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Italy’s security engagement in Northeast Asia : drivers and outlook
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1830-1541
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EUI; RSC; Policy Paper; 2025/06; Global Governance Programme; [Europe in the World]
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PUGLIESE, Giulio, DELL’ERA, Alice, Italy’s security engagement in Northeast Asia : drivers and outlook, EUI, RSC, Policy Paper, 2025/06, Global Governance Programme, [Europe in the World] - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/78227
Abstract
The sustained security engagement of Italy in the Indo-Pacific appears to serve two main objectives. First, the Italian government is signalling political alignment with its allies and strategic partners in both its words and deeds. Second, techno-economic and mercantile objectives constitute significant drivers of Italy’s Indo-Pacific engagement. As a result, Italy is party to a U.S.-led political concert of ‘like-minded countries’ across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres, a process which took shape under the Biden administration. The dispatch of military assets to the region is sustained by the above two factors. Military exercises in the region constitute signals and a new operational testbed for Italy’s capabilities and assets. The Italian Navy is already involved in multi-country military operations in the Western Indian Ocean and ‘Enlarged Mediterranean’, where Italy’s immediate interests lie. Defence diplomacy further east may foster interoperability with traditional allies and new partners and enhance military capabilities through exercises, as per the Italian Navy’s official framing and narrative. In fact, the strategic merits of deploying important assets in the eastern quadrant of the Indo-Pacific need to be questioned, especially when the deployment diverts a substantial amount of human, economic and physical resources away from Italy’s neighbourhood. The situation is in flux. The likelihood of a more decisive U.S. rebalancing towards Asia, hence of a progressive disengagement from Europe and the Middle East, will inform Italy’s Indo-Pacific defence diplomacy from 2026 onwards. As the U.S. shifts its focus eastward, Washington may expect Italy and Europe to take on a larger share of the military burden in the Euro-Atlantic theatre. On the other hand, Italy’s industrial cooperation with local Indo-Pacific players aims at next-generation technologies, military or otherwise. This, along with potentially lucrative military procurement contracts, will sustain Italy’s security and political intervention. Here too, however, the arrival of the Trump administration may throw some of these cooperative and mercantile goals into question.