Enrico Borghi has been a member of Italy's Chamber of Deputies since 2013, is a member of Copasir, the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic, and is the Democratic Party's head of security policy. He has also served as President of Uncem, the National Union of Mountain Municipalities, Communities and Authorities, and Vice-President of ANCI, the National Association of Italian Municipalities, and is the author of Piccole Italie. Le aree interne e la questione territoriale (Small Italies: Inland Areas and the Territorial Question), published by Donzelli.
This interview addresses Italy's national security as it faces the challenges of the new decade: emerging threats, cybersecurity, changes in the global and Mediterranean geopolitical landscape, and the role and evolution of the Italian institutions responsible for safeguarding national security.
Mr Borghi, you are a member of Copasir and the Democratic Party's head of security policy. What does working on national security in Italy mean at this moment in history? What are the main threats that need to be addressed?
Enrico Borghi: We have entered a very fluid phase of our history, in which the arena of economic confrontation has expanded and the stability of traditional political alliances has dissolved. The end of the East-West military confrontation, the increasingly competitive and conflictual nature of capitalism, the use of information to influence the political and economic order, and the new era of the knowledge economy have changed the character of our times. The scenarios of globalisation, in which the clash between the ‘two capitalisms’ described by Branko Milanović is increasingly apparent, require us to interpret the defence of the state's independence and national territory in contemporary terms. Today national security rests on pillars such as energy, finance and the economy, cyberspace, aerospace and the defence industry, and the healthcare system. These sectors can no longer be governed as separate domains; they must be brought within a ‘National Security Strategy’, because what happens within them closely affects all our lives, as individuals and as a community.
What is Copasir's role in protecting national security? Over time, have practices developed that differ from, or go beyond, those provided for in Law 124/2007?
Enrico Borghi: Copasir's role has been changing because the traditional concept of intelligence is changing. Law 124 dates from 2007, the ‘belle époque’ of globalisation. Back then the digital world practically did not exist, cyber threats were in Hollywood films, and people envisaged the magnificent and progressive fortunes of liberal capitalism following China's accession to the WTO. Our intelligence system has progressively adapted to the new context, profoundly altered after the financial crisis at the end of the 2010s and now by the health and economic crisis caused by the pandemic. It was inevitable that Copasir should follow this transformation in its activities. This clearly raises questions about updating Law 124.
In Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, the dialogue between the Athenians and the ambassadors of the Melians, inhabitants of a small island in the Cyclades, sets out one of the great corollaries of international relations. The Athenians assert: ‘In human deliberations, justice is recognised where there is equal necessity on both sides, while the stronger do what they can and the weaker yield.’ Bearing in mind the enduring importance of asymmetries of power, what international alignment do you believe will protect Italy's fundamental interests in a context of bipolar confrontation between the United States and China and the growing militarisation of the Mediterranean?
Enrico Borghi: Thucydides has an urgent contemporary relevance: his teaching underpins China's actions, and it is no coincidence that, at his first meeting with Trump, Xi Jinping cited the parable of the ‘Thucydides Trap’ to point out the parallels between the twenty-first century and the fifth century BC, with Washington and Beijing in place of Sparta and Athens. Xi cites Thucydides repeatedly because he wants to send a very clear message to the West. In his view, the declining power, the United States, must resign itself to making room for the rising power, China. We must be extremely careful, because when the ‘Thucydides Trap’ sprang in the twentieth century between the British Empire and the rapidly rising Wilhelmine Reich, the world plunged into the tragedy of the Great War, which set off a series of historical repercussions that shaped the entire ‘short twentieth century’ until the fall of the Wall in 1989. The explicit aim of Xi's China, a firm believer in the superiority of its political model combining communism, nationalism and free-market liberalism, is to demonstrate to the world the efficiency and superiority of the Chinese model. Let us not forget that China sees itself as a ‘civilisation-state’ before a ‘nation-state’, drawing on the idea of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ as a Confucian constant of China's emperors. Along these lines, with the ‘Shanghai Pact’ of 2014 and the signing of Sino-Russian agreements on energy and military cooperation, it has entered into a strategic partnership with Russia. A clear confrontation between democracy and autocracy has opened up, and Italy is both a new frontier of the ‘Cold War of the third millennium’ and an intersection between the three greatest global powers. Defeating domestic sovereigntist nationalism is the prerequisite for rebuilding democratic purpose and the strategic Euro-Atlantic relationship, which is a community of values before it is an economic and military one. In this sense, our international alignment cannot and must not waver, in the knowledge that extremely delicate contests are taking place close to our national borders in the so-called ‘Wider Mediterranean System’, and of the need to align an essential alliance such as NATO with the new scenarios. Within it, European strategic autonomy must flourish as an element of responsibility and awareness.
