Una centrale perifericità. Il Mediterraneo e le organizzazioni internazionali regionali di sicurezza negli anni Settanta e Ottanta: NATO, WEU, CSCE

The research aims to investigate the aspects related to the Mediterranean security within the main European Regional Security Organizations – i.e. the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Western European Union (WEU) e la Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) – during the Cold War, with a particular attention for the 70s and the 80s on the basis of an extensive analysis on new primary sources evidences from the NATO Archives; the CSCE/OSCE Archives; the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU); the National Archives (Kew, Richmond, Surrey, United Kingdom). The PhD thesis - realized with the research perspective of the History of international relations – aims from one side, to shed light on one of the most dispute and neglect themes within the multilateral security organizations as it was (is?) the Mediterranean, contributing to add a missing page in the specific literature; and from the other, the research aims to reflect on how both the multilateral actors and national states perceived the evolution of the Mediterranean security challenges during the Cold War. Related to this aspect, it will be particularly interesting to see how, between the 70s and the first part of the 80s, in the Euro-Mediterranean region started to emerge new security issues from the traditional ones (the Soviet military and political threat), as the growing gap in the the economic, social and demography development between the two shores of the basin; the political and institution fragility of the Maghreb states; the spread of phenomena as the diffusion of WMD, the emerging of the international terrorism and the religious fundamentalism. The research shows as these challenges - some still valid nowadays - were detected by the actors of the basin and discussed within the multilateral framework, but also why and how, however, the organizations and states acted more as spectators than actors, contributing to renewing of the interpretation of the Mediterranean as a central periphery for Europe.