>Rome is a city-state
>Italian civilization, dating back to the Etruscans, is dominated by city-states
>from the high middle ages onward, the historical trend is towards larger nation-states
>Italy has such powerful city-states that it takes much longer to unite into a single nation-state
>regionalism, and the general ineptitude and inexperience of the national government poison the military, as well as society in general

Germans had this problem too to a lesser degree.

>>1160048
How did Germany overcome this?

>>1160056
The strong unifying force of Bismarck, as well as the fact that Prussia had been operating as a nation-state for centuries beforehand.

Still, I think it's one reason Germany ended up embroiled in the world wars, and ended up fighting them without many allies. They simply hadn't spent as much time navigating the European political theater as England or France.

>>1160048
As well, The thing that made Italy so influential in some terms managed to cause it's own downfall in the way of Military prowess in the Modern era?

>>1160072
More or less.

Past success is often future catastrophe, because it commits you to ways of doing things that might not work in the future. That's something that comes up a lot when discussing victorious WW1 era generals fighting WW2, or victorious WW2 era generals fighting in Vietnam.

The real death knell hit when Spain and Portugal managed to find the New World, and sail past Africa, thus breaking the hold that Italian city-states had on European trade.

If you were to make a really simple flow chart of great western powers, it would go Italian City-States, Iberia, the Netherlands, England, and then the US, all of them rising and falling because of their control of the seas.