Distensione, Mediterraneo e territorializzazione: l’Italia e i cambiamenti della sicurezza marittima, 1965-1977

This article investigates the transformation of Italian maritime security in the Central Mediterranean between 1965 and 1977, at the intersection of détente, trade globalization, and sea territorialization. Its core argument is that maritime border making was not merely a legal adjustment but a political and strategic process that reshaped threat perceptions, operational priorities, and security culture. Drawing on Italian governmental, military, and diplomatic archives, and on NATO, British, French, and U.S. documentation, the essay reconstructs continental shelf negotiations, fisheries disputes, and incidents at sea around the Strait of Sicily. The analysis identifies a shift from a naval model oriented toward general bloc warfare to a doctrine of continuous maritime presence focused on control and economic protection. A first interpretive innovation is the reassessment of fisheries surveillance missions, treated as a laboratory of doctrinal and organizational adaptation rather than as peripheral tasks. A second innovation concerns the relationship between North African assertiveness and Soviet power: Mediterranean tensions are shown to stem not only from superpower rivalry but also from autonomous regional and postcolonial dynamics. In this framework, the 1975 Naval Law and the 1977 Defence White Paper marked the institutionalization of maritime frontiers within Republican defense planning over the period.