic center of gravity now shifted to the Indo-Pacific, and which is facing the Russian threat, can be assiduously interested in the "southern front" when those who have direct security interests seems unwilling to assume the responsibilities that being a major player in the international community entails.
If NATO's attention has shifted to the eastern flank it is not only because Russia attacked Ukraine, but because those who guarantee the security of the "iron curtain" in the east, i.e. Poland and the Baltic States above all, have decided to accompany your requests and security policy needs to a concrete commitment regarding military spending, therefore for maintaining the efficiency of its Armed Forces.
Italy is among the nine NATO member countries that will not reach, not even this time and in any case not before 2028, theminimum goal to allocate 2% of its GDP to Defense. And if this can be tolerated for minor powers, it certainly cannot be accepted for a medium power.
Trying to "impose" one's political agenda on allies without wanting to take on the responsibility of directly contributing to the strengthening of the collective security system is a questionable choice to say the least. And the issue goes far beyond Italian participation in international missions; also because the peacekeeping it is not a reliable yardstick or classification when the prospect is that of a return to conventional confrontation between armies and not that of counter-guerrilla operations.
Interpreting Atlanticism in "passive" terms means believing that the American umbrella is enough for one's own security. The tanks that broke through the Ukrainian border on February 22 two years ago showed that this is no longer the case.
In a scenario of this type, European states will be asked to account - with good reason - of how much and how they are spending on defence. Given that no one is being put on trial at NATO, Italy will be one of those under special observation. It is not enough to be a major contributor to NATO military operations, Italy must spend more, better and quickly if it wants its political-strategic agenda relating to the "southern front" (a definition that is too broad and does not geographically define a clear area) to be at least taken into consideration by the other members of the Alliance beyond generic promises.
Photo: Presidency of the Council of Ministers
