Base Nation

15: “IT’S ENOUGH”

35. In January 2007, one week before center-left prime minister Romano Prodi approved the Dal Molin construction plan, U.S. ambassador to Italy Ronald Spogli visited Vicenza in an effort to pressure Prodi to accept the base. State Department cables released by Wikileaks illustrate more of the pressure U.S. officials brought to bear. One shows that five days before approving the base, Prodi tried to find a compromise to appease base opponents. Prodi offered Ambassador Spogli and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried another site for the new base thirty miles from Aviano Air Base (i.e., closer to the deployment point for the 173rd Airborne Brigade). Spogli refused to consider the alternative. “We’ve been working on the project for two years and have spent $25 million on planning,” the cable signed by Spogli reports him as saying. “Going somewhere else, like Aviano, loses the benefit of collocation of forces. Since we’re so far down the road, at this point we either have expansion at Dal Molin or not at all.” Spogli noted there would be “over a billion dollars invested” and that annual spending locally would rise by more than $130 million. He suggested that if the government didn’t agree, the United States would “take the project to Germany.” “This is not a threat,” said the ambassador, “it’s just a statement of fact.” This casts at least some doubt on the Bush administration’s claim that moving troops and spending to Italy was not a way to punish Germany for expressing opposition to an invasion of Iraq. Yeo, Activists, 112; Ronald Spogli cable to Department of State, “Fried Presses Prodi on Afghanistan, Dal Molin Base Decision,” cable no. 07ROME96, U.S. Embassy Rome, January 17, 2007.