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

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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

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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 industrial 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 exclusion 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 committed to the values of democracy and individual human rights than was traditionally 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.

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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 independent 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 evidence, 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.

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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 eventually 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. From an analytical point of view the focus on 1977–1979 makes sense because both the DC’s and the U.S. government’s attitudes toward the historic compromise changed during that period. The article will explain how Carter and his advisers looked at the PCI’s surge in popular support and will show to what extent they contemplated or took action aimed at keeping the Communists out of power. The main conclusion is that, whereas Carter largely agreed with his predecessors on the need to forestall the entry of the PCI into the Italian government, he tried to achieve that objective using somewhat different means. Together with a lack of clarity and consistency in his and his advisers’ public statements on the matter, this shift in style and instruments of policy caused uncertainty in many Italian quarters about Washington’s real positions. Carter’s initial policy allowed the PCI and others in Italy to keep alive for almost a year the misleading notion that the United States was no longer totally against Communist participation in the Italian government. The resulting confusion may well have been the price that Carter had to pay to avoid being accused of meddling in Italian and French internal affairs. Only in January 1978 did the Carter administration take the necessary steps to eliminate all

7. The PCI received a record 34.4 percent of the popular vote, up 7.2 percent from the 1972 election, but still almost 5 percent less than the Christian Democrats (DC), who received 38.7percent of the vote in both the 1972 and the 1976 elections. See Simon Serfaty and Lawrence Gray, eds., The Italian Communist Party: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), p. 76. 8. For a balanced contemporary account of the socioeconomic crisis, see Guido Carli, “Italy’s Mal- aise,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 54, No. 4 (July 1976), pp. 708–718. 9. The national and international historical background for the compromesso storico is thoroughly de- scribed in Serfaty and Gray, The Italian Communist Party; Grant Amyot, The Italian Communist Party: The Crisis of the Popular Front Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981); and Leo J. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor: The United States and Italy, 1946–1989 (New York: Praeger, 1990).

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possible doubts about its opposition to any compromesso storico that would provide the PCI with a role in government.

The Italian Scene: The PCI on the Threshold of Power

In 1976 the ofªcially declared goal of the PCI was to become, for the ªrst time, the largest party in the Italian national parliament. If such a victory could be achieved, the party could fulªll its next and more ambitious aim: a compromesso storico with the Christian Democrats. The ostensible justiªcation for this proposed alliance was to save Italy from a right-wing backlash or even a neofascist coup d’état. The PCI leader, Enrico Berlinguer, could draw on a long party tradition of seeking broad popular support by appealing to moderate and centrist voters. This tradition dated back to the inºuential PCI Secretary-General Palmiro Togliatti and his reading of the sociopolitical circumstances that had helped Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini seize power. Togliatti presented what was to be known as the via italiana al socialismo, or “Italian path to socialism.” This concept was based on the view that unless the Communist Party built a broad alliance with the “petty bourgeoisie” (small business) and used this alliance to implement structural reforms that would alleviate the country’s problems, the sociopolitical crisis could quickly turn against the working class, as it had in the 1920s. A more contemporary inºuence behind the quest for the historic compromise was the military coup in Chile in September 1973. Berlinguer and his followers saw the coup in much the same way that Togliatti had interpreted the Mussolini takeover ªfty years earlier: that the failure of the working class in Chile to build a broad alliance with the “middle strata” had paved the way for the military takeover led by Augusto Pinochet. To prevent a similar development in Italy, the PCI had to seek an understanding with the Chris- tian Democrats as a whole, not just with its left wing. To Berlinguer, the establishment of an agreement between the “popular forces of Communist and socialist inspiration and the popular forces of Catholic inspiration” was so important that it was given precedence over the task of initiating structural reforms.10 Against this backdrop the PCI in June 1976 called on Italian voters to express their support for the proposed compromesso storico by voting for the Communists in the upcoming general election. The outcome showed that the

10. See Berlinguer et al., I Communist italiani e il oCile (Rme: Editori riuniti, 1973), as quoted in Amyot, The Italian Communist Party, pp. 203–204.

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appeal had been favorably received by large segments of the electorate, albeit not to the extent hoped for by the PCI leadership. The party received a record 34.4 percent of the popular vote, up 7.2 percent from the 1972 election, but still almost 5 percent less than the DC.11 Many contemporary observers, including Secretary of State Kissinger, suspected—quite rightly—that the results of the 1976 election had merely deepened rather than solved the crisis in Italian politics.12 From then on both the DC and the PCI would depend on the support of the Socialist Party to obtain a ruling majority in the House of Deputies. The Socialists, for their part, indicated that they would not enter a new government that excluded the Communists. The DC could block a coalition between the PCI and the So- cialist Party—the second- and third-largest parties with a total of 283 out of 625 deputies—only with the support of thirty-ªve deputies from the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). It would therefore be impossible to achieve governmental stability unless some understanding could be reached between the PCI and the DC.13 Such an understanding seemed all the more important because of the increasingly violent terrorist acts perpetrated by the far-left Red Brigades, who since 1974 had been “striking at the heart of the State” with a series of attacks and killings directed primarily at the security and police forces, the legal authorities, and senior political ofªcials. In early 1977 the terrorist campaign was stepped up even further, with new attacks almost daily. In April the Red Brigades proclaimed themselves a “Communist Combatant Party”—Partito Comunista Combattente (PCC)—intent on bringing about the collapse of the existing social and political system by violent means.14 These events presented the DC and other representatives of the moderate democratic forces in Italian politics with a difªcult dilemma. On the one hand, they could continue the traditional policy of exclusion vis-à-vis the Communists, thereby running the risk of prolonging and aggravating the political and economic crisis. On the other hand, they could try to stabilize the turbulent crisis by accepting the PCI proposal for a historic compromise, with the possible long-term risk of undermining the democratic system. As discussed below, the Carter administration at ªrst tried to avoid openly an-