During some recent emergencies faced by Italian governments, sections of the political parties have expressed discomfort with choices centred on the use of military instruments or approaches judged to be expressions of realpolitik. In your view, is there really a dilemma for governing parties that inherit the Republic's founding political traditions between pursuing their ideals and the imperative of security?
Enrico Borghi: I would not confuse the positions of individuals or factions with the political lines of the parties. As far as the Democratic Party is concerned, the line is very clear, and the actions of Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini provide authoritative confirmation of it. The recent military withdrawal from Afghanistan has made the true nature of our missions clear: by their characteristics and under the Constitution, they operate under a mandate aimed at building peace and justice. As has been seen and understood, our service personnel in Herat and Kabul were defending peace, the dignity of women and the process of opening up that society. If we want to be consistent when proclaiming these principles, we must be prepared to act to implement and defend them. That is how politics is done; otherwise, we remain in the drawing room of the ‘beautiful souls’.
In September 2021 we witnessed the heated exchanges between Paris and Washington over the creation of the AUKUS military alliance in the Pacific, bringing together Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the sale of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia by the United States. A dispute substantially linked to large contracts for the French defence industry, ultimately awarded to US companies, thus generated renewed and serious friction between the two allies. Looking at our own country, by contrast, Italy's defence industry appears able to maintain and strengthen a solid relationship with its American counterpart, as highlighted in the Atlantic Council study The US-Italian Defense Relationship: A Strategic and Industrial Partnership. Why do you think this result is possible, and why is it important for Italy's international standing?
Enrico Borghi: For the reasons mentioned above, Italy is the European partner with the greatest interest in maintaining a stable and strengthened partnership with the United States, within a framework of permanent structured European cooperation and by contributing to the ‘NATO 2030’ process, in order to build modern security and defence policies that perform more effectively in response to the often aggressive initiatives of old and new competitors. With this in mind, military capabilities must be integrated to undertake missions and operations effectively. Italy, moreover, is among the largest European contributors to the budget. It is therefore natural for it to play a significant role both in strengthening NATO's European pillar and in sustaining dialogue with an essential ally such as the United States.
You have repeatedly supported Italy's entry into the English-speaking Five Eyes military alliance, comprising the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which focuses on intelligence operations. Italy should therefore seek membership with the aim of becoming the Mediterranean extension of an existing group of countries bound by exceptionally strong ties of background, identity and interests. What might lead to Italy being accepted into such a restricted circle? Could there be a clash between Italy's Mediterranean and European interests and the potentially different interests of the alliance's other members?
Enrico Borghi: The Mediterranean is an extremely sensitive theatre, even more sensitive than the South China Sea, where the new ‘limes’, or frontier, of twenty-first-century geopolitics is taking shape. In the Mediterranean, tensions and pressures intersect that are directly connected to the contemporary balance of power: energy, logistics, migration and telecommunications, but also the meeting of great monotheistic religions and cultures stretching back millennia. Libya's experience teaches us that, if one operates in this theatre according to the nineteenth-century dynamics of the ‘Concert of Nations’ and those of a creeping late imperialism, democracies emerge defeated. The Mediterranean is the connecting link with Africa, newly colonised by Chinese hegemony, and both Erdoğan's neo-Ottomanism and the new Russian outlet to warm seas established by Putin face onto it. Beyond this intersection of key global nations, this perimeter is also animated by the impulses of jihadist movements, the risk of entire populations drifting towards Islamic fundamentalism, the ever-sensitive and volatile issue of the Middle East, and the balance within the complex Arab world and between it and Israel. In other words, it is here that the destiny and future of democracies will be decided, along with their capacity to prove themselves better than autocracies by affirming values, rights and models of civilisation. Expanding Five Eyes to this perimeter, with a driving and active role for Italy, which by its nature stands apart from neocolonial approaches and could therefore be welcomed by many actors on the ground, fits within this direction. We will discuss it with our allies.
Following the expansion and internationalisation of markets for goods and services in the late 1980s, and the partial demilitarisation of international threats, sections of French public opinion and political-science and economic literature increasingly turned their attention to issues of ‘economic warfare’. This referred to the national protection of domestic markets and the ‘occupation’ of foreign markets by national companies backed by central government. You yourself have referred to the need to replicate France's efforts to build coordinating structures dedicated specifically to economic intelligence. If the principal directions of Italy's military security look east and south, where should we identify the threats to the protection of Italy's economy and business system?
