by Eric J. Lyman
ROME, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- The budding political friendship between Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and U.S. President Donald Trump shows the new anti-establishment Italian government is willing to run contrary to the prevailing views in Europe, analysts told Xinhua.
Conte has been in power for only two months, but he and Trump have met three times in that span: first at the Group of Seven summit in Canada, then at the gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, followed by Conte's visit to Washington early this week.
A strategy for Italy to partner with the United States could be a risky one, analysts said.
While the two governments' isolationist policies and hardline views on migrants make them an easy fit, closer ties could run the risk of increasing friction with other allies -- especially for Italy.
Other major countries in the European Union -- France and Germany, especially -- have a more critical relationship with the United States since Trump took power 18 months ago.
"Italy's close relationship with the United States is a two-edged sword," Riccardo Puglisi, a political economist with the University of Pavia, said in an interview. "The best-case scenario [for Italy] is that it can use this relationship to take a seat alongside France and Germany as one of the European Union's decision-makers."
"Prestige from having close ties to Washington might give the government more power in domestic areas, like passing the 2019 budget in September and October," Puglisi went on. "It's also possible that Italy could act as a liaison between the EU and the United States, or as the country that represents Europe's priorities in the United States."
The worst-case scenario? "None of those things happen and Italy has isolated itself from the rest of the European Union," Puglisi said.
Migrant issues were at center stage all three times the leaders met: Conte's government is taking an aggressive stance in curbing the number of African migrants arriving across the Mediterranean from Libya, while building a wall along the United States' southern border to make it more difficult for Latin American migrants to cross into the country is one of the central priorities of the Trump Administration. Both men also want other countries to do more to strengthen their anti-migrant policies.
"The first test in this new partnership will be to see how much the United States will do to fulfil its promise to help stabilize the situation in Libya," Mattia Diletti, a political scientist with Rome's La Sapienza University, told Xinhua.
Diletti said the Conte-Trump relationship has the potential to be warmer and more constructive than the one between Matteo Renzi and Barack Obama, a former Italian prime minister and U.S. president, respectively.
But even if the United States follows through on Libya as promised, Puglisi, Diletti, and others agreed any alliance would be very uneven.
"There is nothing wrong with an uneven relationship as a starting point," Puglisi said. "Italy's bargaining power will be more than zero, but it will have to be aware that the United States will mostly dictate the priorities."
Diletti said strengthening ties with the United States might be the only strategy available to the controversial Conte government: "It makes sense in terms of politics," he said. "And there's also no other country to move closer to."
