La cooperazione tecnologica e industriale fra Italia e Russia nel settore della difesa

In favorable circumstances, namely in times of low international tension, the relations between Italy and Russia demonstrate a characteristic tendency to expand spontaneously at any scale. This thanks, amongst the others, to a) a series of geographical and cultural complementarities, b) to certain historical-political evolutions (which make so that today Italy and Russia have expertise in different areas and in different markets, in such a way, that generate a series of possible synergies), and c) to the fact that between the two countries there are no negative historical inheritance that can represent some obstacle to any type of dialogue. This in several sectors of society, politics and economy, and also in the field of the security and defense industry, that is characterized indeed by some special features. In fact, in this area, the various collaborations develop on long-term projects, that take a long time to be realized, including design, testing, implementation of supply chains on an international scale, marketing etc. A fact that tends to configure such close relations, that have been defined of “integration” and “interdependency”, and this between industry sectors that until recently (for the fact that they belonged to the whole '900 to different and opposite sides) never had developed any kind of dialogue. Such relations . in defense industry - can be considered, if not irreversible, strongly and mutually binding, involving sharing and transfer of ideas, capital, projects, technologies (both of those codified and not codified, like “know how”, expertise, organizational capability etc.), namely the elements that are the basis of the industrial capacity of a country. Typically these relationships can develop fully only in a framework of stable alliances (that demonstrated to be able to overcome adversities and difficult contingencies) as it not really the case of industrial relations between Italy and Russia, that are relatively "young". Such cooperation dates from roughly the first decade after the 2000, when the two countries, in a very favorable international political climate, signed a series of agreements covering virtually the entire spectrum of strategic functions, both in a strictly military and dual sense (airplanes and helicopters, submarines and multi-function vehicles, electronics, communications etc.), involving key industries, respectively, Russian and Italian (Fincantieri, Finmeccanica, Iveco-FCA). A situation similar to that of other Western countries, in the same period, France and Germany in particular, but that for Italy occurred in an even more accentuated way. Projects that assumed overall a quite satisfactory trend, although they evidence quite soon a number of difficulties relating to both the “corporate” management (regarding mainly the possibility to develop an effective audit on a chain of management and production so articulated), and more properly political questions which, beside the consistency of projects and relative engineering questions, inspire the projects from the beginning. This until the present era, when a sudden change of policy (especially by the Russian side) seems to have questioned many of these agreements, some of which are indeed still in a planning stage. These changes are still very new, therefore they need to be evaluated in their full geo-political extent; however they leave imagine a number of considerations that probably will characterize these relationships in the future (in the defense and security), of itself mutually very challenging.