IRDISP-RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR DISARMAMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE

ABSTRACT: Fine that there is the arms race, but what has Italy to do with it? Aren't the U.S. and the Soviet Union the promoters of such race? It is true that the two superpowers are the chief responsibles for the arms race. The chief one, not the only ones. Italy has its share of responsibility as well. A smaller share, but not a negligible one.In absolute numbers, Italy's military expenditure in 1985 was the eighth of the world. As regards the number of men at arms, it is among the first fifteen countries. And the Italians are in the first six positions among the world exporters of armaments. The weight of the military sector on the whole of the Italian economy is still rather limited: The expenditure accounts for 2.7% of the gross domestic product; arms represent 2.7% of the wealth produced by the industry, and 2.3% of the exports. Moreover, the military threats to the security of Italy are less serious than those which many other international actors have to face - including many of our allies. Therefore

, Italy is in a situation that offers many opportunities to contain the expenditure, experiment conversions to civilian uses of the military productions, and promote a realistic security policy aimed to achieve the detente.

Unfortunately, these opportunities are dropped. In fact, there has been a tendency to expansion over the last decade which must be urgently stopped. As of the mid-seventies, Italy has become one of the major exporters of weapons systems, and its military expenditure exceeds the annual growth rates decided at the NATO level. That same period marks the rise of the supporters of a "new military role" for Italy in the Mediterranean. The "White Paper" presented by the Minister of Defence Spadolini in winter 84-85 summarizes and pinpoints these developments, obviously from the point of view of a person who supports them and hopes that they will continue. This book on the contrary highlights the doubts, the questions, the alternative proposals compared to what has been to this moment a monologue carried out by the establishment.

("ITALY AND THE ARMS RACE" - A counter-White Paper of defence - edited by Marco De Andreis and Paolo Miggiano - Preface by Roberto Cicciomessere - Franco Angeli Libri, 1987, Milan)

PREFACE

The chronic incapacity of the national armed forces to generate what is commonly referred to as the collective good of security, the dispersion, the distraction, the unwise use of the large financial means allotted for defence, the consolidation of a rearmament policy which is heavily influenced by the interests of the "lords" and "merchants" of the war, and lacking any strategic vision, the resistance afforded by the Administration of Defence to the control of Parliament, is what emerges from the chapters dealing with Italy contained in the "report" on the state of the defence for 1986, developed by the Irdisp.

We all perceive a growing sense of insecurity and impotence in the face of the old and new threats, an insecurity which seems to be increasing rather than diminishing, precisely with the increase in the resources allotted to defence and with the improvement of the war instruments which should dissuade the enemy from engaging in a war. The process of modernization of the national military apparatus, and even the defensive doctrines adopted by the military and political leaderships, appear to be increasingly indifferent to the new demands for security which the complex mechanisms of the international system require of the international community. The strategic choices, and the choices relative to the composition and structure of the military apparatus seem to be rather the subproduct of industrial, commercial, occupational, lobbyist interests, and of interests related to international political choices which are passively accepted; in other words, independent variables with respect to the demands for security.

It is self-evident that the prevalence of these interests - legitimate or illegitimate - and the passive acceptance of the marginality of the military apparatus with respect to the problems of security, necessarily lead to the transfer of the decision-making powers from the constitutional bodies to the economic, political and corporative oligarchies that detain those interests.

Moreover, if we relinquish the narrow national dimension, we see that two apparently conflicting tendencies operate in the international community: the ones that play on the fears of a nuclear holocaust, and the ones that rely on the reassuring force of a combination formed in equal parts by the display of more and more sophisticated and destructive weapons and the promise of final agreements and disarmaments.

There arises the suspicion that the widespread fear for the "day after" is deliberately used both by those who claim to deny the imperative of defence and the very existence of the threats in the name of the imperative of survival, and by those who claim to want to free us from the nuclear nightmare, by selling us the illusion of a total and perfect defence.

