Quaderni del Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche 11/2017

Atti del IX Convegno di studio sull'Alleanza Atlantica La lotta al terrorismo transnazionale:un ruolo per la NATO?

Aa.Vv.

• Publisher: EDUCatt
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9788893351218
• eBook ISBN: 9788893351379
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Il presente numero pubblica nella prima parte le relazioni pervenute e pubblicabili presentate al IX Convegno di studio sull'Alleanza Atlantica: La lotta al terrorismo transnazionale: un ruolo per la NATO? Nella sezione Miscellanea compaiono due articoli su aspetti del pensiero cristiano, cattolico e ortodosso, in campo politico.

Atti del IX Convegno di studio
sull’Alleanza Atlantica

La lotta al terrorismo transnazionale:
un ruolo per la NATO?

Introduction

di Massimo de Leonardis

Abstract – La conferenza continua una lunga tradizione di studi sulla sicurezza internazionale e sull’Alleanza Atlantica in particolare, che impegna il Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore con il sostegno costante della Divisione di Diplomazia Pubblica della NATO nonché di altre istituzioni militari e culturali. Questo IX Convegno intende far luce sui molteplici aspetti strategici, politici e religiosi della minaccia del terrorismo transnazionale e sulle possibili risposte sul fronte interno e oltremare da parte della NATO.

These Acta, published after an anonymous peer review, continue along the path of studies on the history and the current affairs of the Atlantic Alliance, which the Department of Political Sciences initiated more than 30 years ago, since its foundation in 1983. In the more recent years, this is the 9th annual Conference. I am confident that next year we shall be able to organize the 10th Conference.

These annual Conferences have been made possible by the constant support of the Faculty of Political Sciences, now Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, and of the Public Diplomacy Division of NATO. Other important institutions sponsoring these events are the Atlantic Treaty Association and the Atlantic Italian Committee. The Italian Armed Forces also demonstrated their constant appreciation and this year we have the sponsorship of the Comando per la Formazione, Specializzazione e Dottrina dell’Esercito, the Command in Charge of the Academies, Staff Colleges and Schools which prepare the Army’s cadres. I wish also to remark that a number of speakers, including the Vice-President Prof. Paolo Magri, are affiliated to the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, the prominent think tank in the field of foreign politics.

In 2015 we debated NATO’s role in the Ukrainian crisis and NATO’s more detached position towards the issue of terrorism. This year we address precisely this latter issue, which is now prominent. Diplomacy required using the expression “transnational terrorism”; everybody however knows that we are talking of “Islamic terrorism”, or, to be more precise, terrorism ignited by Islamic fundamentalism.

From 21st November to 6th November 2015, NATO staged in the Mediterranean its largest military exercise since 2002. Trident Juncture 2015 saw the engagement of about 36,000 military personnel, 140 aircrafts and 60 ships from all the 28 NATO member States plus 7 partner countries. The exercise began and was concluded at Trapani Birgi air base in Sicily, a reminder that Italy remains on the front line in this geopolitical area of the Wider Mediterranean.

However, even this exercise was presented as being staged in the context of deterrence towards Russia and it is still unclear if NATO will ever intervene directly as an organization in the struggle against Islamic terrorism or will just provide a framework for coalitions of the willing, including some States who are members of the Alliance and some who are not.

We tried in our programme to address most of the relevant issues involved, starting with Mr López-Navarro’s keynote speech (whose text is not available, as other presented at the Conference) on NATO immediate future, followed by my intervention which on the opposite will address the long-time historical perspective of the Atlantic Alliance. Prof. Ratti’s and Prof. Pastori’s papers are probably somewhere in the middle of these two perspectives.

Islamic terrorism needs to be addressed from various points of view, including the sociological and the military ones. So we paid attention to the situation in the various theatres of operations: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq and Syria, Libya.

The roles and positions of some key members of NATO were addressed: France, Germany, Turkey and of course the United States, also considering that next November a new President will be elected, a fact which makes unlikely any major change in NATO’s posture until Spring 2017. Hillary Clinton would have continued Obama’s policy: keep a foot in Europe waving the spectre of the Russian threat. President elected Donald Trump endorsed the unilateralist position “America First”, declared NATO «obsolete», warned that the United States will no longer foot the major part of NATO’s bill (a position shared also by Obama) and does not antagonize Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose collaboration he deems necessary against Islamic terrorism.

Russia was at the centre of NATO concerns last year; later Moscow became a partner in the fight against Da‘ish, albeit a problematic one, not differently from Turkey, an old formal ally. Interesting and rather different views on relations between NATO and Russia are presented by Prof. Di Rienzo and Prof. Strzałka (whose paper is not published). The events which took place in Turkey in July and the following developments cast many questions on the future relations with Ankara. Turkey is the only member of NATO having an almost totally Muslim population. In the past Turkish Armed Forces were a bulwark of the secular tradition of Kemal Ataturk; now this bastion is being eroded and Erdogan’s government follows a path of Islamization, which is incorrect to describe simply as a return to the Ottoman tradition, since that Empire was a patchwork of different nationalities and religions.

Finally, a specific session is devoted to the role of Italy. If I may formulate here a personal opinion, in the last months the Italian government’s policy appeared oscillating and not entirely convincing on the issue of using the military instrument against terrorism. Well-known experts discussed this.

While we were preparing these Acta, NATO held its Summit in Warsaw. I will not analyse here its conclusions1. The key word of the very long final communiqué is “adaptation”, which recurs twelve times. From the narrow technical point of view “adaptation” might be sufficient; in long historical terms certainly much more is required, as I argue in my paper.

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1 I did it in my article La NATO dopo il vertice di Varsavia. «Adattamento» in attesa del nuovo Presidente americano, “Rivista Marittima”, settembre 2016, pp. 18-23.

The Historical Role of NATO

di Massimo de Leonardis

Abstract – Fino a pochi anni fa, il compito principale della NATO era lo schieramento “fuori area”. In Europa, l’Alleanza rimaneva “vigilant and prepared”, ma nessuno pensava realmente che ci sarebbe stato bisogno di un intervento. Tuttavia, alla vigilia dello scoppio della crisi in Ucraina, c’erano stati segni che facevano pensare che quella fase stesse giungendo a conclusione. Fra questi, si ricordi il ritiro degli Stati Uniti dall’Iraq e, soprattutto, dall’Afghanistan, dove la NATO stava chiudendo la più importante missione della sua storia. L’emergere della minaccia transnazionale dello Stato Islamico (Dā’ish) non cambiava lo stato delle cose. Allo stesso tempo, il deteriorarsi delle relazioni con la Russia ha portato l’Alleanza all’approvazione del nuovo Readiness Action Plan, a rafforzare il suo schieramento militare lungo il confine orientale e ad istituire una Very High Readiness Joint Task Force di quattromila uomini. Stiamo tornando alla Guerra Fredda? No, dato che il confronto attuale fra NATO e Russia non è da considerarsi alla stregua di uno scontro ideologico globale; piuttosto, la sfida posta da Putin è l’espressione del tradizionale interesse nazionale russo di preservare la propria sfera di influenza. Nel contesto strategico odierno, il rischio principale è dunque che la NATO dedichi troppe risorse alla risposta alla minaccia russa, a spese di al...

Table of contents

• I Quaderni del Dipartimento di Scienze Politichedell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
• Atti del IX Convegno di studiosull’Alleanza AtlanticaLa lotta al terrorismo transnazionale:un ruolo per la NATO?
• Miscellanea