Lo sguardo italiano sulla nascente geopolitica navale americana (1920)

Abstract

The end of the Great War brought with it a strong downsizing of the Italian, French and Rus-sian naval fleets and, last but not least, and caused the disappearance of the German naval fleet, the lat-ter firmly wanted by William II and itself decisive element of that idea of a "proof of strength" that had been affirmed between the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century. Unexpectedly, as a result of this momentous change, new spaces of commercial opportunity opened up and, above all, new possibilities in the field of the balance of power between the naval powers were disclosed. These ex-traordinary opportunities were clear to the American presidential candidates, who in the early summer of 1920 were competing for the role of republican and democratic presidential candidate. Moreover, Wash-ington had never hidden in the years before the war that it wanted to play a more audacious role at a global level, in full competition with the British Royal Navy. The one, whether democratic or republican, who had won the elections would have had the chance to redesign the US political and naval role at the global level and at the same time guarantee the best commercial platform for American products and manufactured goods. On the basis of the reports of the Italian naval attaché at the Royal Italian Embassy in Washington DC, Piero Civalleri, the paper deals with the launch of the new US naval policy, an in-strument of the future American economic power, whose deductions and analyses were the basis of the future Washington Naval Agreements.