The Carter Administration and Italy: Keeping the Communists out of Power Without Interfering

TheNjølstad Carter Administration and Italy The Carter Administration and Italy: Keeping the Communists Out of Power Without Interfering ✣ I would certainly hate to see Italy go Communist. ...Asanultimate thing, though, ...Idon’tthink we ought to intervene militarily or by any sort of covert means. I don’t think that would be right. Jimmy Carter, 23 November 1975.1 Introduction From 1976 to 1979, Italy faced a deep social, economic, and political crisis. For the United States the situation was worse than at any time since the spring of 1948 when the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had posed a serious threat to the ruling Christian Democrats (DC) in the general elections.2 Following that experience, the United States had systematically opposed the PCI’s bid for power and tried to block its attempts to enter the government. Various means had been used, ranging from covert actions and secret ªnancial support to the DC, to harsh anti-Communist propaganda and more or less open threats of political, economic, and even military sanctions if Italy were to ig- nore the U.S. warnings and accept Communists within its government. The ultimate rationale for this policy was the doctrine of “containment.” A Com- munist takeover in a West European country, U.S. leaders feared, would only 1. Statement by Jimmy Carter at the National Democratic Issues Conference in Louisville, KY, 23 November 1975, in The Presidential Campaign 1976. Vol. 1, Part I: Carter (hereinafter PC) (Wash- ington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofªce, 1978), p. 82. 2. Melvyn P. Lefºer, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War, 1945–1952 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 195–196, 213–214; and Alessandro Brogi, Using the Hegemon: Italian-American Relations, 1945–1960 (Master’s thesis, Ohio University, 1992), pp. 10–14. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 56–94 © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 56 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039702320201076 by guest on 01 October 2021 The Carter Administration and Italy aid the expansionist designs of the Soviet Union and undermine Western Eu- rope’s defense. To avoid giving the Soviet Union access to the continent’s in- dustrial core, U.S. presidents from Harry Truman to Gerald Ford deemed a Communist government in Italy to be an intolerable threat to U.S. national security. Because U.S. ofªcials believed that the West European Communist parties were controlled by Moscow, they eschewed contact with the party leaders and denied all party members entrance to the United States. For a long time this strategy worked well. After the Communists had left the coalition governments in France and Italy in 1947, Communist Party representatives were included only one further time in a West European government: in Iceland from 1956 to 1958. In the mid-1970s, however, the exclu- sion of Communists became harder to avoid, for two main reasons. First, the breakdown of authoritarian right-wing rule in Portugal (1974) and Spain (1975) once again allowed the Communists to seek power in these countries. Although the Communists played a relatively minor role in Spanish politics, winning only 9 percent of the vote in the ªrst parliamentary election after General Francisco Franco’s death, the Portuguese Communist Party gained considerable inºuence in the wake of the “Revolution of Flowers” in the spring of 1974. Despite considerable U.S. pressure to keep the Communists out of government, the party solidiªed its position as the Portuguese economy plummeted and the political situation became increasingly unstable. Only after an unsuccessful Communist-backed coup attempt in Lisbon in August 1975 did Portugal’s centrist and moderate leftist forces manage to fend off the Communist challenge.3 This was not the end of the Communist resurgence in West European politics, however. The Communist Parties in France and Italy steadily built their popular support. This was most clearly felt in Italy, where a modernized PCI under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer captured more than a third of the vote in the local and general elections of 1975 and 1976 respectively. To- gether with the Spanish Communist leader Santiago Carillo, Berlinguer was commonly regarded as the main representative of the new Eurocommunist movement, which claimed to be less dependent on Moscow and more com- mitted to the values of democracy and individual human rights than was tra- ditionally the case among West European Communist parties. Eurocommunism in many ways posed an even more difªcult challenge for the United States than orthodox Communism had. It was harder to explain to European voters why supporting the Communist parties was incom- 3. An instructive account of U.S. meddling in Portugal 1974–1975 as well as of the Portuguese Com- munists’ rising inºuence and subsequent defeat, is Tad Szulc, “Lisbon & Washington: Behind the Por- tuguese Revolution,” Foreign Policy, No. 21 (Winter 1975–1976), pp. 3–62. 