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Italian foreign and security policy in a state of reliability crisis?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Ludovica Marchi Balossi-Restelli
Ludovica Marchi Balossi-Restelli*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
*
∗Email: lmb7979@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article focuses on Italian foreign and security policy (IFSP). It looks at three examples of the country's policy-making which reveal its poor results as a security provider, namely: Italy's tardy reaction to the violence in Libya in 2011, its prompt reaction to the Lebanon crisis in 2006, and its efforts to be included in the diplomatic directorate, the P5 + 1, approaching relations with Iran in 2009. The article considers whether government action has bolstered the reliability of IFSP and also discusses the country's FSP in terms of its basic differences from that of its partners in the European Union, France, Britain and Germany, envisaging how Italy could react to build more credibility. Italy's policy is observed through a three-pronged analytical framework enriched by concepts of the logic of expected consequences. The article concludes that IFSP is predictable, but it must still reveal that it is reliable, and explains why this is the case.

Keywords

Italy's foreign and security policyEuropean Unioncrisis managementlogic of expected consequences
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 255 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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