Book Review: Western Europe: The Politics of Italian Foreign Policy
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206401900425 |
| Published date | 01 December 1964 |
| Date | 01 December 1964 |
| Author | E. Cappadocia |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
576
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
generalized
values,
one
suspects,
had more
to
do
with
it.
Adenauer
was
even
more
of
a
cad
than
most
other
German politicians,
and
this
touched
the
British
Achilles'
heel,
their
self-righteousness.
Thus
in
Wighton's
book
the
British
are put
down
as
"bad
haters"
who
were
subjected to
ceaseless
"insults
and
rebuff"
by
a
politician
nursing
a
"pent-up
hatred
of
Britain."
Such
a
version
of
Adenauer's
attitude
is,
in
the
opinion
of
the
reviewer,
who
has
gone
through many
relevant
protocols,
exaggerated
to
the
point
of
caricature.
However
it
is
signi-
ficant
that
the
British, normally
rather
aloof,
allowed
their
image
of
post-war
Germany
to
become
so
coloured
by
emotions.
The
fact
that
the
participants
felt
that
their
reform
efforts won
scant appreciation
is
part
of
it,
but
why
did
the
Americans
get
over
their
rebuffs
in
this
respect
so
much
more
quickly?
Because
they
were
further
away?
Or
because
they
had
more dollars?
Or
H-bombs?
Or
because
they
had
no
colonial
tradition
to
live
up
or
down?
One
suspects
that
the
answers
to
such
queries would
make
significant
contribution
toward
explaining
the
events
leading
up to
those
of
January
16, 1963.
University
of
Florida
ARNOLD
J.
HEIDENHEIMER
THE
PoLmcs
op
ITALIAN
FOREIGN
POLICY.
By
Norman
Kogan.
1963.
(London:
Pall
Mall
Press.
Toronto:
Burns
&
MacEachern.
x,
l78pp.
$7.25)
The
foreign
policy
pursued
by
the
Italian
state
since
its
unification
has
reflected
elements
of
tragedy,
if
by
tragedy
we
mean
the
discre-
pancy between
aspirations
and
achievements.
When
the
cheap
bombast
of
Fascism
is
compared
with
Italy's
role
in
the
recent
war,
one
is
reminded
of
Bismark's
comment
that
Italy
had
better
appetite
than
teeth.
In
fact,
after
1870
Italy
was
included in
the
category
of
great
power
only by
virtue
of
diplomatic
jargon. Failure
in
foreign
policy
developed
in
the
country
an
inferiority
complex
that
can
be
overlooked
or
too
easily
exaggerated.
In
a
short
but
important
book
Professor
Kogan
analyzes
the
forces
that
affect
the
formulation
of
Italian
foreign
policy.
He
stresses
the
poverty
of
the
country and
what
he
feels
to
be
its
concomitant, the
materialism
of
a
basically
oligarchical
peasant
society
totally
devoid
of
social
solidarity.
Political
decisions
are
made
by
a
partytocracy
that
seldom
judges
issues
on
their
merit.
He
notes
that
parliament
is
given
little
effective
voice
by
the
government and
that
in
politics
the
motivat-
ing
force
is
not
ideology,
not
even
realism, but
cynicism.
He
feels
that
the
masses
are
indifferent
to
political
issues, especially
those
affecting
foreign
policy,
because
first
a
democratic
government and
later
a
dictatorship
plunged
an
unprepared
country
into a
war
against
the
wishes
of
the
great
majority
of
the
people.
Another
theme
emphasized
by
the
author
is
that
the
prime
goal,
the
principal
issue,
of
Italian
foreign
policy
is
the preservation
of
the
existing
domestic
social
structure
and
the
resisting
of
any
major
social
reform.
Italian
politicians
have
been
willing
to
pay
the
price
of
slavishly
following
American
policy
in
return
for
relative
freedom
of
action
in
domestic policy.
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