57 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039702320201076 by guest on 01 October 2021 Njølstad patible with Western interests and values.4 Moreover, some observers in the United States might no longer be as acutely fearful that the national interests would be at stake if Communist representatives were allowed into the French or Italian government. Thus, it would be harder to generate public support for ªrm U.S. action. The U.S. foreign policy establishment responded to this dilemma in two different ways. Many, including President Ford’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, took the position that Eurocommunism was only a tactical disguise and that it would be a fatal mistake to trust leaders like Berlinguer and Carillo. Kissinger’s preferred strategy was one of confrontation, warning, and discrediting.5 Others, such as Senator Edward Kennedy, believed that the Eurocommunists might genuinely be searching for a new and more inde- pendent political platform, and that any such development would be more likely to serve U.S. instead of Soviet interests. In their view the rise of Eurocommunism introduced a schism in the Communist world that would ultimately challenge the legitimacy of Soviet rule. Thus, rather than confront- ing and discrediting the Eurocommunists, they advised the U.S. government not to overreact to the new challenge. U.S. interests, they argued, would be better served by playing down the importance of Eurocommunism and by stressing that the proper role of the Eurocommunist parties was up to the Ital- ian, French, and Spanish voters to decide. Moreover, they recommended that rather than trying to discredit the Eurocommunist leaders the U.S. government should encourage them to do more to prove their democratic credentials and their new, self-proclaimed, independence from Moscow.6 By the time Jimmy Carter took ofªce in January 1977, there was no im- minent danger of a Communist government in Italy. The next general election was not scheduled to take place until 1981. Nonetheless, the 1976 election had brought the PCI close to the DC in popular vote, and the Communists seemed to expand their inºuence within the state and local bu- 4. As a leading spokesman of the PCI put it in an article in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1976: “The adversaries of the ‘historic compromise’ in the West—and in Italy, ªrst and foremost—still have to explain why an Italy that achieves a new democratic stability and overcomes its imbalances even if she does so with the indispensable contribution of the Communists, is less desirable than the Italy of today. It is our conviction that Western Europe, and the West in general, would have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And the ªrst to gain would be the future of democracy in Italy.” Sergio Segre, “The ‘Communist Question’ in Italy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 54, No. 4 (July 1976), pp. 691–707. 5. Ironically, this seems also to have been the strategy of Moscow. According to new documentary evi- dence, the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) and the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) tried their best to discredit Berlinguer and Carillo, partly with the help of secret pro-Soviet informers in the inner circles of the PCI and PCE. Christopher Andrew (with Vasili Mitrokhin), The Sword and the Shield: Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 294–301. 6. An example of this kind of reasoning was Peter Lange, “What is to be done—about Italian Com- munism?” Foreign Policy, No. 21 (Winter 1975–1976), pp. 224–240. 58 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152039702320201076 by guest on 01 October 2021 The Carter Administration and Italy reaucracies, the media, and the judiciary almost every day.7 The Christian Democratic government depended on the passive support of ªve other parties in the parliament, including the PCI and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). At a time of growing economic and social difªculties—including the worst national record on terrorism in Europe—this was certainly not an ideal formula for political stability.8 Indeed, many American observers of Italian politics feared that the political costs of heading a minority government would even- tually become unbearable for the DC. If so, the door might be open for a compromesso storico (“historic compromise”) between the Communist and Christian Democratic forces in Italian politics. Above all else, it was this dream (or nightmare) of a PCI-DC coalition government that dominated the Italian scene as Jimmy Carter took ofªce in January 1977.9 The aim of this article is to describe and analyze the Carter administration’s policy toward Italy in the ªrst two-and-a-half years of its term.

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