With the two essays on the strategic defence initiative and on the U.S.'s strategic policy, the theoretical limits and the deviations in the defensive policies which can be found in our country appear to be amplified in the American empire.

The essay, apparently only of a technical nature, on the apportionment of the burden of defence among the NATO countries, introduces us on the contrary into the core of the contradiction between the demand for security and the inadequacy of the current national and integrated defensive structures of the West.

While it is true that the European countries respect the decided shares of apportionment of the expenditure inside NATO, as proven in particular for Italy in the chapter which analyses the defence budget, it is equally uncontroversial that there is a political agreement, which is unwritten but agreed upon with satisfaction by all parties, according to which Europe entrusts the tasks of the common defence to the American empire, and the U.S. reward Europe's obedience to this role of power by assuming the heaviest military burdens.

Regarding this point, it should be acknowledged that the European rulers' determination to give up an autonomous role in the European security is surely stronger than the ambition of the 234 million Americans to ensure the defence of the 367 million Europeans. Hence the periodic revolts of those American senators who ill tolerate the parasitism of Europe, and find it hard to understand why the Europeans should not claim for themselves the burdens and the honours of an autonomous defence, while in the context of the Atlantic Alliance. Hence also the surprise of the United States in the face of the outbursts of sovereignty of the "subject" - by its own choice - who suddenly starts to accuse the "emperor" of violating elementary principles of international and national law, as in the case of the accident of Sigonella. Also, the anger of having to suffer a no-fly measure for its aircraft imposed by allies who are not willing to risk their business and their tranquillity not even on the front of the struggle agai

nst international terrorism.

However, the deep reason for the inadequacy of the defensive structures lies in the national and prevalently military conception of security, and in the principle of national sovereignty which the Western countries, as well as all countries represented in the United Nations, seem to cherish. The contradictions denounced in the "report" on the state of the defence originate from the impossible coexistence of national defensive structures and strategies and integrated defensive structures and strategies. If it is impossible to understand the complex logic and mechanism of the "international system", on the basis of a State-centred conception, if today the centrality of the defence of the national borders in the strategic theories can no longer be sustained, if it is absurd and an insoluble contradiction to request the absolute defence of the national sovereignty and at the same time the efficiency of the international guarantees and controls, if it is impossible for a nation to guarantee the security of its ci

tizens autonomously, then why are national instruments and strategies conceived, while partially integrated on the basis of agreements of mutual assistance?

It is not only a historical and cultural inheritance of an epoch in which the distances between the continents represented a limit which could hardly be overcome by the existing technologies. The basis of this theoretic contradiction, once again, is the short-sightedness of the national rulers and the interests of the national military-industrial complex. Only by opposing every logic of rationalization, of reduction of the costs and of the efficiency, with the alibi of the productive self-sufficiency which would be a guarantee of national independence, the industries of the national defence can guarantee their existence and their profits versus the laws of the market and the interests of the State. Otherwise they would be brutally reduced in size.

And if the alibi of self-sufficiency does not seem clear enough, there is the occupational blackmail: the 465 new jobs in Gioia Tauro should justify the autonomous production of the "Milan" anti-tank missile, with a 60% rise in the cost compared to the direct purchase abroad, corresponding to about 350 billion lire of the 940 of the entire program. 752 million is the cost which the Italian tax-payer pays for each worker, in addition to the market price of the weapon system.

This is the explanation for that sleight of hand which has transformed the 3,380 billion authorized by Parliament in 1976 for the modernization program of three armed forces, into the 35,210 billion of 1986. Even if we inflate the first value to 1986 currency (12,766), there still remains a 36% annual average increase. Therefore, we have a program for the acquisition of the war instruments which is determined almost exclusively by the requirements of the industries and of the political groups and lobbies, which leads to a series of casual and uncoordinated purchases and to serious "gaps" in the defensive system: if 500 billion are squandered on the purchase of a useless aircraft carrier, this will imply that the long-, medium- and short-distance anti-aircraft system will be insufficient.

