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Re-thinking American intervention in the 1948 Italian election: beyond a success–failure dichotomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Kaeten Mistry
Kaeten Mistry*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, UK
*
∗ Email: k.d.mistry@warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract

American intervention in the 1948 Italian national election campaign has long been a source of contention. Most scholarship has assessed the Truman administration's activities in binary terms that revolve on simplistic notions of ‘success’; the idea that American efforts did or did not affect the outcome. The subsequent tendency has been to celebrate or critique US intervention. This article traces the difficulties experienced by the American government in post-war Italy, which laid the platform for an improvised effort in support of non-communist forces. The mobilisation was neither unified nor coherent and, moreover, was influenced by Italians. The final result nevertheless masked problems with the campaign. Rather than a normative critique of American efforts, this article argues that the outcome fostered a ‘perception of success’ that reframed US conceptualisation of the post-war Italian case and considers the wider ramifications of this mind-frame for future US–Italian relations and broader American approaches in the Cold War.

Keywords

United StatesItaly18 April 1948Cold Warinterventionsuccess
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 179 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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