The usual lack of geopolitical vision of Italy

(To Tiziano Ciocchetti)
30/05/18

In these hours an important summit is taking place in Paris with the participation of the various actors of the Libyan situation. Strongly desired by President Macron - enough to organize it using the secret services, bypassing the foreign ministry - sees the presence of the strong man of Tobruk, General Haftar, head of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, and Sarraj, Benghazi premier.

It is clear that France is intent on taking a leading role in the region, becoming the guarantor of Libyan national pacification.

Italy has also been invited to the conference, obviously relegated to a secondary role, despite the close economic ties with the North African country.

Certainly the current - interminable - crisis of government only sharpens the chronic lack of vision of the national interest of our country.

In the 1911, when our relationship with Libya began, Italian foreign policy developed between the growing needs of a newly unified country and the power games of the European Powers. In order not to remain politically and militarily isolated, Italy was linked to the Triple Alliance, with Wilhelmina Germany and the age-old enemy, Austria-Hungary.

On the other hand, the Risorgimento events had brought the young kingdom to a coldness of relations with France, while they could not expect an alliance with England, which had always elegantly avoided it.

The nation needed everything and had not achieved true self-sufficiency in any of the economic fields, including the heavy industry sector. entrepreneurship and banks were nevertheless favorable to expansionism beyond national borders. It invested abroad, in the Balkans, in North Africa. It was thought with insistence to a colony that could absorb investments and labor (exuberant especially in the south). Hence a complex diplomatic work to prepare a possible occupation of the only non-colonized North African territories: Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which were part of the Ottoman Empire.

That this Empire had entered an irreversible crisis had long been known, even if the European Powers still found it useful to use it. They assigned him a double function: to give space to their financial investments and to act as a balancer between the different areas of influence. In fact, everyone had reason to fear the political and strategic void that a dissolution would have created.

In Turkey, the most enlightened minds tried to stop the decline by modernizing the state and its armed forces, but the only models available were European, rooted in cultures very different from the Islamic one. In reality, the Islamic world could have imported them only as tools for the technical modernization of the state structures; certainly not as a means of uprooting one's own culture and Muslim traditions.

Not having understood this characteristic of that ancient civilization and therefore not having realized the system of values ​​on which it was based, was probably the first unforgivable mistake of the Italian political class.

The problem of Italy was to have a global strategy, which would realistically set the general long-term objectives of the state and determine the tasks and resources to be assigned to the various components called to carry them out, including the armed forces. The Italo-Turkish war seems emblematic of a lack of comprehensive global strategy: a very serious shortage which unfortunately has lasted for a long time in Italian national history.

In reality Italy - which depended on international equilibria far more than it could influence - should have assessed with particular foresight the international repercussions of a war against Turkey. It was no mystery to anyone that the Ottoman Empire was considered the Great Sick and that its further weakening would have had devastating effects that did not fit anyone, and less than in Italy. This aspect of the problem was instead neglected compared to the immediate reasons. Probably we did not realize that Italy, so fragile in the context of the European Powers, could indirectly provoke a much more serious damage than it was able to do directly with its own strength. Yet the Balkan nationalisms were known, full of destabilizing potential for the whole of Europe. In fact, just on the eve of the war, the Foreign Minister San Giuliano had lucidly exposed to the president of the Council of Ministers Giolitti (photo) this aspect of the situation.

In July of the 1911 the Agadir crisis occurred: the Franco-German rivalry clearly showed the risk that all of North Africa would be in possession of the European Powers. All of this alarmed Giolitti, who decided to take action by occupying the Tripolitania-Cyrenaica. In view of that moment, Italian diplomacy had long worked in previous years, succeeding in weaving a network of agreements with all the major European powers: in 1900 and 1902 with France (which aimed to have a free hand in Morocco, and therefore was interested in not creating problems for Italy); in the 1907 with England (which preferred an Italian presence in the middle of the Mediterranean to the risk of further penetration of Germany); in the 1909 with Russia (which nothing would have left aside to humiliate Turkey and get to the free navigation of the straits).