If to this we add the claim of our generals and politicians, of facing five interforce missions, from the defence of the "threshold" of Gorizia to that of the Southern "flank", from the air defence to the operative defence of the territory, to actions for peace, security and civilian protection in Italy and abroad, we can understand why our military apparatus is incapable, regardless of any other judgment on the limits of an exclusively military defence, of guaranteeing the collective good of security.

But even armies with a higher level of "efficiency" compared to ours reveal the limits of a national conception. It is the case of the French armed forces, and of their "force de frappe" which claims to ensure autonomously the defence of France and of its territories and interests overseas. But, for example, without the American early warning system, the French defences would be totally blind with respect to the missile forces of the Warsaw Pact. But apart from these considerations, it is hard to pinpoint the moment at which France should consider its national defensive interests jeopardized. Would a limited attack against West Germany, carried out with conventional and chemical weapons, which managed to win the allied conventional forces, represent a lethal threat for France, such as to force it to intervene? The answer is only in theory affirmative, but the possibility that such offensive action would induce France to use nuclear weapons is far less certain. The danger of a retaliation on its territory, an

d the unlikely consent of the German government to the use of tactic nuclear weapons on its territory, would probably discourage this type of military reaction.

Once again, we would be confronted with the incapacity of the most sophisticated Maginot line to contrast acts of war. That is why regardless of its autonomist aspirations, France is also forced to participate actively, in the Atlantic Alliance, to that particular form of defensive integration which unites Europeans and North Americans.

While the "gaps" and the unknown factors in the American atomic umbrella are no less alarming than those of the more modest French nuclear system, it is out of question that the U.S. defensive and security policy, regardless of other types of judgments, cannot be limited to the military means. The U.S., in other words, administers autonomously and also on behalf of Europe, a complex and vast action of political, economic and strategic confrontation with the other Soviet empire. The alternative, in other words, is not between national defence and supranational defence. Only the second one is possible. Obviously this does not not necessarily lead to accept NATO's current policy.

"The imperial unity under the aegis of the U.S." - stated Altiero Spinelli [2] - "is no doubt extremely humiliating for our peoples, but it is superior to nationalism because it contains an answer to the problems of the European democracies, while the return to the cult of the national sovereignties is not an answer. The unity achieved by the Europeans is in fact the only, true alternative to the imperial unity. The rest is the froth of history, not history".

No doubt, a difficult future awaits those who want to conceive a European defence on new and supranational bases, in the context of the process of political union of Europe.

We need to acknowledge the fact that the Western culture, in its various components, and the political families that represent it in the democratic institutions, are incapable of providing satisfactory answers to the crisis which is currently affecting the international system. It is a crisis that threatens the individual, as a subject of freedom and of social and economic progress, and his life, in the industrialized North as in the underdeveloped South, in a complex mechanism of interdependence. The West, instead, insists on separating the elements of this international crisis, especially along the two axes of the East-West and North-South strife, and secondarily among the continental and national subsets, and to taken into account only some elements of the equilibrium of the forces, chiefly the military and economic ones of the two superpowers.

We refuse to acknowledge that the war has been under way for many years in the South of the world, deceiving the citizens on the inviolability of the border between the rich North and the South, devastated by hunger and wars. On the other hand, there is an underestimation of the historical superiority, in the medium-short term, of the totalitarian regimes compared to those based on a democratic and parliamentary power.

On the one hand, it is held that the strife and the anger of the Third World will never seriously involve the industrialized West, without counting the human, political and economic price which the West will need to ensure to try to contain the fanaticism and nationalism which are growing and thriving on our mistakes in the South of the world, to coexist with the extermination of millions of people of starvation and underdevelopment. On the other hand, there is a mental reservation about the democratic-parliamentary model, i.e. the belief that political democracy could be possible only in a specific context of society and culture. All the most reasonable Western democrats believe that the vastest totalitarian regime, the Soviet one, as the Arab totalitarian regimes, should be realistically legitimated as the condition to negotiate peace and security.

