L’Italia al Polo tra storia e attualità, di Ezio Ferrante “

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Scelba government (1954–1955) conditioned Italian ratification of the May 1952 European Defence Community (EDC) treaty on a successful solution in Trieste.35 Such Italian diplomatic «hostage taking» was successful primarily in causing irritation in other capitals.36

Italian tactics came across as largely dilatory, i.e. trying to delay progress on the Balkan Pact to buy time for a favorable settlement of the Trieste dispute.37 Manlio Brosio, the independent-minded Italian ambassador to London (and later Washington) who would become Secretary General of NATO, was repeatedly critical of Italian delaying tactics, which he considered counterproductive and likely to promote an image of Italy as a «diehard party pooper.»38 Italy had to dispense, in Brosio’s view, with the idea that resisting the Balkan Pact would advance Italian interests with respect to Trieste.

But the idea persisted through changes of Italian government. Christian Democrat Cesare Pella, De Gasperi’s immediate successor as prime minister, stated very clearly in August 1953 that «as long as the current situation in Italo-Yugoslav relations» persisted, Italy could not participate either directly or indirectly in any Balkan accords, This would be in «flagrant contradiction to the mood in our country.»39 Speaking later to parliament, Pella also underlined that Italy had made clear that any linkage between security commitments under the Balkan Pact and under NATO could not be separated from the matter of relations between Italy and Yugoslavia.40 And at the April 23, 1954 meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the government headed by Christian Democrat Mario Scelba also made it clear that an Italian okay to a Balkan military accord was conditional upon favorable resolution of the Trieste question.41

It is tempting to describe Italy’s approach as “uselessly aggravating.” In the face of obvious US interest in Titoist Yugoslavia as a thorn in the Soviets’ side, Italian ambassador to Washington Alberto Tarchiani still complained forcefully to the Department of State in June 1953 when informed that the US, UK, and France were considering a military mission to Belgrade to discuss cooperation.42

35 de Leonardis, Guerra fredda e interessi nazionali, p. 275. 36 Brogi, L’Italia e l’egemonia americana nel Mediterraneo, p. 115. 37 Caroli, pp. 204-205. 38 Cable from London dated April 24, 1953, quoted in Caroli, p. 132. 39 Quoted in Caroli, p. 156. 40 Caroli, p. 174. 41 Note that, in this period, the US, UK, and France were quite overtly running the military side of the Alliance through the mechanism of the Standing Group, which brought together the defense staff chiefs of the three countries. 42 Caroli, p. 146.

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Following disappointment in the June 1953 elections, De Gasperi presented to parliament the program of his eighth, last, and very short-lived government, unfairly lambasting the three Allied governments for unfriendliness and purported violation of the NATO treaty for having invited a Yugoslav military delegation to Washington.43

The Italian «choose me, choose me» approach contributed to «Trieste fatigue» in Washington and London,44 including frustration that the Rome government focused on a parochial Italo-Yugoslav territorial dispute, rather than on East/ West worldwide strategic competition. At a meeting of the US National Security Council on July 30, 1953, US president Eisenhower nicely captured the mood in Washington: few people in this country could understand the importance of Trieste to the Italians. The Trieste question aroused emotions in Italy quite out of proportion to our estimate of its importance. It would have helped greatly in the Italian elections if we could have made a firm commitment on Trieste, but this was impossible because of Yugoslavia.45

The parochialism of the Italian approach to Balkan security was evident also when it came to Albania. At his aforementioned June 1953 State Department meeting, for example, Tarchiani sought to undermine US support for Balkan cooperation by alleging a Yugoslav threat to the sovereignty of Albania. His American interlocutors were by no means convinced, since Albania was at that point a devoted Soviet satellite after breaking with Titoist Yugoslavia. But a paradoxical vein of concern about Albania, including alleged Greek territorial ambitions, remained evident at the Italian MFA.46

Returning, however, to Italy’s linkage of Trieste and the Balkan Pact, its unpopularity in Athens as well as Washington is worth noting. On June 5, 1954, in fact, Greek Prime Minister Alexander Papagos declared very clearly that the Balkan Pact would not be subordinated to solution of the Trieste problem. This was a significant blow to the Scelba government. And Turkish Prime Minister Menderes, visiting Washington around the same time, also undermined the Italian government’s position by arguing that the Pact was neither contrary to NATO principles nor a threat to Italian interests.47

