Negotiating a Settlement for Italy and the Minor Axis Powers: Peace Diplomacy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–7

Abstract

I should like to begin by making it clear that the aim of this chapter is basically to elaborate the idea of ‘agreement on disagreement’. I readily admit, right at the start, that this is quite a paradoxical definition which does, however, help us significantly in understanding the rules of peace diplomacy in the years 1945–7. Secondly, my aim is not to provide a detailed reconstruction of day-to-day diplomacy at the CFM, but rather to isolate those issues which contributed to force the negotiators to make their positions clear — even at the cost of a breakdown in negotiations — and those compromise solutions which were elaborated in order to reduce the danger of such a disappointing conclusion of the CFM’s meetings. I shall also hint at the historiographical debate on the origins of the Cold War from the point of view of my specific interest in post-World War II peace-making. Indeed, the crucial passage from wartime peace thinking to post-war practices of pacification has not been fully explored by diplomatic historians. The reason for this is, of course, apparent: the Cold War cast a dark shadow on post-war Allied peacemaking strategies as a whole. However, the failure of the former wartime Allies to elaborate an overall settlement after World War II should not lead us to conclude that the study of peace diplomacy in itself is irrelevant. As I shall demonstrate, the importance of the issue can be seen in a different perspective today, because the need to cast light on the phase of transition from wartime to post-war international relations is much clearer in the present unstable scenario.