Italy flirting with NATO Asia-Pacific expansion

Rome: Italy’s right-wing Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni returned from recent talks with US President Joe Biden that included discussions of how to distance her country from tight economic ties with China.

The discussion was part of NATO’s efforts to “de-risk” – that is, reduce – economic activity with Beijing.

Meloni let it be known she was working to cancel Italy’s participation in China’s so-called Belt and Road Initiative, the trade and infrastructure partnerships that Rome joined four years ago. Meloni indicated Rome could somehow maintain “good relations with China” even as it dropped Belt and Road.

One of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy programs, Belt and Road drives relations with countries from the Pacific to Africa and, in Italy’s case, into Europe.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative was conceived as a new version of the ancient Silk Road between the Han and Roman empires. Map: Library of Congress

No sooner had Meloni returned to Rome from Washington than her defense minister, Guido Crosetto, described Italy’s Belt and Road participation as “improvised and atrocious.”

“The issue today is: how to walk back without damaging relations, because it is true that China is a competitor, but it is also a partner,” Crosetto said.

The Meloni-Crosetto diplomatic duet mirrored Biden’s tricky two-track strategy of dealings with China, which he regards as a combined economic powerhouse and military threat. Washington’s policy couples apparently benign cooperation on issues like trade and carbon emissions reduction with an adversarial approach toward what the US and allies call China’s international “coercive behavior” and challenge to “the rules-based international order.”

Meloni, for example, expressed hopes that benign post-Belt and Road relations with Beijing will continue. But she also steered clear of touting Italy’s other China policy feature: entry into the anti-China arms race. Italy joined the United Kingdom in a partnership with Japan to develop new fighter jets.