Militarization in Italy: from the war economy to the battle of ideas

Rome: The culture of defense embodies the fundamental principle of democratic culture,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said, announcing the first Italian Defense Summit to be held on September 11, 2025. The summit is organized by Il Sole 24 Ore, the most important daily newspaper of Confindustria, the General Confederation of Italian Industry. The newspaper’s name means “the sun 24 hours” meaning that for capital, the sun never goes down, or, in other words: capital never sleeps.

According to the website, the Defense Summit will involve “leading Italian and international players of the [defense] sector, from policy makers to representatives of major companies”. The objective of the Summit is to address key issues such as technological evolution driven by artificial intelligence and the development of cybersecurity – all that because there is an immense potential of the “economic value of the Italian defense industry”.

In that respect, Italy is embracing the global militarization policy which aims to reaffirm the economic, commercial, political and military dominance of US imperialism in the new world order.

What does the current US-led trade war have to do with militarization and the war economy? A closer look at the EU-US agreement on tariffs reached by Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump in Scotland on July 27, 2025, shows how US protectionism against Europe serves above all to the military industry. In fact, the agreement does not only foresee unilateral tariffs of 15% on European products entering US markets, but also huge sums of European investments in the US economy.

Europe has agreed to invest USD 600 billion in the US economy, which is three times the trade surplus that Europe had with the US in 2024. Instead of investing in its own economy, Europe prefers to invest in the US, despite the fact that underinvestment has become a chronic problem in the Eurozone, leading to weak economic growth and a weakening of domestic demand. But how will the European States “force” capital to invest in the US? One of the most plausible hypotheses is that investments will therefore come from large industries, such as – what a surprise! – defense. Defense, despite being private, still has a relative majority stake held by the Treasury or other public bodies.

By the end of 2024, the Italian government approved BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, to hold a stake of more than 3% in Leonardo, Italy’s most important defense and aerospace group. Now, Meloni’s government is working on assuring the best investment conditions to the Italian military industry. It’s not at all surprising as this faction of industrial capital constitutes a key element in Italy’s dominant social bloc.

A couple of days after the EU-US trade agreement, Italy officially announced SAFE (Security Action For Europe), the public loan program designed to finance the defense industry in the context of the Readiness 20230 plan of the European Commission. The main pillar is constituted by €650 billion and depends on the choice of the single EU countries to take on further debt. SAFE, financed by €150 billion, constitutes the second pillar and a common loan program excluded from the budgets of member countries. The loans will have a long maturity of up to 45 years, with a ten-year grace period before repayment begins.

Italy requested access to this instrument in a letter sent to the EU Commission and amounts to €15 billion with a favorable rate. Economy and Finance Minster Giancarlo Giorgetti explained: “It’s an attractive debt because it costs less in interest than BTPs [Italian inflation–linked government bonds, with semi–annual coupons and maturities ranging from 4 to 8 years]. If you tell me I have to pay 3.5% on BTPs or 3% on SAFEs and if the Minister of Economy is not stupid, he’ll say: I’ll pay 3% on SAFEs and save a little interest.”

The Italian government will present the investment plans in November of this year, at the same moment when the State’s budget for 2026 will be presented.

But militarization is not only about money and industrial development, it’s also part of ideological warfare which aims to normalize the militarization efforts inside the Italian population. In the last period, there has been a massive increase of media coverage about the positive role of the army in the Italian society, the new technological developments in the defense sector, and the professional opportunities the army is offering to the youth (a response to the aging of the top levels of the Italian military). Yet little is said about the Italian military operations abroad.

One of the most important presence of the war economy in the social sphere is documented by Antonio Mazzeo in his book “The school goes to war. An investigation about the militarization of education in Italy”. Mazzeo – who was also a member of the last Freedom Flotilla “Handala” – describes how Italian schools are more and more abdicating their educational responsibilities , allowing the armed forces and arms corporations to occupy educational institutions for ideological purposes. Antonio Mazzeo argues: “In parallel to the privatization of the education system, we are witnessing a suffocating process of militarization of educational institutions and of the cultural and educational content itself, similar to the Fascist era: schools are becoming barracks, while barracks are being converted into classrooms to teach student-soldiers devoted to perpetual obedience.”

The examples described are numerous, although little known to the public, from school visits to NATO military bases to so-called pedagogical and cultural activities entrusted by military admirals. It’s a real penetration of the military in everyday life of young people.

But there is also the other side of Italy, the one against war and militarization. The movement against militarization started its new spring in 2022 against the NATO expansion to the East and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was reinforced after October 7, 2023 by mass mobilizations against the genocide in Palestine and the expansion of Israel’s project in the region and by the dockworkers of the country blocking ammunition shipment to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The movement reached its latest peak on June 21, 2025 with the “Disarmiamoli!” mobilization (Let’s disarm them!), when over 30,000 people demonstrated in Rome, against the increase of military expenditure to 5% of GDP as imposed by NATO and the European strategic autonomy.

The anti-militaristic sentiment is confirmed by a CENSIS survey (Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali) which shows that only 25% of Italians support an increase in defense spending, even at the expense of crucial areas such as healthcare and pensions, in order to adapt to living in a more dangerous world. For the majority of Italians, it is much more important to invest in international relations than in arms. The US is not any more considered a central ally, the CENSIS states: “In a world where traditional coalitions are showing increasingly evident cracks, Italians are looking at their historic ally with growing suspicion. Almost half of the population no longer takes US support for granted in the event of war.” In fact, 23% of the participants said that the US was the main source of military threat (a rapidly increasing part of the population).

Furthermore, Italians show no “patriotic fervor” or “ambitions for glory”. Among people aged 18 to 45 – the age group most directly involved in the event of mobilization – only 16% say they are ready to fight a war, 39% define themselves pacifists and would therefore protest, 19% admit without hesitation that they would choose to desert.

Today’s key question is, therefore, how to transform this social majority against war and militarization into a political majority able to chase away those who are already conducting a social war against the people.