11. The DC received 38.7percent of the vote in both elections. See Serfaty and Gray, The Italian Communist Party, p. 76. 12. Kissinger interview with Die Zeit, transcribed in State Department Press Release, 30 June 1976. 13. Amyot, The Italian Communist Party, pp. 212–213. 14. Ely Karmon, “Red Brigades: Cooperation with the Palestinian Terrorist Organizations (1970–1990),” The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzlia, Israel, n.d.; paper to be published by Modernizzazione e Sviluppo. See also Richard Drake, “The Red Brigades and the Italian Political Tradition,” in Yonah Alexander and Kenneth Myers, eds., Terrorism in Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1982), pp. 102–140.

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nouncing its preference for the former alternative, thereby creating the false impression that it actually favored the latter. This was all the more unfortunate as the DC leadership itself was divided on what strategy the party should pursue toward the PCI.

Carter on Eurocommunism: The Initial Response

Eager to prove his credentials in foreign policy and to court the vast number of U.S. voters of Italian origin, Jimmy Carter started to comment on Italian politics even before he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president. What ªrst prompted Carter to address the turbulent situation in Italy and its possible impact on U.S.-Italian relations was the persistent rumor in the Italian news media that, if elected, Carter would welcome a government that included cabinet members from the PCI. In fact, Carter may unwittingly have lent some credibility to the claim that he, under certain conditions, might be ready to accept a government that would include the PCI. He never said this explicitly, but his many statements on Italy had sent a mixed message that made it easy for Italian politicians to misconstrue his real positions. For one thing, Carter had repeatedly denied reports that he would welcome Communist participation in the Italian government. All such allegations were “totally false,” he told the Italian daily Il Tempo on the eve of the general elections in June 1976. Likewise, on a previous occasion he averred that he “would certainly hate to see Italy go Commu- nist.” What complicated the matter, however, was that Carter also refused to rule out the possibility that someday he might be brought around to revise his position. In November 1975 he acknowledged that the PCI leadership had changed in recent years—by pledging a new degree of independence from Moscow, a more positive attitude toward the European Community (EC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and a more explicit commitment to respect the democratic political process— and declared that “the attitude of the U.S. government towards the Italian Communist Party, whether in or out of power, should be inºuenced by the degree to which their pledges are translated into concrete action.”15 Some of Carter’s other campaign statements on Italy also allowed for divergent interpretations. Before he took ofªce, therefore, no one could really know what his policy

15. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 218–219. Carter’s comment that he would hate to see Italy go Communist was made at the National Democratic Issues Conference in Louisville, KY, 23 November 1975, in PC, p. 83.

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on Eurocommunism would actually be: Henry Kissinger-style confrontation, Ted Kennedy-style accommodation, or something different from both. For this reason, Carter’s ªrst ofªcial act regarding Italy—the appointment of an international legal specialist, Richard N. Gardner of Columbia University, as U.S. ambassador to Rome—was all the more important. An original member of the Trilateral Commission and a personal friend of Na- tional Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Gardner had emerged early in the presidential campaign as one of Carter’s most inºuential foreign policy advisers. A liberal-minded law professor who was married to an Italian and ºuent in the language, the new ambassador seemed exceptionally qualiªed for what would obviously be a challenging diplomatic mission. Gardner’s appointment was favorably received by all major Italian parties, though for very different reasons. To the Socialists and the PCI, the appointment was widely interpreted as a sign of a more pragmatic U.S. attitude toward the prospect of Communist participation in government. Paese Sera, the Communist daily, welcomed Gardner as “the ambassador of non-intervention.”16 This interpretation of the new administration’s position was shared by important segments of the political center and was common even in moderate conservative circles. For instance, La Repubblica claimed that Carter’s view of Italian politics was fundamentally different from Kissinger’s, and it quoted Gardner as saying that “the PCI might be okay with us.”17 To the Christian Democrats, on the other hand, the appointment of Gardner guaranteed a continuation of traditional U.S. policies toward Italy, only in a more discreet and ªne-tuned way than had been the case with some of his predecessors.18 Finally, those belonging to the far right saw the appointment as further evidence that the Carter administration was either too liberal to comprehend the danger posed by the Italian Communists or too noninterventionist to do anything about it.19

16. For this and other media reactions to Gardner’s arrival in Rome, see U.S. Embassy Rome to State Department, Daily Press Message, 21 March 1977, pp. 2–5; and Daily Press Message, 22 March 1977, pp. 2–6; both attached to Memorandum, Gardner to Costanza, 28 March 1977, Jimmy Carter Library (hereinafter JC Library), White House Central Files (hereinafter WHCF)—Name File: Gardner, Richard N., 8 February 1977–31 December 1978 Folder. 17. La Repubblica, 9 January 1977, quoted in Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, p. 232. 18. Among Gardner’s postwar predecessors, at least three—Claire Booth Luce, Graham Martin, and John Volpe—had achieved notoriety in Italy for their outspoken interference in Italian domestic affairs. The independent conservative daily La Stampa hinted at this record when it advised Gardner to “keep the Embassy above suspicion and walk the very ªne line between non-interference and non-neutrality,” even though this strategy might “disappoint [the far right] who seem to want a pro- consul and not an ambassador.” See Daily Press Message, 21 March 1977, p. 4. 19. Ibid.

