SWEET, SWEET ITALY-BASHING. All last week, on IM, I've been chatting with TAPPED alum and current UN Dispatcher Fast Leon Goldberg, mocking the idea of an Italian-led peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Italy, after all, has what's got to be the western world's least distinguished military record, managing to get stomped by the disintegrated Austro-Hungarian Empire on various occasions, failing to subdue Ethiopia during the high tide of imperialism, and generally proving to be more millstone than ally during the Second World War. It did, however, occur to me that this might be an unfair smear. Maybe Italy has a distinguished record in contemporary peacekeeping operations. It could happen, right?
Well, it could, but Jeremy Kahn, less lazy than I, takes a look at the evidence and finds nothing but more of the same. It's probably actually irrelevant to the current situation, in which the UN force is more of a face-saving way for everyone to return to the status quo ante and get a new shot at trying to not blunder into mutually self-destructive fiascos in the future than an actual solution to anything. Nevertheless, the facts are the facts -- allies and multilateralism are great . . . the Italian military, not so much. As Kahn notes, much-maligned France actually has a top-notch army that gets medium-sized tasks done about as well as anyone.
--Matthew Yglesias
