The War That Wasn't There? Italy's “Peace Mission” in Afghanistan, Strategic Narratives and Public Opinion

Effective strategic narratives? Italian public opinion and military operations in Iraq, Libya, and Lebanon

“…However, the level of violence on the ground is not a decisive variable per se. The polls, as already demonstrated by recent studies (Coticchia and de Simone, 2014), confute the idea that the Italian public is 'casualty phobic'. In fact, the highest level of support for the operation 'Ancient Babylon' was registered the days following the massacre of Nasiriya.…”

“…The absence of relevant episodes of violence led to the (limited) interest in the nonmilitary dimension of the intervention, such as the development cooperation projects. This has surely helped the government's communication strategy and its 'peace and humanitarian' narrative (Coticchia, 2014).…”

Breaking the frame: frame disputes of war and peace

“…The object of broad debate (Davis, 2002: 10-12), narratives are broader than frames and "go beyond just framing an issue: they involve actors, goals and motivations. Narratives are frameworks that aim at connecting phenomena around some causal transformation" (Coticchia and De Simone, 2016;De Graaf et al, 2015;Miskimmon et al, 2013). 2.…”

“…As stated by Coticchia: “…historical factors, and international and domestic constraints, favored the emergence of a general and widely-shared consensus among the different political cultures that a ‘peace’ frame should guide foreign and defense policies” (Coticchia, 2013: 53, author’s translation). During the Cold War, this ‘peace’ master frame became strongly entangled with multilateralism and humanitarianism as core values with which Italian decision-makers would package security and defense policies (Coticchia and De Simone, 2016: 43; Pirani, 2010). The promulgation of the peace master frame resulted in the creation of a pacifist national identity in Italy.…”

“…Our empirical case is the Italian army which, in the post-Cold War era, adopted a ‘peacekeeping frame’. This entailed, among other things, consistently describing its missions as ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’, and resisting attempts to describe the missions as more kinetic (Coticchia and De Simone, 2016). Reality on the ground in some missions has, however, been violent, yielding ample opportunity for experiences that can deliver shocks to this dominant frame of being soldiers of peace.…”