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At ªrst glance there were indeed numerous reasons to believe that the Carter administration might alter U.S. policy toward Italy. The most important was the weight the administration initially put on the principle of noninterference. During the campaign, as well as after taking ofªce, Carter and his principal advisers took pains to emphasize that the United States no longer believed it had the right to intervene in the democratic processes of other countries. This position was particularly interesting with regard to Italy. Over the previous three decades, the United States had probably interfered more heavily in Italian politics than in the politics of any other West European state. Indeed, the very ªrst covert operation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that was approved by the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) was the top-secret campaign against the Italian Communists prior to the 1948 election.20 As recently as the early 1970s the Nixon administration had approved the use of CIA money in support of anti-Communist parties in Italy.21 Interestingly, Carter himself had made speciªc allusions to Italy when he explained his preference for a policy of noninterference. For instance, he told an Italian weekly magazine in November 1976 that “we cannot and do not want to tell Italians how they should vote and what party they should bring into government.”22 Gardner repeated this position in several interviews at the time of his appointment. In a typical statement to La Stampa, the ambassador expressed “absolute conªdence” in the ability of the Italian people to outlive the current political crisis, and explained that one of the ways his government intended to help Italy was by refraining from “interfering in Italian domestic affairs.”23 These statements reºected a general view among Carter and his foreign policy advisers that the Nixon administration’s heavy-handed interference in the Italian political process had been counterproductive; its only result, they felt, had been to turn large segments of the Italian population against the United States. Such statements also seemed to indicate a more pragmatic attitude toward the PCI than under previous U.S. administrations. As late as the summer of 1976 President Ford had declared that he would “vigorously oppose any Communist participation” in the government of Italy or other West Eu-

20. In December 1947the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ªght the Italian Communists with a wide range of covert means, ranging from secret ªnancial support of the DC’s campaign to anti-PCI propaganda to bribes. All in all, the Truman administration spent some $10 million to $20 million on the effort. Lefºer, A Preponderance of Power, p. 196. 21. Richard N. Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001. 22. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, p. 225. 23. Gardner to La Stampa, 9 February 1977, quoted in Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tri- color, p. 232.

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ropean allies because such a development would “totally change the thrust and the concept of NATO.”24 The contrast between the outgoing and the in- coming U.S. administrations was seen also in their attitudes toward the Ital- ian Communists. Whereas the Nixon and Ford presidencies had upheld the traditional U.S. policy of rejection and exclusion, Carter signaled in his election campaign that he wished to establish better working relations with the PCI leadership, a promise he fulªlled after the election. 25 Thus, from the day Ambassador Gardner arrived in Rome, he consulted regularly with moderate Communist leaders, providing a kind of legitimacy that had previously been denied to them by U.S. ofªcials. Moreover, Carter took steps to change the policy of not granting visas to Communist Party members, a practice estab- lished before the 1948 election to discourage Italian voters with relatives in the United States from voting for the PCI. Since then, the policy had effectively barred the inºuential PCI press from opening a bureau in the United States.26 Communist hopes that the new U.S. government could be brought around to tolerate PCI cabinet members were boosted by Carter’s campaign promise to let his ªnal say on the matter hinge on whether the PCI actually lived up to its commitments to democracy, NATO, and other Western institutions. From a PCI perspective this position was a considerable improve- ment.27 The optimism among Italian supporters of the compromesso storico stemmed also from various ambiguities in Carter’s public statements about the PCI and its possible role in Italian government. For instance, he was extremely vague about the possible consequences for NATO of PCI participation in the Italian government. He vacillated between, on the one hand, assur- ances that he did not look upon it “as a disaster or as a factor for destruction

24. Public Papers of the Presidents: Ford, 1976–1977, Book I–III (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofªce, 1979), pp. 376, 1373; and Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and Italian Tricolor, p. 223. 25. For instance, Carter had told Playboy in August 1976 (the interview was promptly leaked though it was not formally published in Playboy until November 1976) that he would not want “to close the doors of communication, consultation, and friendship” to the Communist leaders in Italy, France, or Portugal, since that would only force the European Communists back into the arms of Moscow. Inter- view with Playboy, November 1976, in PC, p. 955. 26. Daily Press Message, 21 March 1977, pp. 2–5; Daily Press Message, 22 March 1977, pp. 2–6; and Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 229–232. In fact the Justice Department sent out a warning in early 1948 that anyone who voted Communist in the April election would be denied entry into the United States. Lefºer, A Preponderance of Power, p. 214. The ban on granting Commu- nist Party members entrance to the United States was thereafter codiªed in the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the McWarran-Walter Act of 1952. The proposed change on visas for the Italian Commu- nists, it should be noted, was part of a broader effort on the part of the Carter administration to do away with the McWarran-Walter Act. 27. Carter ªrst formulated this view in his June 1976 interview with Il Tempo. Gardner took the same position in the weeks following his appointment. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 218, 232.

