Over the past four years, Italy has undertaken an operational leap few analysts would have anticipated. Between 2021 and 2024, Rome progressively intensified its engagement in the Indo-Pacific, a region that for decades had remained on the margins of its security agenda. The 2024 mission of the Cavour Carrier Strike Group, which lasted over five months and spanned the Indian and Pacific Oceans, marked the culmination of this strategic shift. Cooperation agreements with India, Japan, and Australia, new partnerships with regional actors, and a strengthening of naval and industrial capabilities have projected Italy into a strategic theatre that, until recently, seemed far removed from national priorities.
The Indo-Pacific today stands at the heart of great power competition. Here, the main challenges to global security converge: stability in the Taiwan Strait, tensions in the South China Sea, the protection of maritime routes, and the resilience of global value chains. For a country like Italy, whose economy heavily relies on exports and freedom of navigation, these are matters of vital importance. Approximately 40% of global maritime trade passes through this region: ensuring its security is no longer a marginal issue but a goal intertwining foreign policy, industry, and national security.
Yet the economic dimension is only one aspect of Italy’s new activism in the area. The Indo-Pacific has become the crossroads where alliances, balances, and power relations are being reshaped. London and Paris had long reinforced their naval presence to assert influence, and later Berlin also began contributing more to regional stability. For Rome, remaining a mere spectator in these dynamics risked not only political marginalisation but also the loss of valuable leverage in negotiations with Washington.
External Pressures and Internal Choices
Italy’s decision to “look East” results from the interplay of external pressures and domestic dynamics. The decisive push came from the United States, which, starting in 2021, shifted its modus operandi with Rome. Moving away from a defensive stance aimed at dissuading Italy from strengthening ties with Beijing – as in the case of the Belt and Road Initiative or 5G infrastructure – Washington adopted a proactive strategy to involve allies, Italy included, in managing regional security. This pressure operated both through bilateral channels, tied to Italy’s withdrawal from the 2019 BRI Memorandum, and multilateral platforms such as NATO and the Multinational Strategy and Operations Group (MSOG), which promoted increasingly close coordination among like-minded countries in containing Chinese expansion.
The results were tangible. In 2023, the PPA Morosini docked at nineteen ports across eighteen countries, participated in the multinational exercise Komodo 23 in the South China Sea, and contributed to the EMASoH/AGENOR mission in the Strait of Hormuz to safeguard freedom of navigation. In 2024, in addition to the Cavour cruise, the PPA Montecuccoli became the first Italian unit to actively take part in RIMPAC, the world’s largest naval exercise, strengthening cooperation with Japan, South Korea, and the United States. In the same year, Italy assumed command of Task Force 153 within the Combined Maritime Forces, tasked with ensuring the security of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The year 2025 opened with the deployment of the Marceglia to the region, returning to La Spezia in July after exercises with India and participation in KOMODO25. As Admiral Enrico Credendino noted before the Foreign Affairs Committee, 2024 marked Italy’s entry into the select “club” of countries capable of operating aircraft carriers and fifth-generation fighters: “Being present,” he explained, “means being credible; those who are absent risk becoming irrelevant.”
(Table adapted from Termine, L., & Natalizia, G. (2025). Italy’s Indo-Pacific tilt (2021–2024): diving into the determinants of a security policy change. Contemporary Italian Politics, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2025.2543652)
Italy’s engagement has not been limited to the military dimension. Rome has intensified diplomatic, infrastructural, and industrial cooperation with the region’s key actors. With Japan, the strategic partnership was consolidated through the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), which will lead to the development of a sixth-generation fighter jet in collaboration with the United Kingdom. With India, Italy signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on Defence and a five-year Strategic Action Plan, opening new avenues for technological and military collaboration, as well as joining the IMEC partnership in 2023 to build an economic corridor linking the subcontinent to Europe. With Indonesia, important contracts were signed for the supply of eight frigates (later halted) and two PPA patrol vessels (successfully delivered), strengthening Fincantieri’s role as a leading player in the region’s naval market. Meanwhile, Leonardo consolidated its presence in the aerospace and defence sectors through the sale of AW139 helicopters to Australia and ATR 72 MPA aircraft to Malaysia, while new technological collaborations are emerging in South Korea and the Philippines. These initiatives have enhanced Italy’s international credibility.
