Arrivederci, Silvio: George W. Bush's Italian problem

NEW YORK The wafer-thin victory of Romano Prodi's center-left coalition over Silvio Berlusconi's center-right alliance is another setback for the Bush administration's foreign policy, and ushers in what is likely to be a complicated period in U.S.-Italian relations.

Berlusconi gave uncritical support to the Iraq war in the face of overwhelming opposition from his own electorate. This hurt him politically, even though Italy's stagnant economy and his own erratic and undignified performance in the election campaign were probably more important factors in his election defeat.

For most of the postwar years, a close association with an American president was a major plus for a European political leader, particularly an Italian one. Alas, those days are now past. President George W. Bush made a major miscalculation when he arranged for Berlusconi to address a joint session of Congress on the eve of the Italian election, and endorsed his re-election in a joint press conference. The Italians, and particularly the leaders of Prodi's victorious center-left coalition, will not soon forget this blatant interference in Italy's domestic affairs, television reports of which were run over and over on Berlusconi's three private television networks as well as on the three state television networks under his control.

Prodi and the leaders of the coalition of reformed Communists and moderate democrats that will form the main element in his government are not anti- American, even though most of them are anti-Bush. During the election campaign, they denounced the decision to invade Iraq as both a strategic mistake and a violation of international law, and made clear that they would withdraw Italy's 3,000 troops in Iraq as soon as possible.

As Prodi emphasized in his television debates with Berlusconi and in his election manifesto, a Prodi government will seek to maintain good relations with America, but will rebalance Italian foreign policy toward its other traditional pillars - the European Union and the Mediterranean (including the Middle East).

Unlike the Euroskeptic Berlusconi government, Prodi will try to promote a common European foreign policy and a credible European military capability. He will also seek more active European involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In Iraq, he will limit Italy's role to helping build democracy and rebuild the economy.

These Italian attitudes deserve understanding from a Bush administration used to enthusiastic Italian support for every U.S. initiative. After all, Italy's center-left has demonstrated before that it can work with the United States for good causes. When he was prime minister in the late 1990s, Massimo d'Alema of the Democrats of the Left, although a former Communist youth leader, gave loyal support to the NATO military campaign to terminate Serbia's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

Bush, who on Friday had yet to contact Prodi with his congratulations, will have to deal with a Prodi government that yearns for what its leaders call "the other America" - the America of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Carter and Clinton, an America that knew how to combine military power with "soft power," attracting the support of foreign countries for American leadership by identifying U.S. interests with theirs. >>>cont

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