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of the Atlantic Alliance”28 and, on the other hand, warnings that it would be “a mechanism for subversion of the strength of NATO.”29 Carter was equally ambiguous when discussing how the problem should be dealt with by the outside world and by the United States in particular. He would sometimes argue that the PCI had gained strength because of “the weakness or ineptness of the democratic forces to govern appropriately”; Eurocommunism in general, he claimed, was “a disquieting problem” that could be dealt with through “a better functioning of the democratic re- gimes.”30 On other occasions Carter took a much harder line against the Communists. He once said that the United States should do everything it could “within reasonable and open bounds” to keep cabinet seats out of the Communists’ reach.31 In an interview published by Playboy magazine in No- vember 1976 (an interview that was disclosed to the American press two months earlier), Carter addressed the question of the proper U.S. response if the PCI were elected to power. He maintained that the “proper posture was the one taken by Helmut Schmidt, who said that German aid to Italy would be endangered.”32 He likewise emphasized the necessity of warning Italian and French voters “that the Communists have double loyalties which risk playing in favor of the USSR or the East European countries.”33 Overall, then, the public record gave Italian observers a mixed picture of Carter’s position on Eurocommunism in general and the notion of a compromesso storico in particular. Whereas it was difªcult to ªnd evidence that Carter would look any more benignly on a Communist takeover in Italy or France than his predecessors would have, there was reason to believe that his administration would be less inclined to interfere in the democratic political process in these countries to prevent such an outcome. In this way Carter’s policy differed from that of, say, the Truman administration, which made preparations for military intervention (even if it is extremely doubtful that such an intervention would have taken place), or the Nixon administration, which threatened to expel a PCI-governed Italy from NATO.34 Carter’s willingness to open direct lines of communication with the PCI leadership, and to abandon the automatic denial of visas to PCI members represented an im-

28. Interview with L’Express, 23 August 1976, in PC, pp. 545–546. 29. Interview with Playboy, in PC, p. 954. 30. Interview with L’Express, in PC, pp. 545–546. 31. Remarks at the National Democratic Issues Conference, in PC, p. 83. 32. Interview with Playboy, in PC, p. 954. 33. Interview with L’Express, in PC, p. 546. 34. Lefºer, A Preponderance of Power, p. 196. Kissinger’s threats are documented in The New York Times, 22 March 1976, p. 3, and The Washington Post, 14 April 1976, p. A1.

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portant shift in diplomatic style and means, especially compared to the rigid position taken by Kissinger and by Gardner’s predecessor in Rome, Ambassa- dor John Volpe, whom leftist Italians often jokingly called Ambassador Coup d’État. The importance of these changes should certainly not be dismissed. Nonetheless, these differences in style and means did not necessarily imply that the Carter administration was pursuing goals different from those of its predecessors with respect to Italy. The available evidence, in fact, suggests the opposite. Carter’s campaign record conªrms that he never publicly ques- tioned the objectives of traditional U.S. policy toward the West European Communist parties. Not only did he claim that he would hate to see the Communists take power, but he also expressed, from the very start, his hope that democratic parties would prevail indeªnitely in leadership roles.35 After the 1976 presidential election, Carter’s foreign policy aides took pains to stress the fundamental continuity between Carter’s objectives and Nixon’s and Ford’s policies toward Italy.36 More important, the new administration’s emphasis on continuity in its handling of the PCI was reiterated even outside the public arena. Shortly after taking ofªce, Carter and his foreign policy advisers initiated a secret reassess- ment of the Eurocommunist challenge. On 1 February 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski commissioned a Presidential Review Memorandum (PRM-9) on U.S. policy toward Europe. First on the list of “key European issues” was an analysis of broad trends in U.S. relations with Western Europe, including U.S. policy on important internal issues in West European countries. Within the latter category the sole matter explicitly discussed was Euro- communism.37 The main initiator of the study, Brzezinski, later said his primary concern at the time was that the entry of the PCI into the Italian government would “legitimate a kind of Left-wing neutralism in Europe which would then undermine NATO.” In 1977 this was a particularly worrisome issue in the Ital- ian case, Brzezinski recalled, since “insofar as NATO is concerned, Italy was viewed very much as a passive member, a rather weak member, very different from Germany, France, and Britain.” Moreover, Italy seemed politically vul-

35. Remarks at the National Democratic Issues Conference, in PC, p. 82. 36. Ambassador Gardner stressed this point in his interview with Italian television’s Channel 2 in Jan- uary 1977. Six months later Assistant Secretary of State Hodding Carter III even issued an ofªcial statement that emphasized the lack of disagreement between the positions of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Carter administration with regard to Italy and the PCI challenge. See Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 252–253. 37. PRM-9, “Comprehensive Review of European Issues,” 1 February 1977, JC Library, Presidential Review Memoranda collection.

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nerable and uncertain in its foreign policy orientation. Thus, Brzezinski wanted “to make sure that nothing happened within the Italian body politic that would produce a qualitative shift of formal orientation which could then be contentious to us.”38 The position of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance is harder to assess. The lack of any discussion of Eurocommunism in his memoirs suggests that he did not see it as a particularly urgent problem. Carter conªrmed this impression in an interview after leaving ofªce. When asked to summarize his advisers’ positions on Eurocommunism, the former president responded: “Brzezinski was much more concerned about the [Euro] Communist threat than I was. And I was probably more concerned . . . than Cyrus Vance.”39 These differences should not be exaggerated, however. After all, Vance and the State Department made important contributions to the PRM-9 process and helped to coordinate the policy review with the work of another interagency group that was devising secret political instructions for Ambassador Gardner. In addition to Gardner, the group consisted of Vance’s assistant secretary for European affairs, Arthur Hartman, and the head of the State De- partment’s Italian desk, Bronson McKinley, as well as members of the NSC staff. Secretary Vance and Secretary of Treasury Michael Blumenthal submit- ted the secret decision memorandum for presidential signature on 16 March 1977. According to an unauthorized reprint of the document, the interagency group argued that the aim of U.S. policy should be to preserve Italy’s democratic system and Western orientation and that “ambiguous signals from Washington would do much to discourage those struggling to revitalize the democratic parties, especially the Christian Democrats, bringing to the fore those who would seek refuge in an ‘historic compromise’ with the Commu- nists.”40 The big question was how to support the DC and avert a DC-PCI coalition government without provoking charges of undue interference in internal Italian affairs. The memorandum introduced a crucial distinction between noninterference and indifference. It was necessary, the authors claimed, “to approach this objective without, on the one hand, appearing to interfere in

