America owes much to Italy. That includes modern Italy, and not just Ancient Rome—though our debts there are particularly clear, from inspiring “Publius”, the nom de plume of the author(s) of the Federalist Papers, to many an American town, river, and county’s name, to physical architecture, to the very shape of our political regime.
Congratulating the Italian people on the 80th anniversary of their democracy on June 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted:
As the United States celebrates its 250th year of independence, we honor the profound influence that Rome’s republican traditions had on our Founding Fathers. Just as Rome’s legacy shaped the birth of American democracy, today’s partnership between the United States and Italy continues to advance the values of faith, liberty, and rule of law that both nations hold dear.
Italy is a steadfast partner and friend. The United States applauds Italy’s increased investment in defense spending and appreciates Prime Minister Meloni’s commitment to maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz and support for Middle East security and stability. We value Italy’s support for efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and our cooperation to counter threats to our shared security. We are grateful for Italy’s hospitality extended to nearly 30,000 U.S. service members and their families across Italy.
Italy has been a key American ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since its inception in the wake of World War II. Around 400,000 American soldiers in WWII fought and bled from Africa, over to Sicily, then up through the boot of Italy in the “Liberation of Italy.” Almost 20,000 of these died, and thousands of them remain interred in two separate American cemeteries under the purview of the American Battlefield Monuments Commission, the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial near Anzio (around 8,000 buried) and the Florence American Cemetery in Tuscany (around 4,500). Similarly, around half a million Italian Americans served in WWII, thirteen of whom earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of them being the iconic John Basilone.
Sitting at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, Italy’s modern strategic significance is self-evident to anyone who looks at a map. During the Cold War, the Mediterranean basin was a particularly sensitive area of confrontation with the Soviet bloc, including within Italy itself, with the northern port city of Trieste being mired in bloody disputes between Western Allies and Yugoslavian troops (partly a relic of that region having been a longstanding part of the Austo-Hungarian Empire). Italy contributed to NATO’s general defense and deterrence efforts during the Cold War, participating in NATO-led exercises and training. It also participated in NATO’s then new air defense system, the NADGE, (NATO Air Defense Ground Environment); hosted an anti-submarine research center in La Spezia (today’s Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation) to galvanize NATO’s ability to counter the Soviet submarine fleet; and offered Rome to be the second home to the NATO Defense College when it had to move from Paris in 1966 because of France’s withdrawal from the NATO integrated military structure.
With its geographical location, Italy anchors NATOs southern flank and serves as a gateway to Africa. Italy thus not surprisingly hosts on its territory several Allied bodies, including Allied Joint Force Command Naples, which has responsibility for NATO Strategic Direction-South HUB, itself designed to increase NATO’s understanding of the regional dynamics of North Africa, the Middle East, the Sahel, Sub-Saharan Africa and adjacent areas. Italy also hosts at Poggio Renatico the Deployable Air Command and Control Centre, whose mission is to prepare elements for worldwide operational deployment.
Of particular interest to Americans, Italy, after Germany, currently hosts the largest number of American military personnel (30,000) in Europe, stationed across several bases, from Aviano Air Base in Northeastern Italy (home to the USAF-31st Fighter Wing); Vicenza (USAG Italy) in Vicenza (home to the USA-173rd Airborne Brigade); NAS Sigonella in Sicily (US Navy and NATO); NSA Naples in the Naples area (USN- Sixth Fleet Headquarters); to Camp Darby in Tuscany (US Army- Logistics & Support.) Nearly 2,000 local Italians work at these bases, and these feel the vagaries of US domestic politics in the most tangible ways—for instance in their pocketbooks, when their paychecks don’t arrive because of a US government shutdown, as happened last October.
But also of note, since it prompted much misunderstanding within the United States recently in relation to the ongoing Operation Epic Fury in Iran: Italy retains ownership of the land on which these US military installations reside; unlike as in some countries such as Germany and Japan, the United States doesn’t have full sovereignty over its Italian installations. The United States operates as a tenant under formal agreements, and so its operational decisions, especially when for non-routine missions, often need explicit and prior Italian approval, which often means involving the Italian Parliament.
