Pulling Italian troops out of Iraq is not the top priority for the new Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi despite his speech to the Senate calling the war in Iraq a “grave error” and pledging to bring 2,600 Italian troops home.
His primary concern has had to be whether the two houses of Italy’s Parliament would give him a vote of confidence. There was no problem with the Lower House where his coalition has a 70-seat majority. The Senate was the problem. A nail-biting two seats hold his majority there. In the event, he did not need to worry.
Yesterday’s victory in the upper house confidence vote was to be expected: None of coalition supporters in the Senate were going to say no. There are no complaints at present about the coalition. It does not have any skeletons in the cupboard and given that no one wants fresh elections for the moment what was the alternative?
But with such a slender majority in the Senate and a potentially fractious coalition supporting him, the odds on Prodi’s administration remaining intact for long are doubtful. It could last for a year or so before it crumbles back to the old Italian way of coalition collapse, reinstatement after tough negotiation or fresh elections. To those who counter that Italian politics have matured over the past five years, that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s record-breaking administration was also a coalition and that there is no reason why Prodi’s should not survive the full term as well, there is a simple answer: Berlusconi’s coalition partners were far more interested in staying in power than in ideology. Prodi’s mixed bag of partners, on the other hand, put party policy high on their priorities. They are also quite suspicious of each other. The only thing they have in common is their antipathy to Berlusconi. It cannot be long before the bickering starts — which means that the Prodi government is probably going to be preoccupied by political hypochondria.
Nevertheless as far as Iraq goes, there is no question now about Italian troops going home soon to the delight of the majority of Italians. The big difference, though, between Prodi’s pullout pledge and that of the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero following the Madrid bombings two years ago and his dramatic victory three days later is that it will not result in a rift between Rome and Washington, as happened between Madrid and Washington. In part that is because Berlusconi had already announced that troops would return home by the end of the year and the Americans had already adjusted to the fact. Of course, Berlusconi might have changed his mind; 14 months ago he did just that after promising a pullout by September last year. Prodi will keep to his word and may well bring forward the date.
There is, though, another reason why a pullout will not damage relations: Neither side wants it. No US administration can afford to be seen an anti-Italian, given the Italian lobby in the US. And in Italy, no government can afford to be anti-American; too many Italians have relatives in the US. Prodi may have an uncomfortable ride ahead but it will not be because of the Americans.