38. Zbigniew Brzezinski, interview, Washington, 19 October 1993. See also Brzezinski, Power and Principle, pp. 311–313. 39. Jimmy Carter, interview, Atlanta, 20 October 1993. 40. Parts of the memorandum are reproduced in Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 232–235. Wollemborg, who claims to have been the ªrst outsider to have access to the document, was on very close terms with Ambassador Gardner and appears to have been his mouthpiece in the Italian press. Wollemborg, therefore, most likely obtained access to the document with the help of his connection with Gardner. In a letter to the present author, Gardner has conªrmed the authenticity of the quoted document.

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Italy’s domestic politics or, on the other, giving the impression that we favor accommodation with the Communists or are indifferent to Italy’s political choices.”41 On the basis of these arguments, the memorandum identiªed three principles for U.S. policy toward Italy. First, it was important to impress on the Italians that the United States continued to attach great importance to Italy and intended to do whatever it could to strengthen the already close bilateral ties. Second, the administration would not interfere in Italy’s domestic affairs “by such actions as dictating to Italians how they should vote, seeking to ma- nipulate political events in Italy, or ªnancing Italian political parties or per- sonalities.” Finally, the memorandum emphasized that the administration would prefer to see Italy governed by political parties with strong democratic traditions, values, and practices. Thus, even though the United States would work constructively with any Italian government that was “truly independent of external dictation” and was committed to human rights and the principles of the European and Atlantic communities, the administration should openly communicate that “we are concerned about the willingness and ability of Communist parties, which do not share these traditions, values, and practices, to cooperate with us and other members of the Western community on fundamental political, economic, and security issues.”42 Brzezinski, who probably would have preferred even stronger language, was eager to get the president’s signature on the memorandum as a ªrst step in the right direction. On 14 March 1977 he told Carter that the drift to the left in Italian politics was “potentially the gravest political problem we now have in Europe.”43 Even if Carter was less alarmed by the PCI challenge than Brzezinski was, he readily signed the document and authorized the dispatch of ofªcial instructions to Gardner based on the memorandum. As Carter recalled later, the prospect of a Communist takeover in France or Italy worried him “as a most serious threat” because it also involved the possibility that these countries would form an “alliance or condominium with the Soviet Union.”44 If these recollections are correct, Carter evidently believed that a government in which the PCI took part could not be trusted to respect either the rules of democracy or the goals and integrity of NATO.45 There was thus

41. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, p. 233–234. 42. Ibid. 43. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 312. 44. Carter, interview, Atlanta, 20 October 1993. 45. This interpretation ªts well with Carter’s claim in August 1976 that a Communist takeover in

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general agreement within the administration about the need to oppose a compromesso storico. The adoption of the decision memorandum also suggests that some of the changes in U.S. policy toward Italy in 1977 were motivated primarily by tactical concerns. Nothing illustrates this better than the policy of accommodation that the interagency group urged the United States to adopt vis-à-vis the Italian Communists. In line with Carter’s campaign promises, the memorandum called for a gradual and careful expansion of U.S. diplomatic contacts with the PCI leadership, together with moderate steps to liberalize U.S. handling of visa requests from members of the Communist Party.46 Part of the reasoning behind these moves was that the rejection policy of the past three decades made little sense in the era of détente. In Brzezinski’s view it had been “perfectly ridiculous” for the Nixon and Ford administrations “to agree to talk to Brezhnev and refuse any contact with Berlinguer.”47 But there were tactical motives as well. For instance, Carter’s advisers hoped that the increased contacts with the PCI would make it possible for the United States to retain at least some moderating inºuence on Italian politics if the nightmare scenario of a Communist takeover ever came true.48 Moreover, the somewhat muted denunciation of the PCI that the new accommodating policy necessitated in the public sphere was compensated for by more straightforward rhetoric in the private sphere. U.S. diplomats in Rome were secretly instructed that they should “emphasize and elaborate our views on the risk of Communist participation in Italian or other Western governments more in private than in public.”49 In short, the ofªcial U.S. position on Eurocommunism was being soft- ened for tactical reasons. Because a more explicit denunciation of Western Eu- rope’s Communist parties was likely to backªre and harm U.S. interests, the diplomatic corps was assigned the task of conveying the sharpest warnings in private conversations. The decision to adopt this approach also casts doubt on Carter’s strong public commitment to the principle of noninterference. Al- though private warnings are qualitatively different from the use of bribes or blackmail, they constitute a middle course between active involvement and noninterference.

Italy or France could prove to be “a decisive factor for the future of the free world.” Interview with L’Express, in PC, p. 546. 46. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 233–234. 47. Ibid., p. 225. 48. Ibid., p. 225. 49. Quote from the last paragraph of the 16 March 1977 memorandum. (see fn. 40 above), reproduced in Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, p. 234.

