ABSTRACT In January 2018, the Italian parliament approved a new military operation in Niger and an extension to the existing deployment in Libya. Italian leaders explicitly cast this as a ‘pivot’ to Africa, a ‘relocation of troops’ from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Sahel and Northern Africa. What factors underlie this strategic shift? Despite the importance of this question, to date, little analysis of the decision-making process underpinning the recent change has been forthcoming. The article seeks to address this gap through an analysis of the parliamentary debates on the missions. Specifically, it examines the ‘relative importance’ of the two threats/challenges motivating the interventions: irregular immigration into the E.U. (and the related smuggling phenomena) and transnational terrorism. The article contributes to the ongoing debate on the evolution of the Italian foreign, security and defence policy in the broader Mediterranean, offering insights for comparative analyses with other states engaged in those contexts.

中文翻译：

---

“我要两个。” 移民，恐怖主义以及意大利在尼日尔和利比亚的军事参与

摘要2018年1月，意大利议会批准了在尼日尔的新军事行动，并扩大了在利比亚的现有部署。意大利领导人明确表示，这是对非洲的“枢纽”，是从阿富汗和伊拉克到萨赫勒和北非的“部队调动”。是什么因素促成这一战略转变？尽管这个问题很重要，但迄今为止，几乎没有对支撑最近变化的决策过程进行分析。本文旨在通过对议会关于特派团的辩论进行分析来解决这一差距。具体而言，它研究了促使干预的两种威胁/挑战的“相对重要性”：非常规移民到欧盟（及相关的走私现象）和跨国恐怖主义。