An Italian Romance Goes Sour
by Francis X. Rocca
published July 14, 2005

ROME -- On the day after last week's terrorist bombings in London, amid a chorus of solidarity with Britain from world leaders gathered at the G-8 conference in Scotland, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters that Italy would start withdrawing its troops from Iraq in two months. The prime minister insists that his statement was not, despite appearances, an attempt to appease the latest authors of terrorism in Europe but merely the reassertion of a previously announced policy.

It is true that Mr. Berlusconi revealed his pull-out schedule last March, to the surprise of his own government, not to mention those in Washington and London. The timing then was also suggestive. Earlier in the month, U.S. forces had accidentally killed an Italian military intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari, near a checkpoint in Baghdad. Polls showed that 70% of Italians favored an immediate return of their forces, the third-largest non-U.S. contingent in Iraq. But the day following his bombshell, after his British and American counterparts voiced their disapproval, the Italian prime minister explained that the withdrawal timetable "was only my hope. ... If it is not possible, it is not possible. The solution should be agreed with the allies."

Mr. Berlusconi's flip-flopping is part of an increasingly desperate attempt to keep up a close alliance with the U.S. while appeasing public opinion hostile to Italy's military presence in Iraq. With his center-right coalition having suffered overwhelming losses in April's regional polls, the prime minister evidently hopes that bringing all the soldiers home in time for national elections -- which must take place no later than May of next year -- will not only keep him in power but spare his country a version of last year's pre-election terrorist bombings in Madrid.

Maybe he will be right, or lucky, on both counts. But Mr. Berlusconi's inconstancy is likely to be as unavailing politically as it is damaging to Italy's international reputation.

Loyalty to the U.S. has been an essential element of his policy, and of his worldview, since well before he took office in 2001. Mr. Berlusconi once famously said that he agreed with the American position "even before I know what it is." His domestic political platform is clearly inspired by admiration for U.S. enterprise and social dynamism; and the self-made media tycoon has presented himself to voters as a homegrown version of the American dream. With this persona and message, he has managed to lead the longest-serving government in post-war Italian history.

Nowhere in continental western Europe does pro-Americanism resonate better than in Italy. Everyone here seems to have relatives in the U.S. (almost always somewhere "near Boston"). The elites flock to Columbia and Sloan-Kettering for their medical care, and to Harvard Business School for their higher education. Older generations recall that the post-war "economic miracle," which turned a poor agricultural country into one of the world's richest industrial powers in a few decades, owed at least as much to the U.S. security umbrella and trans-Atlantic trade as it did to membership in the European Union. The young consume American pop culture as avidly as their contemporaries everywhere. Except for fashion, food and design, in which locals enjoy a justified sense of superiority, admiration for U.S. products is practically universal. Because Italy has been a nation-state for less than a century and a half, its citizens have not developed a sense of common identity strong enough to arouse ambitions of cultural let alone strategic rivalry with the sole superpower.

Anti-Americanism in Italy, though at times vociferous, is restricted to the extreme left and right. It was not animosity toward American leadership that led Italians to oppose the war against Saddam Hussein; it was the war itself that inspired Italian criticisms of America. A survey by the Pew Research Center showed favorable views of the U.S. dropping by more than 50% in the months before the invasion.

An aversion to war is not hard to understand in a nation whose experience of it within living memory has been so disastrous, and which is still haunted by the greed and folly of Mussolini's imperial schemes. Italy's post-war constitution explicitly "repudiates war ... as a means for settling international disputes." This attitude also reflects the influence of the Catholic Church. No international leader was more passionate in his denunciation of the Second Gulf War (or for that matter, the First) as John Paul II; and although Italians no longer attend mass in great numbers, their respect for the Vatican's moral authority is easy to underestimate.

Even Italians' recent displays of suspicion and resentment toward the U.S. say as much about their own history as about attitudes toward America. The willingness of many journalists and citizens here to entertain accusations that the friendly fire that killed Calipari may have been deliberately aimed at the freed hostage in his charge, the left-wing journalist Giuliana Sgrena, bespeaks a characteristic suspicion of all powerful people and institutions, and an almost automatic assumption that truth isn't what the authorities say it is. By the same token, after convincing statements from American intelligence sources last week that the Italian government had (contrary to Mr. Berlusconi's strenuous denials) sanctioned the CIA's abduction and rendition to Egypt of a suspected Islamist militant on Italian territory in 2003, the direction of outrage has been shifting away from Washington and toward the prime minister's office.

Despite the unpopularity of Italy's military presence in Iraq, that is not the issue that will decide whether the prime minister remains in power. Mr. Berlusconi faces nothing like the anti-war dissent within his coalition that British Prime Minister Tony Blair contends with inside the Labour Party.

The real source of discontent is Mr. Berlusconi's failure to deliver on his promises of a stronger economy. Caught between a regionalist northern party demanding tax cuts, and other coalition partners who want more spending for the underdeveloped south, and faced with entrenched interests such as banks and labor unions adamantly opposing change, Mr. Berlusconi can now do little to enhance his record with needed reforms. Italy is in recession and its rate of GDP growth is approaching zero. By comparison with solving such problems, calling home a few thousand troops must seem like an easy fix.

Mr. Rocca, an American writer in Rome, is the co-author, with Rockwell A. Schnabel, of "The Next Superpower? The Rise of Europe and Its Challenge to the United States," which will be published next month by Rowman & Littlefield.

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