Enrico Borghi: The report that the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic submitted to Parliament on 5 November 2020, following a unanimous vote, outlines a number of features in this respect. It stressed the need to raise the level of attention and scrutiny concerning interference by foreign actors in national sectors and companies, emphasising that some industrial transactions might be driven not only by economic motives but also, or solely, by political strategies, in many cases linked more or less indirectly to sovereign states. Telecommunications is certainly the most striking example, and Copasir also took a position on this in December 2019, calling for Chinese companies to be excluded from the implementation of 5G technology. The penetration of Chinese capital into Italy's economy has certainly grown exponentially: foreign direct investment from China rose from 573 million in 2015 to almost 5 billion in 2019, a tenfold surge in four years, in strategic sectors such as energy, networks and companies with strong strategic and innovative potential. Nor is French activism in banking, finance and insurance any secret, or the presence of major international funds, including sovereign funds, among the shareholders of some leading Italian banks. One central point needs to be understood: the crises we are experiencing, together with the current industrial and commercial landscape, require us to consider the concept of ‘economic warfare’ very carefully. Most governments today no longer pursue the classic objective of conquering new territory or establishing dominion over new populations. Instead, they seek to build technological, industrial and commercial capabilities that can attract money and employment to their own territory. Until the ‘belle époque’ of globalisation, we, at least in the West, lived in the conviction that liberalism was an end in itself, that it had achieved global hegemony after Fukuyama's concept of the ‘end of history’ and with the neoconservative precepts of exporting democracy around the world manu militari, by force of arms. We have woken from that bubble and realised that this is not the case. The idea that world trade is structured solely by supply and demand is fading, making room for ‘political capitalism’, through which nation-states intervene in the market to pursue strategic and geopolitical objectives. To lack one's own economic intelligence in this context is to be blind in a world where the sun illuminates the entire landscape.
On 4 August 2021, with the conversion into law of the ‘cybersecurity’ decree-law, the National Cybersecurity Authority was established. The agency will also incorporate the Cybersecurity Unit of DIS, the Department of Information for Security, and will receive resources from the PNRR, Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan. How could the PNRR's funds and loans be used to improve the country's cybersecurity? What role will the agency play within the National Cybersecurity Perimeter?
Enrico Borghi: Cyber issues are indispensable today. The so-called ‘infosphere’, meaning the totality of contributions, messages and communications exchanged through the internet and the media, is one of the essential actors in the ‘economic warfare’ I mentioned earlier. More broadly, it is a place where tensions, insecurity and subversive projects can germinate. Capitol Hill offers a lesson. The figures, moreover, speak for themselves: in 2020 Italy experienced 1,871 cyberattacks, an increase of 91.2% compared with 2014, with a monthly average of 156 attacks, five a day! The creation of the Cybersecurity Agency is therefore an obvious, unavoidable and essential requirement for protecting national interests in this field. The PNRR allocates 620 million euros to cybersecurity in public administration, to strengthen personnel and security, and we in the Democratic Party fought hard for this. Without securing the entire cyber framework of public administration, the Recovery Plan's investments, and more generally those linked to the country's economic and productive recovery, are at risk. And this is a risk we absolutely cannot afford. The Agency will play a key role as a hub and organiser, bringing together expertise that is currently dispersed and coordinating the actions of the various public and private actors, to make the decisive leap forward that Italy must make in this sensitive and fundamental sector. Let us remember that digitalisation is an unavoidable step: businesses that do not become digital will simply disappear. The slowness of digital infrastructure, combined with its potential insecurity, costs us dearly. This is also a sector where we can release the energy of two groups in society, young people and women, who are essential to a recovery for the country that is truly of high quality and, if I may say so, democratic.
In the US government's decision-making on foreign policy, military affairs and domestic security, a decisive role is played by the National Security Council, or NSC, established by President Harry Truman in 1947. Over the decades, it has demonstrated its effectiveness as a body for bringing decisions together, enabling the role of the National Security Adviser to grow in importance. Do you think the Interministerial Committee for the Security of the Republic, or CISR, plays a comparable role in decision-making on national security? Are there reforms you would suggest as necessary?
Enrico Borghi: By deciding to concentrate the functions of senior direction and overall responsibility for cybersecurity policy in the office of the Delegated Authority for the Security of the Republic provided for by Law 124/2007, the Italian legislature has taken a step towards the figure of a ‘National Security Adviser’, whose role is divided between CISR and CIC, depending on whether the subject is intelligence or cybersecurity. If we consider everything we have said so far about economic intelligence, and, for example, the choices made by a country such as France, which has established a dedicated secretary for this area reporting to the President of the Republic, we can understand the scale of the issue. It is one of the questions linked to updating Law 124, to reconcile efficiency and balance, powers and countervailing powers, checks and balances that are essential and fundamental in a democratic system.