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The “Soft” Statement of 6 April 1977

Once the decision memorandum was signed, the administration agreed, at Gardner’s suggestion, to issue a statement summarizing the three basic principles of U.S. policy toward Italy—friendship, noninterference, and a preference for democratic government. For Gardner, who was to be sworn in as ambassador on 18 March 1977, there was an obvious advantage in arriving in Rome with a ªrm policy statement in hand.50 Much to Gardner’s dismay, however, the State Department suddenly re- versed its position and canceled the planned statement.51 Instead, it sent Gardner to Rome empty handed, with the 16 March memorandum serving only as his secret compass in the turbulent political waters awaiting him. This still might have worked reasonably well if Washington had refrained from ofªcial statements that contradicted the guidelines to which he was supposed to adhere. On 6 April, however, the State Department issued a public appraisal of Eurocommunism that Gardner believed was contrary to the political objectives of his diplomatic mission. The passage in question reads: We believe the position of a Communist party in a particular country is a matter to be decided by the people and the government of the country concerned. We do not propose to involve ourselves in the processes by which they reach their decisions on it. This does not mean that our attitude is one of indifference. We attach great importance to our ability to work with the countries of Western Eu- rope on matters of vital interest. Our ability to do so could be impaired if these governments came to be dominated by political parties whose particular traditions, values, and practices are alien to the fundamental democratic principles and common interests on which our relations with Western Europe are based.52 This statement could be seen as softening the administration’s policy in two important respects. First, although the president had already hedged his commitment to noninterference with a clear preference for an all-democratic government, the State Department message emphasized the administration’s unqualiªed commitment to the principle of noninterference. This nuance was signiªcant because it could give the false impression that the United States would not under any circumstances undertake countermeasures against a Communist takeover. Second, the nonindifference principle was presented in

50. Ibid., p. 232. 51. As Gardner recalls it, Vance simply called him on the phone to say that the statement would not be issued after all, offering no further explanation. Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001. 52. Statement by the U.S. Department of State, 6 April 1977, quoted in Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 234–235.

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a way that seemed to allow for the granting of at least a limited number of cabinet seats to the PCI, since such a step would still keep the PCI from domi- nating the Italian government. Interpretations to this effect were immediately voiced by pro-Communist and far-right observers of Italian politics, who saw the statement—or at least pretended to see it—as proof that Carter had accepted the notion of a compromesso storico. Even some moderate Italian newspapers interpreted the statement this way. For instance, La Repubblica carried the headline that “The U.S. Veto of a Government with the Communists Has Collapsed.” Likewise, Epoca claimed “The Attitude of the U.S. Would Be ‘In- different’ if the PCI Were to Participate in the Government but Did Not ‘Dominate’ It.”53 Alarmed by such speculation, Gardner sent a cable to Brzezinski and Vance explaining the difªculties created by the ofªcial statement. Compared with the secret policy guidelines for his mission that he had received a few weeks earlier, the ambassador found the ofªcial statement much “softer.” While acknowledging that the task of addressing Eurocommunism in general could have necessitated “some differences in wording,” Gardner complained that the ofªcial statement had led many Italians to believe that the United States “would have no problem with governments in which PCI would participate but not dominate.” To make things worse, Gardner continued, even some inºuential U.S. journalists had charged him with seeking to issue a “soft line” statement on the PCI. He emphasized that this was the “exact opposite of [the] truth.” In his judgment it was imperative for the administration to provide an authoritative clariªcation of its position on Eurocommunism.54 Conclusive evidence on the reasons for the apparent change in U.S. policy is lacking, but all indications are that the State Department had not intended to modify the guidelines. Rather than representing a softening of U.S. policy toward the PCI, the April statement appears to have resulted from a clumsy U.S. attempt to help François Mitterrand, the head of the French So- cialist Party, in his struggle against the Communists for the pro-left vote in the upcoming French municipal elections. Mitterrand had sent a representative to Washington in January 1977 to meet with Peter Tarnoff, who was then executive secretary at the State Department and Vance’s special assistant on European affairs. Having lived in Paris and Lyon for many years as a student and as a U.S. Foreign Service ofªcer, Tarnoff knew France well and was sensi- tive to French interests. Mitterand’s envoy wanted Tarnoff to assure him that the United States would refrain from diplomatic actions that could be interpreted by the French people as interference in France’s electoral process. In

