Michele Marchi - 05/04/2012

     Since his investiture at Palazzo Chigi, Monti has been interim Minister for the Economy, but informally at least he has also run the Foreign Office. Without wishing to detract from the professional credentials of the official incumbent, Giulio Terzi di Santagata, it at once became evident that Monti’s every political decision would be subject to one priority: building up the nation’s credibility and gaining international confidence in the process. From his very first moves, Monti clearly believed his government must face three challenges on the foreign front. One is long-term: Italy has not yet fully digested how in a post-bipolar world she has lost much of her strategic importance, bound up with geographical position, membership of NATO and place in the European Union. 

     The second is medium-term and caused by the foreign policy legacy of Silvio Berlusconi. Monti’s difficulties here are not just due to the last year of scandals that brought the country’s credibility to an all-time low. Monti has had to tackle the out-and-out “privatisation” of foreign policy imparted by his predecessor. In the Berlusconi era institutional relations were obscured by personal relations, involving the chemistry among leaders that so affects Italy’s standing with the rest of the world. Lastly, an immediate challenge: the need to expunge the image of Italy as “the sick man of Europe”. 

     In the face of these three challenges Monti has so far taken steps on three main fronts (to simplify somewhat): Europe, the Euro-Atlantic alliance and Asia. On each front the premier’s basic conviction is that any new projection of international policy rests entirely on regaining largely lost credibility, and such credibility in turn rests on restoring consistency between home policy and foreign policy decisions. This approach has naturally been most evident on the European front. In nearly five months at the helm, Monti has laboured first to prove (by urgent economic measures and longer-term labour reforms) that Italy is no longer part of the Eurozone problem but a key to solving that problem. 

     Secondly, drawing on his ten-year Brussels reputation as Commissioner for the Internal Market and Competition, he has sought the role of mediator between the conflicting viewpoints of Merkel and Sarkozy. If one moves from Europe to relations with Washington, one might be tempted to ascribe his motives to traditional Italian Atlanticism in line with his predecessor. But it was quite clear from his early February State visit that Monti went to Washington primarily as a European “ambassador”. His meeting with Obama was more of a Euro-Atlantic summit than a bilateral Rome-Washington get-together. Monti’s message to that least European of US presidents was that his return to the White House would be bound up with solving the Eurozone crisis. 

     For that task Monti was the man of the moment since Great Britain, the traditional ally, can hardly speak for the Eurozone, Sarkozy is embroiled in a tricky election, and Merkel’s insistence on rigour clashes with Obama’s own on growth. Lastly, on his long tour of Asia in late-March/early April Monti has tried to show that, at least planning-wise, Italy possesses a “global agenda” or that her new political leaders, at least, wish to profit by growth wherever it still occurs (this explains the decision to extend the tour to the Boao economic Forum, a kind of Asian Davos). In short, Italy is trying to open a window of opportunity onto BRICS and China in particular, the powerhouse of the world economy. 

     Monti’s line is to stress the need for his country to invest directly as well as in public securities. Beijing’s first response looks positive, though we shall see in these months to come whether the long Asian tour actually redresses some of the trade balance with China. Since being called to Palazzo Chigi, in short, Monti has been guided by an overriding principle in pursuing foreign policy in a globalised and multipolar world: a country’s international credibility depends on its having coherent domestic policies. Two other principles must also be weighed when judging foreign policy: the burden of a historical legacy, and continuity of basic decisions regardless of changes in the governing majority. 

     On the first score Monti has a lot of work to do in the coming months; on the second and third it will be up to the country as a whole to prove in the medium-long term that it can move beyond the usual image of stumbling from crisis to crisis.

Michele Marchi
(University of Bologna)