Europe, the USA and the 'policy of the pendulum': the importance of foreign policy paradigms in the foreign policy of Italy (1989-2005)

About a century ago, Italy's foreign policy swung back & forth between the poles of Germany & England/France, until the crisis of 1914 brought this ambivalent policy to an end. In the 1980s, former Ambassador to the US Rinaldo Petrignani described liberal Italy's foreign policy as following the trajectory of a pendulum, periodically swinging from pro-English/French to pro-German/Austrian policies. This article contends that Italy's post-Cold War foreign policy -- 1989-2005 -- is again like a pendulum, though swinging between the EU & the US, or Europeanism & Atlanticism. Italians themselves are divided in their approval of the Berlusconi government's fluctuating foreign policy, but this paper sees Berlusconi's course as 'new', at least in a paradoxical sense. This historical period is broken down into four segments that show the variations in the degrees of Europeanism & Atlanticism over time. However, it seems clear that the end of the Cold War & the end of the "First Republic" brought an end to the previous trend of Italy's foreign policy, certainly in broadening its range from between two areas of Europe to between all of Europe vs America. Figures. J. Stanton