After the 1956
Suez Crisis, Italy attempted to position itself as a reliable ally of the United States. Italy allowed two
Jupiter missile wings to be based in Italy, and Italian Air Force crews managed everything except nuclear weapons ownership, which was handled by United States Air Force personnel. The Italian Navy also saw a large investment and rapidly became almost as large as the French Navy (more on that and other naval matters
here), and it became the first European navy to acquire guided missile ships with American supplied
RIM-2 Terrier missiles. However, Italy went on to propose two major initiatives that went beyond just having a larger and more modern navy, as it also had plans to deploy
Polaris missiles on its ships as part of NATO
Multilateral Force and to procure nuclear powered ships. When Polaris was cancelled Italy even tried to go it alone for a while with its
Alfa missile, although it's unclear where a nuclear warhead would come from (presumably an independent Italian program).
Neither program worked out, but the Italian Navy and some of the other initiatives Italy was trying for in the early part of the Cold War are quite interesting. Could Italy have managed to establish a dual-key nuclear deterrent with the United States (or even an independent deterrent if things went quite differently) or procure nuclear powered submarines? Is there anything else interesting that Italy might have done?