I’ll probably get more attacks for this one than not but…
Italy was a significant force in World War II for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a sizable navy that contributed to harassing the British in the Mediterranean and keeping ships out of the Atlantic war enabling German U-Boats to operate with greater freedom. The major problem with the Italian war effort was two-fold: first, Italy was not prepared logistically to enter war in 1939. Second, the Italians lacked the military strength by that time to effectively wage an aggressive war against the British and her commanders (who were quite effective all things considered) were faced with the task of trying to go on the offensive with very few tanks and virtually no air support.
The Italians fought very well in most areas despite the now common belief that Italian war exercises involved practising throwing both hands in the air. But the Italian army had very few offensive weapons at their disposal and Mussolini felt he had to bring the Empire back, but also consider that Hitler promised Mussolini that he wasn’t going to go to war until at least 1944 or so, so Italy thought they had enough time to get the economy kicked into Wartime gear.
To make this short, the Italians did fight very bravely often against logistical odds (they did have an advantage in manpower but this was offset by the disadvantage in airpower, offensive firepower such as tanks and artillery, and logistics such as supply lines and overall supplies) and put up a good showing when fighting on Italian soil.
But Japan was a real deal offensive juggarnaut and more than deserved to be on the map; I think Italy, although capable of maintaining their own war programme early, by the start of A&A had become sort of an auxiliary in Europe to the German army and thus are best represented as pretending that the BB in CMed zone is their naval contribution and that the IC in SEu is the ability of Italy to produce some sort of a military contribution to the mainland defense.