The multilateral security organizations at stake. NATO, OSCE and the Covid-19 emergency: an opportunity into the crisis?

The Coronavirus outbreak showed how nobody was prepared to this crisis and to its economic, social and political implications which now represent the main challenge for political actors. However, if the measures taken by national states to curb the sanitary emergency seem to have partially restored their capacity to address the events, the Covid-19 has struck a significant blow to the already fragile multilateral system, as exemplified by the allegations – some of them based on coherent elements of criticism, other with less objective basis and misleading – to the World Health Organization (WHO). To better investigate the impact of this unprecedented crisis on the international institutions and its implications on security, the present article aims first to shed light on how two important organizations as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), have reacted and are acting to this crisis: an aspect  just partially covered by the public media and that deserves to be better explored to avoid misleading interpretations. Secondly, trying to offer to the national stakeholders and public opinions a useful way to look on the Covid-19’s impact on these forums, the analysis will also reflect on the possibility that this crisis could be turn by the organizations into an opportunity to relaunch themselves and become more aware of the other elements of concern as health risks, climate change and migration which, even not strictly related with the conventional interpretation of security, are posing undeniable aspects of concern. In front of the contradiction between the emerging of complex global challenges and the deteriorating of the multilateral order, this crisis should foster organizations and states to find a new reason to cooperate in answering to the future global threats, recognizing that a better security is possible only through a comprehensive approach

A Missed Rebirth: The Rockefeller Foundation's Involvement in the Economic and Social Development of Sardinia after the Second World War

The stipend from the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) under the Research Stipend Program has provided me with an opportunity to clarify one of the most forgotten pages of the late phase of the "Sardinian Project" i.e., the involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) in the studies for the economic and social rehabilitation and development of the Italian Island of Sardinia in the early 1950s. The issue has been particularly debated in the contemporary history of Sardinia, as well as in the political debate at that time because, despite the initial great interest, the involvement of the American institution (and other international players) did not take place. On the contrary, the economic "re-birth" of Sardinia was possible mainly through the so-called "Rebirth Plan," approved by the local and national governments in June 1962, twelve years after the "missed rebirth."Over the past seventy years, two main positions have emerged in this regard. One agrees that the RF was never involved "for a lira or a dollar" in the planning of Sardinia's socio-economic development. The second one states that the American foundation was, to some extent, directly involved, at least in the preliminary phase. However, to date, both theories have failed to look directly and deeply into the historical record for a more precise and objective reconstruction. This report summarizes the first results of my research conducted at the RAC in September 2022, which aims to gain a better knowledge of this page of local history, that possesses underrated - and largely unknown - national and international implications

Una centrale perifericità. Il Mediterraneo e le organizzazioni internazionali regionali di sicurezza negli anni Settanta e Ottanta: NATO, WEU, CSCE

The research aims to investigate the aspects related to the Mediterranean security within the main European Regional Security Organizations – i.e. the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Western European Union (WEU) e la Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) – during the Cold War, with a particular attention for the 70s and the 80s on the basis of an extensive analysis on new primary sources evidences from the NATO Archives; the CSCE/OSCE Archives; the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU); the National Archives (Kew, Richmond, Surrey, United Kingdom). The PhD thesis - realized with the research perspective of the History of international relations – aims from one side, to shed light on one of the most dispute and neglect themes within the multilateral security organizations as it was (is?) the Mediterranean, contributing to add a missing page in the specific literature; and from the other, the research aims to reflect on how both the multilateral actors and national states perceived the evolution of the Mediterranean security challenges during the Cold War. Related to this aspect, it will be particularly interesting to see how, between the 70s and the first part of the 80s, in the Euro-Mediterranean region started to emerge new security issues from the traditional ones (the Soviet military and political threat), as the growing gap in the the economic, social and demography development between the two shores of the basin; the political and institution fragility of the Maghreb states; the spread of phenomena as the diffusion of WMD, the emerging of the international terrorism and the religious fundamentalism. The research shows as these challenges - some still valid nowadays - were detected by the actors of the basin and discussed within the multilateral framework, but also why and how, however, the organizations and states acted more as spectators than actors, contributing to renewing of the interpretation of the Mediterranean as a central periphery for Europe

Il conflitto tra Russia e Ucraina. La prospettiva storico-diplomatica

Muovendo dalla documentazione esistente, dal fact-checking e dalle testimonianze, il contributo mira a dare una presentazione generale del conflitto tra Russia e Ucraina iniziato nel febbraio 2022 con l'invasione di Mosca, sotto il profilo storico-diplomatic

L’occupazione anglo-americana e la ‘questione triestina’: Cinegiornali e documentari italiani del secondo dopoguerra.

Tra il 1945 e il 1954 Trieste e una parte dei territori della Venezia Giulia furono amministrati dall’Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT). La produzione documentaria e cinegiornalistica che racconta quel particolare periodo storico si offre oggi come strumento importante per analizzare e individuare le diverse forme di costruzione di una memoria nazionale condivisa. In particolare, la ricerca pone l’attenzione sui cinegiornali prodotti da La Settimana Incom e Nuova Luce, nonché sui documentari realizzati sotto l’egida dello United States Information Service, con lo scopo di individuare le caratteristiche principali del racconto storico offerto. I testi filmici presi in esame mostrano come, attraverso un processo selettivo e parziale del trascorso storico, venga definito e ridefinito il recente contesto bellico, favorendo un oblio dialogico ed estromettendo dal discorso qualsiasi senso di responsabilità nazionale. Inoltre, la ricostruzione storiografica e narrativa offerta dalle opere oggetto della ricerca se, da un lato, rafforza e promuove l’identità nazionale, dall’altro accentua la contrapposizione politica e ideologica tra il blocco occidentale e i paesi del Patto di Varsavia. In conclusione, la ricerca mostra il ruolo assunto da queste opere nella descrizione delle vicende del confine orientale, evidenziandone la natura politica e sottolineando la funzione svolta dalla produzione audiovisiva del secondo dopoguerra nel promuovere la costruzione di una “memoria istituzionale”