13/05/2015 - 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 soldiers (then 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 from Parliament. Or you are a bit creative. as they say here in Italy, or do not care about what the Parliament will do or say and then the Italian people on their Armed Forces. My same source always told me that the general speaker had anticipated to the participants how an indiscretion the idea on the part of the minister to consider and make the TUOM Consolidated text of the regulations on military law, in accordance with Article 14 of the 28 Act November 2005, n. 246, from the legislative point, less important or in the background compared to what is indicated and redrawn in the White Paper. This certainly pave the way and not just the parliamentary path of the LB that would not find any 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.

As a matter of fact, General Camporini reports in his article: "... From these premises follows a clear analysis of how it is necessary to modify norms, structures, procedures in order to satisfy the requirement with a view to financial sustainability. And here emerges the radical nature of the document, which aims to initiate a reform of governance that constitutes a full realization of the reform of 1997, the Andreatta reform, substantially betrayed then by its implementing regulation: a drastic downsizing of the spaces of the individual components, in full respect of their specificity, which no one wants to question, in favor of a strengthening of the powers of the Chief of Defense, with a view to an indispensable inter-force integration that allows great savings by restoring useless superstructures in favor of a necessary increase in spending. Hence the vision of an integrated logistics (it would be crazy to keep two logistic chains for the NH90 of the Army and Navy, as crazy as to maintain a similar structure for F35) and to pool the training and training activities already overlapping today and kept separate only by myopic campanilistic interests. ".

An article then, that signed by General Camporini, not insignificant if you also think that perhaps in the drafting of the White Paper there will also be some researchers of the IAI. I think that thinking in terms of efficiency and rationalization of spending, we can not disagree with what the general writes but what I really can not tolerate and that I have always expressed on this issue is the absolutely non-democratic method with which we have come to produce and publish a document of such importance. I do not think it is right to dismiss and discount criticism of the White Paper by stating that they are an expression of partisan interests expressed by the individual components. I believe that they should be given maximum attention, perhaps by addressing them and resolving them in a broad inclusive debate in which we can not go out with a shared and democratic solution. The problem is that at the end of the work this document has not been exposed to the shared observation and perhaps even critical of the top of the individual members. Who writes on this issue today, very often is a former military who for the most part was the leader of at least an armed force if not the whole 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