№ 6 - 2002
Barabanov O.N.
Italy’s Contemporary Foreign Policy Ideology

In his work, the author makes a try to put together into an integral picture those particular features that are determinant for Italy’s foreign policy of the last five years. Out of them the main one consists in that the country seeks to revive its activity on the European and Mediterranean arenas, guided, in so doing, by the principle of partnership with the rest of the Western states, first of all with those leading of them, on the one hand, and with the countries of the Near East, on the other. Priority ideological principles of the country’s foreign policy are in this connection characterized in the article: it’s global transnationalism and liberalism that have been consolidating themselves with especial distinctness in the capacity of such principles in these years; , and it’s at the same time with due regard for moral values — civil rights and constitutional law in its universalistic interpretation — that practical steps undertaken in implementation of these principles have been being realized. Italy’s foreign policy doctrine, as a result, both at the doctrinal level as such and in the practical aspect appears as a principled unity of versatility, as a combination of rigorous allegiance to the adopted common commitments, on the one hand, and activity, independence and initiative, on the other, with enough broad vision of national interests. Thus, it is naturally oriented first of all to cooperation with the NATO, the OSCE, the Council of Europe; at the same time, say, Poland has begun to occupy in these years an especial place within the sphere of Italy’s foreign policy interests as a country whose example in its time, at the junction of the 1980s and 1990s, played an important role for the way the whole of Eastern Europe turned its historical fates, liberating itself from totalitarian heritage. The Italian government is willing to render help also to Russia in her efforts for the integration into the world economy and into the international community. It is, besides, especially noted in the article, that the country seeks to be initiator of an “intercultural dialogue between the West and the Islam”.