Fascicolo 29 | 2026

Indice

Massimo de Leonardis – Introduzione

Abstract – The Editor of the Quaderni , as usual, gives a brief presentation of the various articles in this issue, which consider various countries an topics: the United States during the Reagan Administration, the Foreign and Defence and Policy of the Italian Republic in the 1980s, the relations between the Holy See and China between 1922 and 1949, and the first regulation regarding the Artificial Intelligence introduced by the European Union

Keywords: Ronald Reagan, Italian Foreign and Defence Policy, The Holy See and China, Artificial Intelligence

Keywords: China, international order, OSCE, post-Soviet world

Simone Zuccarelli – The Reagan Enigma: Reassessing
the Essence of a Conservative Foreign Policy

Abstract – Il contributo riconsidera criticamente la figura di Ronald Reagan come archetipo conservatore in politica estera, mostrando come tale rappre- sentazione sia in larga parte il frutto di una costruzione retrospettiva. Muovendo dall’analisi della trasformazione semantica e concettuale subita dal termine conservatorismo negli Stati Uniti a partire dagli anni Trenta del Novecento, il contributo ricostruisce i tratti tipici di un compiuto approccio conservatore alle relazioni internazionali, segnato da impronta antirivoluzionaria, nazionalismo di matrice burkeana , prudenza nell’uso della forza, ostilità all’esportazione del a modello liberal-democratico e apertura a politiche protezionistiche. Su tale griglia interpretativa, articolata in cinque diadi – rivoluzione o conservazione, inter- nazionalismo o nazionalismo, interventismo o anti-interventismo, esportabilità o unicità, libero commercio o protezionismo – viene quindi misurata l’azione internazionale dell’Amministrazione Reagan. Emerge un Presidente più vicino alla tradizione wilsoniana e liberal-internazionalista che a quella conservatrice in senso proprio: idealista nella visione del mondo, internazionalista nella prassi, attivo promotore della liberal-democrazia e del libero commercio come strumenti di pacificazione globale. Si argomenta, infine, che nel Partito Repubblicano con- temporaneo l’approccio conservatore alla politica estera sta guadagnando spazi, segnando una significativa discontinuità rispetto all’eredità reaganiana.

Keywords: Reagan, Burke, Conservatism, United States, Foreign Policy

Giovanni Battista Bronzini – Privatizzare la diplomazia: il White House
Office for Public Liaison nell’era Reagan

Abstract – Drawing on archival materials from the Reagan Presidential Library, this article traces how the White House Office of Public Liaison was repurposed in Ronald Reagan’s first term from a largely domestic gatekeeping and coalition-building unit into a functional hinge between the White House and a broader public diplomacy architecture. After reconstructing its institutional ge- nealogy, the article focuses on the reorganization of public diplomacy introduced by NSDD-77 in 1983 and on the transition from Elizabeth Dole to Faith Ryan Whittlesey. It argues that WHOPL helped “privatize” foreign policy sustainability by mobilizing non-state constituencies – religious, business, ethnic, and profes- sional – into parallel efforts overseas, especially in the Central America outreach campaign. The article conceptualizes this as privatization of capacity, channels, and frames: the delegation of mobilization and legitimation to organized civic actors; the creation of quasiparallel pipelines that operate alongside formal diplo- macy; and the permeability of White House narratives to ideological repertoires developed within the conservative movement. Rather than displacing the State Department, WHOPL operated as an interface that amplified, translated, and tested foreign policy narratives in the domestic arena in practice.

Keywords: White House, Reagan, United States, Public-Private Diplomacy, U.S. Foreign Policy.

William De Carlo – L’anticomunismo cattolico in Cina tra le due Guerre.
Una ulteriore chiave interpretativa dei rapporti diplomatici
sino-vaticani del 1946

Abstract – The relationship between the Holy See and the Chinese Communist Party has become a topic of growing interest in the field of International Relations. While most studies have focused on the period after 1949, the recent opening of the Vatican archives related to the pontificate of Pius XII allows a reconstruction of the Catholic Church’s position toward the Chinese Communist Party since its foundation in 1921. This study examines the evolution of these relations through the activities of the Apostolic Delegates who served in mainland China between 1922 and 1949: Msgr. Celso Costantini, Msgr. Mario Zanin, and Msgr. Antonio Riberi. Their correspondence highlights the confrontation with the atheistic ide- ology promoted by the communist movement and the hostile climate toward Catholic communities. In this context, Catholic anti-communism developed dur- ing the pontificates of Pius XI and Pius XII strengthened relations between the Catholic Church and the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), contributing to the establishment of Sino-Vatican diplomatic relations in 1946. The study is primarily based on Vatican archival sources and Jesuit documentation.

Keywords: Catholic anti-communism; Sino-Vatican relations; Apostolic Delegates in China