The participation to the peace keeping operations  represents, by now, one of the most effective means to give concreteness to the safety politics of a State that, in the new international picture,  has assumed a central role within the foreign politics. In such context, the military politics grows stronger his function of tool, not only to the service of the defense of the integrity and national sovereignty but, also and above all, of necessary support contribution of the foreign and safety politics of the Nation. 

In this vision, the role of the tool military earthling is, without doubt, important. Such verification draws origin and strength from the typology of the situations of crisis and conflictual of the XX Century and, probably, from those that will also characterize that in progress: conflicts of nature identitaria, cultural, religious, ethnic, etc, that can effectively be prejudiced, minimized and on its way to solution above all through a direct, diffused and constant presence of military unity on the contended territory. 

Here therefore the three factors that condition military strategy, and not only, to adopt in the management of this type of conflictuality: territory, factions and populations. 

The army is become in these last years a tool in degree to assure an ability of simultaneous intervention really on these factors, adherent to the dynamic one to evolve some situation and flexible in relationship to the diversified effects to be realized. Ability already shown by the army in the operations of support of the peace examined in this book: complex activity, whose increasing importance is also confirmed by the most recent situations of crisis. 

The analysis of the operations effected by the author gathers, in his to become historical, the growth of the international role of Italy. That is its being mostly participant of the decisions assumed within the International Organizations, his increased ability of I handed what authoritative interlocutor of the parts involved in a conflict and, finally increases him ability to coagulate, to drive the wish of the Governments toward solutions legitimated at international level. The expression used in the text "Italy, from gregarious to leader" it synthesizes, with happy explanatory formula, the sense of this evolution from 1982 to 1997. 

A great international role, therefore, acquired particularly also through the employment of the Armed Strengths and the army. A temporal arc of almost twenty years that you/he/she has seen to grow in exponential way the demands of safeguard of the national affairs and the international peace both abroad and is on the metropolitan territory. Demands that determine a more and more intense employment of the army in operaions. The peace keeping operations  

diversified , often contemporary, in distant geographical areas often among them and from the madrepatria. 

A serious appointment that is also a recognition of ability. And it is really this ability to give effective answers to the demands of the State that it represents the true ragion to be, the role of the army. An acquitted role, yesterday as today, with the consent of the national collectivity, to demonstration of the strong bond between Army and society. A bond at times troubled but vivified and consolidated by the daily appointment of all the citizens and soldiers in the certainty that the military institution constitutes an essential patrimony of values and ability that belongs to Italy everybody. 

The author examines different problem list in antiseptic way, not apologetic of the military " world ". Particularly, he underlines as the national share to the operations of support of the peace is a coherent consequence of the different Italian approach to the problem list sprung by the evolution of the picture of international reference in dynamic change. Share, besides, that, thanks to the appointment of the unities of the army, you/he/she has determined further evolutionary impulses on the Italian reality of the moment. I am demonstration symbolic of it the PSOses had developed since 1982 to 1997 and particularly her before and the last of these: the operation in Lebanon and the operation " Dawn " in Albania. 

Such operations, temporally equidistant from the prophetic 1989, you/they can be considered, to reason as fundamental tappe of the evolutionary lines of the national scenery. 

Fundamental Tappe, besides, of the evolution of the international role of Italy and his Army. 

IL CAPO DI STATO MAGGIORE DELL'ESERCITO Ten. Gen. Francesco CERVONI

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