It is the spectre of Nazism, which is rekindled in the tragic deception of stopping new forms of Nazism.

There still lacks the awareness that the authoritarian regimes represent in themselves a threat to security.

We need to acknowledge that the totalitarian regimes can decide outside of any bond determined by the democratic and parliamentary debate, outside of any control or reaction determined by a free and widespread information, in a more rapid and dangerous way. If these regimes perceive a military and strategic superiority combined with elements of internal weakness, they can even decide serious military actions, the consequences of which cannot be estimated.

Gorbachev may win on the table of negotiations because he can, almost without restrictions, play ruthlessly in all fields. No one is asking him to question the true element of force of the U.S.S.R. which tips the scales, far more than the missiles or nuclear warheads, between East and West, and which threatens the international security.

Even if he will have to give up a couple of missiles, Gorbachev, whose desire to start a process of modernization of the Soviet society I am not questioning, will maintain the possibility and the force to undertake any aggressive action thanks to the totalitarian and military-police control of his empire and of the media, which he will never give up precisely in order to overcome any resistance to his policy.

The only alternative is that of upholding and imposing on the totalitarian states the principles of the necessarily slow, contractual and contradictory decision-making process of a democratic state, as the only effective and experimented, while imperfect, obstacle against the temptation to wage wars. Giving up a priori the only and single force of deterrence, that of democracy and freedom, is a political suicide. But to do this, the Western democracies should revise their policy of alliances, the ruthless and cynical coverage of military or racist regimes.

In spite of everything, the twelve countries of the European Community are less involved and less compromised than the United States in such policy. They are more credible, thanks also to the courageous positions which the European Parliament has assumed every now and then on the major issues of justice, civil rights, security and world hunger.

It is utopian to conceive of a European union capable of re-establishing the policy of security?

Already the fact of forcing the public opinion, the media and the political class to discuss the abovementioned issues would represent a major victory and a major achievement.

For example, would we be talking about a military service or a professional army, in the modest terms in which the debate has developed, if only we thought of the possibility for the young Italians, the young and less young citizens of a politically united Europe, to be actually called to uphold security, peace rather than waste their time in the barracks. If the participation to defence were a duty and a right for everyone, as provided by the Constitution, not only of the males "fit" for martial arts.

If workers, doctors, engineers, teachers could be mobilized on the front of the war against world hunger.

If the best resources of culture and technology were used simply to inform millions of citizens of the East, who are deprived of the primary good of truth - the indispensable condition to benefit from well-being and peace.

If, quite simply, we convinced ourselves and others that it is not true that the borders of democracy, of freedom, of the right to life and justice can be arbitrarily drawn along the Berlin wall or the Sahel desert.

Roberto Cicciomessere

Translator's notes

[1] CICCIOMESSERE ROBERTO. (Bolzano 1948). Radical deputy belonging to the European Federalist Group. Conscientious objector, arrested and convicted; following his initiative, in 1972 this civil right was recognized in Italy. In 1970 treasurer of the Radical party, which he was also secretary of in 1971 and 1984. In 1969 secretary of the LID (Italian League for Divorce), member of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1989. Architect and organizer of "AGORA' telematica", multilingual computer communications system.

[2] SPINELLI ALTIERO. ( Rome 1907 - 1982). Italian politician. During fascism, from 1929 to 1942, he was imprisoned as leader of the Italian Communist Youth. In 1942 co-author, with Ernesto Rossi, of the "Manifesto of Ventotene", which states that only a federal Europe can remove the return of fratricide wars in the European continent and give it back an international role. At the end of the war he founded, with Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and others, the European federalist Movement. After the crisis of the European Defence Community (1956), he became member of the European Commission, and followed the evolution of the Community structures. In 1979 he was elected member of the European Parliament on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), becoming the directive mind in the realization of the draft treaty adopted by that parliament in 1984 and known as the "Spinelli Project".