Giolitti, however, did not ignore the precariousness of these consents, linked more than anything else to temporary conveniences. Therefore, he considered it appropriate to keep the preparation secret so as not to provoke any international diplomatic steps that, at the last minute, could put the stick in the Italian initiative.

In fact, the political landscape was very complex, so much so as to induce the Foreign Minister San Giuliano to send Giolitti, immediately after Agadir, a secret reminder to illustrate his point of view with great clarity. The document, dated 28 July 1911, examined the serious reasons that would have recommended peace, but believed that the circumstances required despite the war.

Saint Julian realized that a possible defeat of Turkey would end with the uprising of the Balkan peoples inside and outside the Ottoman Empire, and that such a fact would almost certainly have provoked Austrian armed intervention. This hypothesis, in addition to being fearful for the expansion of the Vienna to which it would have inevitably given rise, was also dangerous because it would offer Russia an easy opportunity to intervene in favor of the Orthodox Slavs.

However, despite this, here are the reasons that advised the war.

  1. There was a risk that France, once the control over Morocco had been completed, would drop that part of the Italian-French agreement of the 1902 that was supposed to favor Italy;
  2. The extension of French influence risked damaging Italy, paradoxically, in the triplicist sphere. The reasons were subtle and somewhat convoluted: in the alliance there were agreements on the basis of which, if Austria or Italy had altered the Balkan equilibrium, the Power which had received prejudice would have been entitled to compensation (even territorial). In the - not unlikely - case of an Austrian initiative in the region, Austria and Germany would be forced by the pacts to offer Italy compensation. At this point, instead of looking for spaces in the Balkan area, they would have had a good opportunity to offer Italy their consent to the occupation of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. And Rome did not mean to accept. Also for this reason, it would have been advisable to take possession of the two North African regions as soon as possible.
  3. However, Italy would have benefited from the military success and the territorial enlargement when the 8 July 1914 would have had to discuss the renewal of the Triple Alliance that expired on that date.

The declaration of war (valid under the Albertine Statute even without Parliament's endorsement) was presented to Turkey on 29 September 1911, while Parliament was on holiday.

With the Turkish defeat, and the consequent withdrawal from Libyan territory (peace of Lausanne of 18 October 1912) it seemed that the strategic position of Italy in the Mediterranean was considerably strengthened. The reality was substantially different. First of all, it was necessary to take into account that the French commanded Bizerte and Tunis, and that the British were in Malta, Cyprus, Alexandria and Port Said, as well as in Gibraltar. Therefore a first radical limitation to our possibilities came from the geopolitical situation, which imposed good-neighborly relations with Italy with at least one of the aforementioned Powers.

All this found the fundamental reason for the economic, scientific and technological inferiority of Italy and its industrial structures. Without the active collaboration of France and England the process of industrialization of Italy would have run aground and then Germany would have had to resort, with the consequence of a total dependence. However, Italy needed raw materials that came largely from the world area controlled by France and England.

Certainly the Italian fleet could have operated effectively in the Central Mediterranean, provided that it had adequate bases that did not exist, with the exception of Taranto. The ports of Trapani, Augusta, Messina, Naples, Tobruk and Tripoli could not have given the fleet the necessary logistical support, unless they carried out massive and expensive expansion works. But this hypothesis was not taken into consideration in any way, since all the funding for the Navy was aimed at the mirage of a powerful fleet.

For all these reasons the possession of Libya remained a factor of weakness. As they were a regular source of concern over the need to secure supplies for the population and the stationed military forces, which would remain isolated in the event of war.

Today, however, the Italian control of the Libyan coasts is an essential factor for the national interest, we see our diplomacy stumbling in the usual Byzantinism, with the sole result of leaving the road open to the usual transalpine interference.

(photo: Quirinale / Eliseo / web)