Foreign Policy Between Ambition and Caution
Despite its growing activism, Italy still lacks a national Indo-Pacific strategy. Although the main institutions – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, and the Prime Minister’s Office – often act without a unified steering mechanism, a degree of continuity emerges in Italy’s approach to the region: on one hand, intense and visible activity characterised by industrial agreements, military missions, and new diplomatic relations with like-minded partners; on the other, a cautious stance aimed at avoiding friction with Beijing and preserving strategic flexibility.
It is no coincidence that Italian naval units deliberately avoided the Taiwan Strait, signalling Rome’s intention to balance alignment with Washington with pragmatic management of relations with China and notwithstanding Taiwanese recommendations to transit it, even refraining from labelling naval manoeuvres as FONOPs. While expanding its Indo-Pacific presence, Italy has also elevated its level of engagement in the broader Mediterranean, an area increasingly afflicted by state fragility, economic and food crises, and direct threats to national interests.
Italy thus faces a highly complex balancing act: projecting globally without neglecting regional priorities; contributing to collective deterrence against Russia and China while safeguarding trade with Beijing. Further complicating matters is the absence of a shared European posture. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom pursue divergent strategies in the region, and the lack of a common framework risks diluting the impact of Italian initiatives. In an international context shaped by intensifying U.S.-China competition, Rome must also preserve a margin of strategic autonomy. Merely following others’ agendas would mean forfeiting the ability to set independent priorities and negotiate greater room for manoeuvre. This uncertainty was evident after the inauguration of the new Trump Administration regarding European involvement in the Indo-Pacific. Following years of U.S. pressure on Europeans to do more in the region, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared at the Shangri-La Dialogue that Washington is now “pushing allies in Europe to take better care of their own security, to invest in defence” and that “the ‘N’ in NATO stands for North Atlantic.” European allies, he argued, “should maximise their comparative advantage on the continent” so the United States can “focus more on the Indo-Pacific, [its] priority operational theatre.”
Conclusion
Italy’s growing involvement in the Indo-Pacific could represent far more than a simple expansion of its operational reach, potentially signalling the emergence of a “fourth circle” in its foreign policy.
On the one hand, external pressures from the United States have acted as a catalyst, pushing Italy to look beyond the Mediterranean to contribute to the stability of a region critical to the global balance. On the other, Rome seeks to preserve its international prestige and enhance its industrial and military capabilities, aiming to strengthen its position in multilateral fora and consolidate strategic ties with the region’s key actors.
This projection, however, occurs within an incomplete transitional phase. Italy lacks a national Indo-Pacific strategy that defines clear priorities, coherent instruments, and effective institutional coordination. Decisions taken thus far reveal a reactive approach, shaped more by the need to respond to allied pressures and seize contingent opportunities than by a long-term organic vision. The result is an ambivalent positioning: Italy portrays itself as a responsible and proactive actor while carefully avoiding overly definitive stances that could trigger friction with Beijing or require military commitments beyond its means. The reversal introduced by Donald Trump’s return to the White House on European involvement in the Indo-Pacific has left continental partners perplexed and raised doubts about the medium-term sustainability of Italy’s recent acceleration.
The implications are profound. Projection into the Indo-Pacific opens new avenues for influence, strengthens Italy’s international visibility, and supports the competitiveness of its strategic industries. Yet it also carries potential challenges. Italy now faces the risk of military overstretch, the possibility of becoming entangled in crises far from its borders, and the difficulty of allocating resources effectively between two distinct theatres: the broader Mediterranean, where threats remain immediate and concrete, and the Indo-Pacific, which represents a long-term strategic investment.
Gabriele Natalizia
Sapienza University of Rome, Centro Studi Geopolitica.info
Lorenzo Termine
European University Institute, Centro Studi Geopolitica.info
This article is part of a broader research project supported by the MOFA Taiwan Fellowship Program, through which Gabriele Natalizia and Lorenzo Termine served as Visiting Scholars at the European Union Centre in Taiwan, National Taiwan University, between July and September 2025.
