ARIANNA ARISI ROTA

La politica del «peso determinante»: nota su un concetto di Dino Grandi

N. 145

Summary — The essay focuses Dino Grandi’s (Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1929 to 1932) view of Italian foreign policy and his characteristic thesis on the "determinant weight" Italy could and was to exert in the European power-system. Grandi's perception of the Italian chances to acquire the internationally recognized role of balancing power was extremely sharp and showed the efforts to combine the actual national power with the actual diplomatic space Italy could take advantage of. Moreover, the working conditions of the determinant weight policy in the 30s recalled the basic problems affecting Italian diplomacy since the time of national unity.

Grandi thought that Italy was to take time and mantain herself independent from any coalition in the European system in order to get material or moral benefits from her "non-alignment" position or, better, from her menacing a support to the German interests as well as, according to the convenience, to the French ones. Such a policy can be interpreted as a form of deterrence relying on merely potential alliance and on its psychological success on both sides of the system: that’s why it stopped working when either Germany (with the Austrian-German customs-union project of 1931) and France (with the British-French agreement of 1932) showed their independence from Italy's diplomatic game.

Yet, in spite of its operative limits, Grandi’s thesis — which has been variously interpreted by historians in the last decades — maintains some positive meaning, since it represents an open-minded attempt to achieve national interests according to national power.