Strategic Culture and Italy's Military Behavior by Rosa Paolo;

Author:Rosa, Paolo;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

These figures reveal a very marginal sector indeed. This impression is further strengthened by the historical series presented by Fabrizio Battistelli, covering a century of military spending in Italy, which reveal a sharp drop after World War II. While military spending accounted for 35 percent of all public expenditure between 1931 and 1940, between 1945 and 1950 it had dropped to 16.4 percent. In terms of GDP, the former accounted for 12.3 percent, the latter for only 3.9 percent (see tables 2 and 3 in Battistelli 1980: 30, 32).

All these initiatives—the membership of international multilateral organizations, the development of a pacifist constitution, the downgrading of nationalism, the rescaling of the military-industrial complex—ended up contributing to the stabilization of a nonmilitarized strategic culture and weakening the supporters of traditional power politics.[36]

In order to more thoroughly describe the characteristics of the strategic culture established after World War II, we must take a look at the orientation of its key supporters: the Catholic and left-wing political forces.[37] Regarding the former, a distinction should be made here between general Catholic thought on war and the ideas expressed by the Christian Democrat leaders.

Christian doctrine is not prejudicially contrary to war. However, war should only be used in a limited number of cases, for defensive purposes. This is the so-called just war theory developed by medieval Scolastica. The aim of this theory was to reconcile the moral condemnation of war and the reality of international politics. The solution is a middle-of-the-road position between prowar and pacifist attitudes that identifies a limited number of cases in which the use of force is legitimate. The key tenets of the just war doctrine are the following (Dougherty, Pfaltzgraff 1971):

A war may be declared only by persons occupying public office. Only persons vested with superior authority have the right to engage in violence against other people. In other words, only States are authorized to wage war. Private citizens are not entitled to use force to uphold their rights.

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