Visions and blunders of Americans on the end of the first Republic
Who was there and what was said at the presentation of the book “The End 1992-1994. The end of the first Republic in the American secret archives” by Andrea Spiri, professor of contemporary political history at Luiss
Seen from a super American eye in Rome as the First Republic collapsed. The interpretative lenses of Americans living and working in Italy on 1992-1994: analysts of the State Department at the embassy in Via Veneto, officials of the consular offices, undercover CIA agents, each committed, each in their own field, to provide precise addresses to the heads of overseas administrations.
Andrea Spiri, professor of contemporary political history at the Luiss Guido Carli University, analyzed 20,000 papers declassified by the State Department. But, he observes, "it is only a drop in the sea of documents" on Italy as seen from the USA, in the various branches of the Administration, with even conflicting readings among the various subjects engaged in analyzing us.
In spite of a certain vulgate conspiracy by the USA against the ruling class of the First Republic on what, as judge Anthony Scalia said to his compatriots in the ganglia of power in Italy bordered on "the coup" with the violation of the rules of the state of right, emerges from Spiri's book – The End 1992-1994. The end of the first Republic in the American Secret Archives (Baldini+Castoldi) – that those analysts actually also took blunders.
First they embraced the thesis of the new advancing with Achille Occhetto's PDS, then they began to be disappointed by it and above all, like everyone else, they did not notice Silvio Berlusconi's imminent descent into the field. But it emerges that they did not even defend the ruling class of the First Republic, despite the fact that for the US it had been of decisive support in the Cold War.
No conspiracy theorists, but certainly, says Spiri, at the presentation of his volume at the Centro Studi Americani in Rome, with the director Roberto Sgalla (“A formidable work”, defines it Marcello Sorgi, editorialist of the newspaper La Stampa ), the Americans did not like very much some aspects of the “autonomous policy of Italy”.
In reality, observes Spiri, the US was really annoyed by the fact that Bettino Craxi warned Gaddafi, saving him from the American attack, rather than Sigonella, who later recovered his composure.
Giulio Andreotti, then under investigation for the mafia, for example, was not listened to by the USA when he pointed out, in the context of a policy in line with Craxi on the Mediterranean, that the brutal alternative to Gaddafi was Islamic radicalism, whose danger with Craxi had already glimpsed that ruling class. 92-94, according to Luciano Violante, former president of the Chamber, now at the helm of the Leonardo-Civiltà delle Macchine Foundation, is the start of a US lack of interest in Italy, after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Berlin Wall .
In the debate, moderated by the political journalist of the newspaper Domani , Daniela Preziosi, who reminds Violante of the "justicialism of the left" of those years, Giovanni Orsina, director of the Luiss School of Government, also gives his reading. The political scientist comments: "In reality, with Clean Hands it was the Italians who did a sensational damage to themselves".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/fine-prima-repubblica-presentazione-libro-andrea-spiri/ on Fri, 17 Feb 2023 06:31:26 +0000.