Italy’s American Illusion and the Myths of Spheres of Influence

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Italy’s romanticized view of its place in the U.S. orbit blinds it to the realities of empire, power, and strategic dependence.

By TRH Foreign Affairs Desk

New Delhi, November 13, 2025 — By Paolo Falconio’s account, Italy’s foreign policy imagination has long been sustained by a comforting myth — that belonging to a “sphere of influence” is a choice, and that within the American one, Italy is an equal ally. Both, he argues, are fantasies.

Writing on LinkedIn, Falconio, an Italian analyst, takes aim at what he calls Italy’s “romanticized vision” of the global order. The phrase sounds quaint, but the consequences, he insists, are not. “Spheres of influence are always imposed,” he writes. “When they are chosen, it is done out of necessity.”

In Falconio’s view, Italy’s political class has mistaken proximity for parity — seeing in its alliance with Washington not dependency but partnership. That misperception, he says, has “brought unspeakable damage.” The reality, he suggests, is that Italy is not a peer but a province in what he bluntly calls the American empire.

To most Italians, the word “empire” evokes either Rome’s lost grandeur or the specter of fascist delusion. To Americans, it’s a label they reject as undemocratic. But Falconio insists the term fits: “It is an empire that is not codified, but still an empire — and we are partners at best.”

His evidence is both historical and contemporary. Italy “lost the war badly,” Falconio writes, and then “consciously chose this condition.” The enduring U.S. military presence — roughly 13,000 troops stationed on Italian soil — is not merely symbolic. During the COVID-19 crisis, when Moscow sent a small contingent of doctors and intelligence officers, Washington responded not with diplomacy but deployment: “Trump immediately sent 40,000 men to Italy for a total of 53,000 men. Keep in mind that our army has about 83,000.”

The message, Falconio implies, was unmistakable. “If we asked the 13,000 U.S. military to pack their bags tomorrow, do you think they would leave?”

Falconio’s realism borders on fatalism. The United States, he says, exercises the first privilege of hegemony — the choice of the enemy. Europe’s actions toward Russia, in this telling, are not autonomous but derivative, “a policy decided in Washington.” Trump, constrained by Congress and domestic politics, cannot pursue lasting peace; instead, “England is moved as the face-off” of American strategy.

This is not to exonerate Russia. Falconio concedes that Moscow plays its own long game, keeping a “door of dialogue” open with Washington even as it exploits Europe’s illusions. But for Italy — and, by extension, the rest of Europe — his warning is clear: the failure to grasp the hierarchy of power will only invite further subordination.

Falconio’s essay ends on a darkly ironic note. “We think that once the war in Ukraine is over, we will go back to drinking vodka and eating spaghetti,” he writes. But Russia, “well aware of the reality of the Spheres of Influence,” will not invade — it will “delight us with all forms of autonomous hybrid warfare.”

It’s a sobering reminder that in geopolitics, self-delusion can be as dangerous as hostility. Italy’s tragedy, as Falconio sees it, is not that it belongs to a sphere of influence — but that it refuses to admit it.

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