PRESS

not been reversed, and, as predicted in the 2012 note,
the ministry has formalized plans to shrink the Italian
military by 40,000 and cut back or delay procurement
programs designed to modernize Italy’s military.
In short, since 2007, resources for training and
modernization have dropped by over 40 percent and
30 percent, respectively. Like other European states
that are reducing numbers of people and platforms,
the pledge is that Italy’s military will be “of smaller
dimensions but with higher quality.” 19 Whether that
will happen remains to be seen.
But the ambitions Italy set for itself a little more
than a decade ago cannot, as the ministry itself made
clear from the start, be fulfilled in the absence of a sustained
increase in defense funds. In this context, was
the fact that Italy was forced to withdraw its aircraft
carrier—the Garibaldi—from ongoing NATO operations
against Libya in July 2011 in order to cut costs
the low point from which the Italian forces will now
move forward, or a harbinger of things to come? 20
ITALY’S MILITARY ABROAD
Italy’s military during the Cold War was principally
focused on defending the country itself. This
strategic posture was reinforced by the fact that, as
one of World War II’s defeated Axis powers, Italy was
reluctant (like post-war Japan and Germany) to be
viewed as believing that its military was for anything
but defending the homeland proper.
To a very limited degree, this attitude toward the
use of the military has changed in Japan in the wake of
9/11. Judging by Berlin’s use of the military in Kosovo,
Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa over the past
decade and a half, it appears that Germany has modi-
16