Italy and the Middle East

Italy played a vital role in the Cold War dynamics that shaped the Middle East in the latter part of the 20th century. It was a junior partner in the strategic plans of NATO and warmly appreciated by some Arab countries for its regional approach. But Italian foreign policy towards the Middle East balanced between promoting dialogue, stability and cooperation on one hand, and colluding with global superpower manoeuvres to exploit existing tensions and achieve local influence on the other. Italy and the Middle East brings together a range of experts on Italian international relations to analyse, for the first time in English, the country’s Cold War relationship with the Middle East. Chapters covering a wide range of defining twentieth century events - from the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Lebanese Civil War, to the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – demonstrate the nuances of Italian foreign policy in dealing with the complexity of Middle Eastern relations. The collection demonstrates the interaction of local and global issues in shaping Italy’s international relations with the Middle East, making it essential reading to students of the Cold War, regional interactions, and the international relations of Italy and the Middle East.

This book breaks new ground in our understanding of the interests and agency of a middle-ranking European power such as Italy in the Middle Eastern checkerboard. The product of often painstaking analysis of unique primary sources from a variety of Italian governmental archives, this book goes beyond the frequent focus on superpower involvement in the Middle East to deliver a very informative set of analyses by experts of the field of the interactions between republican Italy and a variety of Middle Eastern actors, both state and non-state. A seminal and very important book.

Luciano Monzali is Full Professor of History of International Relations at the University of Bari 'Aldo Moro', Italy. He is the author of The Italians of Dalmatia: From Italian Unification to World War I (2009). Paolo Soave is Associate Professor of History of International Relations at the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy. He is the author of The American Revolution in the Mediterranean (2004) and has published in the New Historical Review.