43 Caroli, p. 154. 44 de Leonardis, Guerra fredda e interessi nazionali, p. 273. 45 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Western Europe and Canada, Volume 6, Part 2, Washington, DC, 1986, No. 750, «Memorandum of Discussion at the 157th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, July 30, 1953». 46 Caroli, pp. 250-251. 47 Caroli, p. 207

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Surveying the situation in summer 1954, another of Italy’s most independent-minded diplomats, ambassador to France Pietro Quaroni, wrote to the MFA Secretary General in Rome that Italy had made huge errors, notably in evaluating the significance of the Balkan Pact for Yugoslavia’s interests vis-à-vis Trieste, and had shown itself to be «more Balkan than the Balkans.» Hence his aforementioned call for an end to Italy’s «Adriatic romanticisms.»48

Once the Treaty of Bled was signed, the only issue remaining for Italy to decide was whether to join, but this largely faded away. There was some cautious interest in Italian diplomatic circles,49 but when Prime Minister Scelba addressed the Italian Senate on September 25, 1954, i.e. about six weeks after the Treaty of Bled was signed, he still forcefully put the Trieste question front and center. Italy’s eastern border was the necessary «hinge» between NATO and the Balkan Pact. Absent «normalization» of the situation at the Italo-Yugoslav border, such linkage would be «difficult if not impossible.»50 Voices in favor of Italian membership in the Pact came at times from NATO allies Greece and Turkey, and even from Alliance Secretary General Lord Ismay,51 but the Yugoslav government, in turn, insisted that Italy had «imperialistic» ambitions in the Balkans.

After all the Sturm und Drang, it is striking how quickly and quietly the Balkan Pact became a dead letter. The October 5, 1954 London Memorandum on Trieste, which reflected the realities on the ground, giving Italy most of Zone A, voided most Italian concerns about the Pact. It also opened the way to the October 1955 bilateral agreement establishing the US Army Southern Europe Task Force (SETAF) in Vicenza,52 which did more to consolidate Italy’s sense of security than anything that might have happened in the Balkan dimension.

For Tito, Balkan security cooperation perhaps had never been more than a temporary expedient.53 Following the March 1953 death of Stalin, Belgrade became very receptive to détente overtures from the new Soviet leadership, and increasingly advocated non-alignment, inconsistent with the clear anti-Soviet-bloc logic of the Balkan Pact. Greek-Turkish relations, in turn, entered a downward spiral starting in 1954, when Greece took the Cyprus issue to the UN. By the end of the following year, all chances for genuine Greek-Turkish military cooperation had been «destroyed.» Notably, the September 1955 bombing of the Turkish con-

48 Quoted in Caroli, pp. 228-229. 49 See for example Caroli, pp. 210-222. 50 Quoted in Caroli, p. 248. 51 Caroli, 220 52 Nuti and Cremasco, pp. 327-328. 53 Stevan K. Pavlowitch, «Yugoslavia: The Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the West», in Kaplan, Clawson, and Luraghi (Eds), NATO and the Mediterranean, p.170.

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sulate in Thessaloniki led to riots targeting Turkey’s Greek minority, and Greece was on the verge of intervening militarily.54

Overall, Italy’s unconvincing and ineffectual approach to Balkan security in the early Cold War period reflected a broader difficulty in defining and operationalizing a sound view of the country’s geopolitical and geostrategic identity, and in identifying possible sources of leverage. The less than completely satisfactory settlement of the Trieste question contributed to a vociferous effort to define and advance Italy’s international interests more effectively.55 The so-called «Neo-Atlanticism» of the late 1950s would seek to leverage a close relationship with the United States to advance distinctly Italian interests, e.g. in the Middle East.56 But Neo-Atlanticism frankly would mark little concrete improvement57 over the confusions and contradictions of the early 1950s.

54 Iatrides, «NATO and Aegean Disputes», p. 43. See also «Failed Rampart», pp. 64-65. 55 Virgilio Ilari, «L’Italia un alleato ‘fedele’», in Massimo de Leonardis (Ed.), La nuova NA-

TO: i membri, le strutture, i compiti, Bologna, 2001, p. 111. 56 de Leonardis, Guerra fredda e interessi nazionali, pp. 289-290; Ilari, p. 112. 57 See for example de Leonardis on the «myths and realities» of Neo-Atlanticism in Guerra fredda e interessi nazionali, pp. 285-297, also Nuti and Cremasco, pp. 328-330