53. Ibid., p. 235. 54. Ibid., pp. 237–238.

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particular, he warned against any U.S. attempt to discourage voters from helping the left-wing parties of the Left to power. Such undue pressure, he claimed, would only beneªt the Communists and would prevent him from gaining the upper hand within the two-party alliance. This, in turn, would harm U.S.-French relations and impede Mitterrand’s goal of strengthening the alliance between the United States and France.55 Apparently, Tarnoff and Vance accepted Mitterrand’s arguments. Al- though the chief U.S. objective remained the same for both Italy and France—to increase general receptiveness to U.S. interests and to keep the Communists out of power—the different domestic political situations in the two countries called for different U.S. strategies. In Italy, where the PCI was the second largest party and effectively controlled the left, U.S. interests seemed best served by explicit support of the center, which for all practical purposes would mean to continue the traditional courting of the DC. In France, however, the Socialists had already taken over the PCF’s role as the dominant left-wing party. Under Mitterrand’s leadership, the party had moved toward the center, especially on foreign policy issues, and appeared in many ways to be a more tempting partner for the United States than was Pres- ident Giscard d’Estaing’s French Democratic Union (UDF), which still showed signs of a Gaullist complex in its dealings with Washington. Hence, U.S. objectives toward France would not necessarily be best served by an open attack on the Communists or an explicit endorsement of the moderate- conservative parties. Rather, the optimal course seemed to be a careful balanc- ing act that would seek to move d’Estaing away from the Gaullists and Mitterrand away from the PCF without weakening their relative strength vis-à-vis their respective rivals. What Vance and his staff may not have fully recognized is that it would be almost impossible for Washington simulta- neously to pursue strategies optimal to France and Italy. The result was to Gardner’s disadvantage. By mid-March 1977, as he was awaiting the issuance of a U.S. statement on Italy, the focus of the State De- partment was shifting toward France, where municipal elections, including an extremely tight race for the local government of Paris, were approaching. The prospect that the 1978 general elections in France could result in a historic victory for the left seemed to increase almost day by day. Against this backdrop Vance decided to cancel the agreed-upon document on Italy in favor of a more general statement on Eurocommunism that had been tailored to address the more delicate situation in France. The statement contained only the parts of the 16 March memorandum that were conducive to the optimal French strategy, providing Gardner with almost no leeway to rebut Italian speculation

55. Ibid., p. 234 and Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001.

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about the Carter administration’s attitude toward the suggested historic compromise. The notion that the April 1977 statement was not actually intended to signal a new U.S. softness on Eurocommunism is conªrmed by the ease with which Gardner persuaded the State Department to rectify its tactical blunder. Garder’s desire to clarify the statement was supported by Brzezinski, whose anxiety about the PCI was reinforced by a letter he had received a week or two earlier from his friend George Urban, a senior ofªcial at Radio Free Europe. On the basis of conversations with inºuential Italians, Urban offered three propositions: First, in contrast to the French, the Italians would not resent, but would welcome, a stronger U.S. stand against the Communist Party. There was an old “navigare complex” in Italian politics, Urban claimed. Politi- cians and voters, he argued, expected to be told “which way their opportun- ism should be directed,” and the United States must not refrain from making its views known. Second, Urban warned that although there had been positive developments in the PCI, it was far too early to conclude that the party was genuinely supportive of democracy. Finally, Urban challenged the argument that the rise of the PCI would cause Moscow greater concern than it would the United States. Although Moscow might fear that a Communist takeover in Italy or France could deprive it of the economic beneªts of détente, Urban claimed that this loss would be offset by the long-term beneªts of having a Communist government inside NATO. Such a development, he warned, would have a “disastrous” psychological impact in many European countries and would ultimately deprive the Western Alliance of its raison d’être.56 The letter echoed Brzezinski’s own concerns about Eurocommunism, and he immediately passed it on to Carter. Whether prompted by Gardner’s appeal for a stronger statement or by Urban’s assessment that “a single paragraph in a speech by the U.S. President might work wonders,”57 Carter ªnally decided that it was time for him to enunciate his views. In a meeting with a selected group of West European journalists on 25 April 1977, Carter was asked by La Stampa how he would react to the possibility of a coalition government in Italy or France with Communist participation. In a carefully worded reply, Carter said he would prefer that the two governments in question continue to be democratic and that “no totalitarian elements become either inºuential or dominant.” After repeating his commitment to noninterference, he twice used the opportunity to express his hope that dem-

56. Urban to Brzezinski, 19 March 1977, JC Library, WHCF—Subject File, Box CO-37, 20 January 1977–30 June 1977 Folder. 57. Ibid.

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ocratic parties would “prevail during the coming years in the struggle for political authority.”58 Further clariªcation of the administration’s position came on 2 May 1977, when Carter told three leading European television networks that he “strongly favored” the election of leaders who were committed to democracy and who were “free from Communist philosophy.”59 Thus, non-indifference was once again equated with U.S. opposition to any setup that would help bring the PCI or, for that matter, the PCF to power. This was exactly what Gardner had been asking for all along. Three days after the Carter interview appeared in La Stampa, Gardner sent a brief note to the president emphasizing that “the answer you gave on Eurocommunism was extremely helpful to us here.” According to Gardner, both President Giovanni Leone and Benigno Zaccagnini, the Secretary of the Christian Democrats, “expressed particular satisfaction with your remarks.”60

The Carter-Andreotti Summit

Even as the Carter administration was taking a clear-cut stance against Com- munist participation in the Italian government, developments within Italy spurred the PCI to step up its bid for power. This shift was caused primarily by the party’s sudden loss of popular support. The local elections in mid-April 1977 proved extremely disappointing. The PCI suffered setbacks in every re- gion of the country, especially in the south, which was normally a bastion of Communist support. The share of the PCI’s vote in the south dropped as much as 25 percent. In addition, the Communists were frustrated by the government’s hesitancy in implementing the social and economic reforms it had pledged to carry out under the August 1976 accord between the DC and its ªve supporting parties in parliament. The delay was worrisome to the PCI leadership because the party’s rank-and-ªle members had only reluctantly supported its backing of the all-DC government. Unless Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti moved relatively soon to fulªll the promises he had offered the previous summer, it would be difªcult for the PCI leadership to justify keeping him in power.61

