Leonardo Palma | University of Roma Tre (original) (raw)

Papers by Leonardo Palma

ISPI Analysis, 2021

After the deal The new AUKUS security partnership in the Indo-Paci�c launched by the United State... more After the deal The new AUKUS security partnership in the Indo-Paci�c launched by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia to counter China's presence in the region shall enhance the development of joint capabilities and technology sharing, deepening integration of security and defence-related science, technology, industrial bases, and supply chains. It will require a trilateral, 18month-long diplomatic e�ort to seek an optimal pathway. Nevertheless, the �rst AUKUS and the Consequences of the Non-Proliferation Regime Crisis https://www.ispionline.it/it/print/pubblicazione/aukus-and-consequences...

Strife, KCL War Studies, 2021

The 1973 Yom Kippur War has been regarded by traditional historiography as an intelligence failur... more The 1973 Yom Kippur War has been regarded by traditional historiography as an intelligence failure. Western intelligence services, as well as Israeli military intelligence, failed in anticipating President Anwar Sadat's intentions, to the point that the war provoked the intervention of both the US and the USSR and the risk of a nuclear confrontation. However, declassified archive materials, interviews, and memoirs allow us to tell a different story: though it is true that the Israelis underestimated the Egyptians, the former had all the information they needed to anticipate the invasion. Western intelligence services correctly sensed Sadat's intentions in waging war but failed to grasp Egypt's military capabilities and misread the expulsion of Soviet advisors. The Italian foreign Intelligence Service (SID), however, communicated to its Israeli military counterpart (Aman) in 1971 how Egypt would attack. Thanks to intelligence gathered in Eastern Germany and a brilliant order of battle analysis of the Egyptian Army, the SID inferred that Sadat's generals would intend to use a new concept of tactical movement tested by the Soviets to cope with Israel's air superiority: the static coverage of the battlefield. After having examined British and American intelligence evaluations, misconceptions, and cognitive dissonance, this post will assess the Italian order of battle analysis, Egypt's tactical concept, and the delicate balance between failure and success in military intelligence.

Strife, KCL War Studies, 2020

Libyan nuclear weapons program started in the 1970s and lasted for thirty years. The acquisition ... more Libyan nuclear weapons program started in the 1970s and lasted for thirty years. The acquisition of nuclear capabilities was sustained by the country's oil wealth and by December 2003, Libya had succeeded in procuring from abroad most of the technical pieces of the nuclear-weapon jigsaw. Colonel Muʿammar al-Qhadafi, however, never got the bomb, proving that money and black market are not enough to go militarily nuclear. In March 2003, a few weeks before the Iraq War, Musa Kusa, then head of the Libyan Foreign Intelligence (Mukhabarat al-Jamahiriya), contacted the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) to start talks aimed at dismantling the program in return for removing sanctions. After having examined the key drivers behind the program and how Libya proliferated, this post will assess the scale of threat that it posed to the international system and how and why a potentially successful project failed.

Strife Journal, KCL War Studies, 2019

The 9/11 attacks came as a major shock for the West. However, its causes and motives can be backd... more The 9/11 attacks came as a major shock for the West. However, its causes and motives can be backdated to the early 1990’s. The article argues that the 2001 attack was not the beginning of something new, rather the manifestation of something older. Al-Qa’ida gave priority to the international Jihad against the ′far enemy′, in so doing accepting a theory that was harshly debated within the Islamist movements in Egypt between the 1960’s and the 1970’s and later in Afghanistan during the 1980’s. By exploring this connection, the article wants to give a broader view of a phenomenon that has never been monolithic, rather weak, divided, and oftentimes inconclusive despite its undeniable dangerousness.

Le Grand Continent, 2020

L'accélération de la crise en Libye a ses sources dans la seconde guerre civile libyenne éclatée ... more L'accélération de la crise en Libye a ses sources dans la seconde guerre civile libyenne éclatée en 2012. L'historien italien Leonardo Palma propose de revenir sur cette histoire peu connue qui fournit l'ensemble des clefs pour comprendre la complexité du jeu libyen.

The Salisbury Review, Quarterly Magazine of the Conservative Thought, 2019

Reportage realized between July and August 2018

Nato Defense College Foundation, 2019

The 2011 uprisings failed in spreading democracy. They did, nevertheless, reshape regional relati... more The 2011 uprisings failed in spreading democracy. They did, nevertheless, reshape regional relations leaving three traditional powers of the area -Egypt, Syria, Iraq -as barely functional states. The Gulf countries -Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE -are leading a potential endless counter-revolution effort. The latter has ignited a toxic circuit of proxy wars that is re-orienting regional foreign policy with a compass driven by altered perceptions of threats and opportunities. The hope that, at the end of the Syrian War, major actors would have designed a regional order based on new power relations was premature. The new order, as Marc Lynch said, is fundamentally one of disorder 1 . States that avoided collapse are fragile, and the political and social problems that led to the Arab Uprisings are still there, beneath the shallow.

Books by Leonardo Palma

Tripoli, Italia. La politica di potenza nel Mediterraneo e la crisi dell'ordine internazionale, 2020

A.F. Biagini (a cura), Castelvecchi Editore