Italy Joins the U.S. in Containing China — With Nuclear Ambitions

The Taiwan crisis represents one of the most urgent and strategically complex challenges of our time. The Indo‑Pacific has become the primary theater of confrontation between the dominant maritime power – the United States – and the ascending continental power – China – that now seeks to translate its continental dominance into oceanic influence.

Especially critical is the route linking the Indian Ocean to the Pacific via the Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait: a vital artery of the world‑system and a friction line between the Western thalassocracies and Beijing’s rising maritime power.

An emblematic episode occurred on 3 June 2023, when a Chinese destroyer cut across the path of a U.S.–Canadian naval formation in the Taiwan Strait. The presence of Italy’s frigate Francesco Morosini in that area confirms that Italy now operates at the heart of the global contest to rewrite the rules of maritime power.

From Rome to the maritime republics, to Imperial Britain and American sea‑power, whoever dominated the Mediterranean projected power into the world. Today it is China gazing at it, seeking to comprehend its deep logic and disrupt its equilibrium.

Forget microchips.

The simplistic reduction fostered in Europe—that the future of global power will hinge on semiconductors—is yet another form of European self‑delusion. What makes the next great contest inevitable isn’t the race for algorithms, but the dominance over the waves. On the surface of the sea and in its depths. Across seabeds, land, sky, orbital space and cyberspace.

The decisive struggle will be about control of the seas. Actually, of two seas: the Mediterranean and the Indo‑Pacific. The first, an ancient crossroads of power that still shapes geopolitics today. The second, the fulcrum of the challenge between Washington and Beijing, which tightens around the neck of Taiwan.

In this maritime showdown, America will not stand alone.

Italy appears increasingly aware of the strategic centrality of these seas. With one of the most capable navies in Europe, Italy is prepared. The Italian Navy has already extended its sphere of action beyond its traditional Mediterranean confines, adopting a posture increasingly projected towards the Indo‑Pacific — without however disengaging from the Mediterranean, which remains our vital space.

The 2024 mission of Italy’s aircraft carrier ITS Cavour in the Indo‑Pacific clearly illustrated this. During that mission, the embarked air group — including F‑35B aircraft — took part in joint exercises and operations with the U.S. Navy and other allies in the Philippine Sea, with a significant stop in Singapore and, according to multiple sources, activity near the South China Sea.

The strategic objective was clearly to link the Euro‑Atlantic front and the Indo‑Pacific, thereby responding to mounting challenges to the freedom of navigation and China’s assertiveness in the region. That mission signifies a profound evolution of Italy’s posture: it is becoming a global naval actor, capable of operating in synergy with the United States across the key maritime theaters of the 21st century.

That said, the Mediterranean remains our critical front. Alongside the Indo‑Pacific deployment, we saw Mare Aperto 2025 — the most recent and technologically advanced naval exercise conducted by the Italian Navy, held between March and April in the central Mediterranean.

All of this takes place in a context in which Russia, China and Turkey are intensifying their presence across the entire Mediterranean space. Common challengers for both Italy and the United States.

That is precisely why a structured and enduring partnership between Rome and Washington is essential: on one hand, Italy can play a meaningful role in containing China in the Indo‑Pacific; on the other, bolstered naval cooperation between the U.S. Navy and the Italian Navy would be crucial to counter the Turkish, Russian and Chinese ambitions in our primary area of interest.

In recent years, China has sought to expand its influence even into southern Europe, strategically targeting the port city of Trieste. This was no coincidence: Trieste is a critical junction of European and global geopolitics. Located in Italy’s far northeast, overlooking the Adriatic, it serves as a hinge between Central Europe, the Balkans, and the broader Mediterranean basin.

China’s ambition to pull Italy into its sphere of influence was made clear with the memorandum signed in Rome in March 2019, which envisioned Trieste as the European terminal of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Washington, recognizing Italy’s strategic importance and wary of a potential drift toward China, responded by inviting Rome to join the India‑Middle East‑Europe Corridor (IMEC) – a dual-use military, maritime, and digital network linking the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, with the Mediterranean as a central artery.

This context helps clarify the problem – and the solution. Italians, and in particular segments of the political class that once flirted with Beijing, have demonstrated a fundamental ignorance of Italy’s geography, of the strategic importance of its seas. Such unawareness risks serving the interests of foreign powers rather than national ones.

Even though Italy’s political landscape has changed since 2019, its vulnerabilities remain the same. The renewed strategic sensibility that now appears to inform the Meloni government is certainly a step forward – but it still falls short of structural reform. Italy’s ruling class remains largely detached from maritime awareness because the country lacks a cultural foundation in this domain. Our educational system – trapped in a rigid, memorization-based, and self-referential model – fails to cultivate critical thinking and does not communicate the nation’s geostrategic position.

