Better France than Italy
By Yglesias points to this excellent article on Italian and French military capabilities. In brief, “thanks, but no thanks” is probably the best response to an offer of Italian military support and leadership, especially when other options are available. The French military has consistently displayed a high level of expertise in peacekeeping and other low intensity operations (Rwanda notwithstanding, which suffered from problems more political than military in any case), and are probably the best choice for Lebanon.
A great book has yet to be written on why some states and some cultures seem to do well at the tasks necessary to maintaining a capable and efficient modern military organizations, and others don’t. Resources and wealth don’t do such a great job explaining such variation. I would suspect that the determinants vary for different kinds of operations and different organizational structures. Stephen Rosen’s book asks some of the right questions, but he unfortunately wades into a not-terribly-useful set of case studies that ignore the very real differences between modern and ancient military organizations.