The value of Italy’s geostrategic position has not disappeared with the end of the Cold War. Italian national security is primarily affected by strategic and military developments in the European continent and the wider Mediterranean, including its appendixes—the Sahel, the Persian Gulf, and the South Caucasus. Whether or not one agrees with the parameters of or the designation that Italy is a “middle diplomatic power,” Italy has undeniably continued to be central to US and NATO operations in the Balkans and the Middle East. On the operational level, Italy supported the missions in Bosnia in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan in concert with the US from 2001-2021, where it played a major role in evacuating Afghans and others in the wake of America’s sudden, disastrous withdrawal from the country. Italy continues to play a key role in missions to Iraq and Kosovo.
Italy also contributes mightily to maritime defense, anti-piracy and freedom of navigation/sea lines of communication efforts, and counterterrorism and humanitarian missions across the Mediterranean and beyond. During the height of the piracy crisis off the coast of Somalia, the Horn of Africa, in the Gulf of Aden, and in the Indian Ocean in the mid-2000s, Italy participated in NATO’s Operation Allied Protector, then Operation Ocean Shield, and currently, in the EU’s Operation Atalanta. It also participates in current high profile joint exercises and drills, like this April’s NATO’s Neptune Strike 26-1 in the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
More economically, trade-and-finance-speaking, in a welcomed (especially by Washington, DC) shift, or re-shifting back, Italy has more recently ostensibly positioned itself to lead Europe’s engagement with the Indo-Mediterranean trade network (IMEC) and the new trade routes it is championing. In 2023, under current Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, Italy withdrew from its ill-advised Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China’s controversial, signature foreign policy project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Critics of that MOU feared that Italy was, quite frankly, inviting a known economic and ideological wolf straight into the European henhouse both theoretically and physically, via the Trieste port.
With proximity to major European cities like Vienna, Munich, and Milan, along with enviable access to Europe’s industrial heartland of northern Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and parts of Eastern Europe, Trieste is in the running for Europe’s prime entrepôt for eastern trade and thus being the anchor to the IMEC. As two Atlantic Council fellows have put it in The National Interest, “Trieste could be as pivotal to Europe’s trade with the Indo-Pacific as Rotterdam is to the Atlantic, enhancing the interests of the United States, Europe, and Indo-Pacific nations alike.”
And in terms of already-existing industrial ties between Italy and the United States, there currently exist around 6,000 Italian companies operating in the United States, employing around 300,000 workers, chiefly in New York and Florida. America, on the other hand, is the leading non-European investor in Italy, with foreign direct investment totaling $29 billion USD in 2023.
Among these companies both American and Italian are manufacturing and defense related companies. Ever since Italy joined in steel production spurred on by the needs of the Korean War, which itself helped to propel Italy’s postwar “economic miracle,” Italian firms like Fincantieri and Leonardo have operated manufacturing facilities in the United States. Reciprocally, US defense manufacturers today such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, and Northrop Grumman, have a strong presence in Italy. This reciprocal relationship provides a solid foundation for Italy to demonstrate its credible commitment as a strong defense partner for America. A tangible, positive development along these lines has been the first-ever bilateral space dialogue between the United States and Italy, the second iteration of which just occurred this April in Washington, DC.
Once could argue that the ties that bind the United States to Italy began when Christopher Columbus of Genoa, Italy, set off to find a new trade route and stumbled into America instead. Or that they began in 1507 when the first world map applying the name America to the New World was published under the title Universal Geography According to the Tradition of Ptolemy and the Contributions of Amerigo Vespucci and Others, and decorated with prominent portraits of Ptolemy and Amerigo Vespucci. Or perhaps, when the Founding Fathers, namely “Publius,” made the public case to the newly independent Americans to adopt the US Constitution, via a comparative study of prior political regimes, including, quite prominently, the Roman Republic. Or perhaps, the real ties began eighty years ago when Italy became a democracy. But what can’t be denied is that the ties are there, and that there is much to celebrate about them. Sante.