THE UNITED STATES, ITALY AND NATO: AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD ITALY, 1948-1952

After the Second World War the areas of concern to United States foreign policy greatly expanded. One such area in which the United States became involved was Italy. Prior to World War II, the interests of the United States in that Mediterranean nation were minimal. However, with the development of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the United States came to view the security of Italy and its independence from Communist domination as essential to the security of the United States itself.;The policy of the United States toward Italy from 1948 to 1952 is the major area of focus for this dissertation. The United States, at the end of World War II, sought to build Italy into its vision of a strong, stable democratic nation. Once Italian democracy was established, the United States was determined that Italy remain in the Western Bloc of the Cold War. In order to accomplish that goal, Washington increasingly became involved in the domestic affairs of that Mediterranean nation.;The major concern to United States policymakers in developing a policy toward Italy was the powerful Italian Communist Party. Viewing the Italian Communists as a tool of Soviet foreign policy, the United States sought to weaken its influence in the labor movement and to bolster the Christian Democratic Party as a counterforce to the Communists. Believing that economic recovery was essential to weakening the Communist position throughout Western Europe, the United States developed the Marshall Plan for economic recovery in 1947. However, as international tensions mounted due to the Soviet-American confrontation, the Truman Administration came to believe that economic reconstruction could not be completed without a defensive commitment by the United States to Western Europe. Once the commitment of the United States was assured by the North Atlantic Treaty, Washington came to believe that without rearmament, that commitment could not be an effective deterrent to aggression in Western Europe. For that reason, the United States developed the Mutual Defence Assistance Program to build up the defenses of Western Europe, which was accelerated with the beginning of the Korean War in 1950.;This dissertation examines these United States decisions and their impact on Italy. As Italy joined NATO and as they began to build up their defense forces, which were limited by the 1947 Treaty of Peace, Italy faced many economic hardships. Increasingly, as a result of the desire to build up their armaments, Italy sought to remove the limitations placed on their military. The Western revision of the Peace Treaty completed the transformation of Italy from its role as a defeated enemy to a full partner in Western Europe's economic and military organizations.;The foreign policy of the United States during the first years of the Cold War recently has been among the most popular topics for United States diplomatic historians. However, no comprehensive work has been done on the policy of the United States toward Italy during the years 1948-1952, a period of time in which some of the most important decisions relating to Italian-American relations were made and which has formed the basis of the relationship between those two nations for the past thirty years. The policy of the United States toward Italy during those years contained, on a smaller scale, many of the elements present in the overall containment policy adopted by the Truman Administration in 1947.