Unless schools begin teaching Italians to understand their national reality through a geopolitical lens – by integrating this perspective into the study of history, economics, geography, philosophy, and literature – Italy will continue producing elites without strategic orientation. The great Italian tragedy thus repeats itself in a kind of eternal recurrence: every change in government risks erasing the fragile progress of recent years, reopening the door to strategic missteps such as the 2019 Belt and Road memorandum.

The cooperation between Italy and the United States in the field of defense is not a new development.

In May 2024, Fincantieri Marinette Marine, a subsidiary of the Trieste‑based group, was awarded a contract worth over one billion dollars to build the FFG‑66 and FFG‑67 frigates of the Constellation class. A March 2025 U.S. Congressional report confirms that the entire series, starting with the FFG‑62, is being built at the Marinette shipyard in Wisconsin. While the United States works to rebuild its strategic domestic defence supply chain, Italy offers industrial capacity, experience and manufacturing resilience, acting as a bridge between U.S. demand and Italian high‑tech know‑how.

On one hand, Washington aims to revive its defence industrial and shipbuilding base – material keystone of American hegemony; on the other, Rome requires stable foreign investment and demand to sustain its advanced manufacturing sector, one of Europe’s most refined and second only to Germany. From this convergence can emerge a new kind of naval, technological and productive alliance – based on complementary interests and mutual trust that translates Atlantic cooperation into shared industrial power.

The Indo‑Pacific is already the fulcrum of the new global competition. In this scenario, Italy has a modest but far from insignificant margin of influence. Its continued relevance will depend on its ability to be useful even in theatres far from its traditional geographic range, such as the Indo‑Pacific. The increasing U.S. strain from bearing the burden of global hegemony alone reasonably prompts Washington to delegate greater responsibilities to its allies.

In contributing to this shared effort, however, Italy must avoid weakening its presence in the Mediterranean, the natural heart of its strategic projection and primary area of responsibility.

From this derives the imperative to strengthen national maritime capabilities — not only by keeping the aircraft carrier Cavour fully operational, but also by integrating the Trieste, the recently commissioned multipurpose amphibious unit, designed to operate as an “auxiliary carrier.” However, Italy is now considering a much more ambitious leap: the development of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the first in the country’s history. This would place the Italian Navy in an elite group so far comprising only the United States and France.

The Multi-Year Defence Planning Document 2025–2027, released in October 2025, explicitly outlines plans to initiate studies and technological development for future naval units — including a next-generation aircraft carrier, “most likely” to be nuclear-powered. Admiral Enrico Credendino, Chief of the Italian Navy, confirmed in a June 2025 interview that preliminary studies are underway.

Historically, Italy has already built three vessels capable of launching fixed-wing aircraft: the Garibaldi (retired in 2024), the Cavour, and the amphibious assault ship Trieste. The last two can deploy F‑35B fighters and remain the pillars of Italian naval power projection. Yet their operational autonomy is limited — from two weeks to a month without refueling.

A nuclear-powered carrier, by contrast, would offer virtually unlimited range, superior speed and energy output — with U.S. Nimitz-class vessels being faster than the Trieste despite displacing over 60,000 tons more. These features are essential for sustained operations in distant theatres, such as the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific, where Italian interests are growing.

In parallel, Fincantieri’s Minerva Program is also exploring the integration of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) on submarines and other naval platforms — signaling a broader shift toward nuclear maritime propulsion.

Investment in these two platforms, potentially framed within the wider European rearmament discussion already underway, represents a choice more consistent with Italy’s maritime vocation than focusing solely on infrastructure enhancement – which, though useful, remains a lower priority compared to reinforcing naval projection.

Neglecting the Mare Nostrum would amount to losing our sense of place in the world. If Italy were to withdraw, others would fill the vacuum. Russia, China, Turkey – powers united by designs to project influence into the Mediterranean. The risk is that the Mediterranean, par excellence, becomes a theatre of constant chaos, fragile and fragmented.

For Italy – and for the U.S. Navy that still undergirds its balance – the Mediterranean is the vital hinge of Atlantic stability. Preserving its security, safeguarding freedom of flow and maintaining its strategic centrality are not tactical options, but existential duties. The durability of Italy’s maritime projection, energy security and political sovereignty – and the very strength of the Western bloc – depend upon the integrity of this sea.

Riccardo Ficicchia is a geopolitical analyst with the Istituto Analisi Relazioni Internazionali (IARI).