58. Interview with European Newspaper Journalists, 25 April 1977, Public Papers of the Presidents, Jimmy Carter, 1977: Book I (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Ofªce, 1978) (hereinafter PPP), pp. 777–778. 59. Interview with European Broadcast Journalists, 2 May 1977, PPP, p. 767. 60. Gardner to Carter, 5 May 1977, JC Library, WHCF—Name File: “Gardner, Richard N.,” Box 1173, 8 February 1977–31 December 1978 Folder. 61. Amyot, The Italian Communist Party, pp. 218–225. According to one survey, 67percent of the PCI members interviewed in 1977–1978 supported the policy of the historic compromise, but viewed

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In May 1977 the PCI publicly condemned the government’s handling of the economic and social crisis. The Communists soon threatened to withdraw even passive support unless they received a greater say in the formulation and implementation of policy. This strategy proved partly successful. Against a backdrop of new record highs in inºation, unemployment, and government deªcits, the DC in midsummer agreed with its ªve supporting parties on a re- vamped program, the so-called June programmatic accord. Although the June accord did not prompt any changes in the government setup, it included so many concessions to the Communists that it could easily be interpreted as another important step toward the historic compromise. The PCI did its utmost to portray the revised compact as a prelude to a new government that would include Communist cabinet members. Ofªcially, Andreotti, Aldo Moro, and other DC leaders rejected this interpretation, but their denials did little to curb the PCI’s momentum.62 These events occurred as Andreotti prepared for an ofªcial visit to the United States in late July 1977. From the U.S. perspective the Andreotti visit was important for at least three reasons. First, it would provide an opportunity to improve the bilateral relationship and to stress Italy’s importance for the United States and the Western alliance. Washington in fact was looking for a symbolic gesture that would help calm Italian fears of being treated as a secondary ally. Evidence of these fears had emerged on 31 March when the Italian ambassador to Washington, Robert Gaja, privately complained to Brzezinski that his government had “difªculty in contacting U.S. ofªcials.” He argued that a long line-up of foreign leaders had already visited President Carter and that only Italy had “been left out.” According to the ambassador, it was difªcult for his government not to think that the United States had “a special reason for excluding Italian contacts with the President.” To rectify this unfortunate impression, “the Italians were looking for a political gesture”—in other words, it was now imperative for the United States to agree to a formal state visit by Andreotti. After ªrst pointing out that the U.S.-Italian relationship should not rest on “constant cries of ‘disaster’ and ‘crisis’” and that Italy should not “exaggerate the importance of things not happening,” Brzezinski gave the ambassador what he had come for—a ªrm assurance “that the visit was on.” Brzezinski emphasized that Andreotti would be invited for an ofªcial visit with the president, as opposed to the informal visits by other European leaders such as Bruno Kreisky and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and

it as a tactic; another 20 percent refused to accept it at all, and only 23 percent approved it and saw it as a preferable long-term strategy. 62. Amyot, The Italian Communist Party, pp. 221–224; and Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 256–257.

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that he would visit Washington before such prominent ªgures as Giscard and Helmut Schmidt.63 Second, the Andreotti visit would enable Washington to oppose the PCI without interfering too conspicuously in Italian politics. Although U.S. ofªcials in their public statements before and during the visit emphasized their desire to improve U.S.-Italian relations, their more important objective was to thwart the PCI. An internal White House memorandum on the upcoming visit stressed that “the principal item we will bring up will be the Ital- ian internal political situation and the Communist problem.”64 Administra- tion ofªcials who prepared the political agenda for the meeting highlighted the need to obtain from Andreotti a promise not to let the Communists into the government unless the voters in a future election made this absolutely impossible to avoid.65 Last, but not least, the visit was seen as a way of helping Andreotti and the DC remain in power. The administration was well aware that opinions within the ruling party differed concerning best way of dealing with the current crisis and the PCI. In a meeting with Brzezinski in March 1977, Ambas- sador Gaja indicated that the DC leadership was split along two lines. The ªrst group, headed by Forlani, wanted to call a general election if a parliamentary crisis occurred. The other group, led by party chairman Aldo Moro, was prepared to form a government coalition that would in some way include the PCI. In the ambassador’s own view, both alternatives were “dangerous.” He warned that Italy might be approaching a fundamental crisis and that the res- olution of the crisis would depend on what signals came from Washington. If the United States gave the impression that it would accept Communist participation in the Italian government, then “you would have them in the government tomorrow.” Brzezinski, to whom the ambassador’s remarks must have sounded like a manifestation of the Italian “navigare complex” referred to by Urban, emphasized that the United States did not favor such participation and would not encourage it.66 Thus, given the split within the DC leadership, Andreotti stood out as the best guarantor of a continuation of Christian Democratic rule. A visit by Andreotti to Washington would enhance his per-

63. Memorandum of Conversation (hereinafter MemCon) between Brzezinski and Ambassador Goja, 31 March 1977, JC Library, NSA, Brzezinski Material, SF, Box 33, MemCons: Brzezinski Janu- ary–September 1977 Folder. 64. Memorandum, “Tresa” to Deputy Appointment Secretary Frances M. Voorde [Fran] and Special Assistant to the President for Appointments Timothy E. Kraft [Tim], 17 June 1977, JC Library, WHCF—Subject File, Box CO-36, Executive File, 1 July 1977–31 July 1977 Folder. 65. Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001. 66. MemCon between Brzezinski and Ambassador Goja, 31 March 1977.

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sonal standing and authority within the party, a point that had been emphasized by inºuential members of the U.S. Congress in a letter they sent to Carter in March 1977.67 If the Carter-Andreotti summit meeting was also meant as a way of stop- ping Italian rumors about a change in U.S. policy toward the PCI, those expectations went unfulªlled. Despite the positive atmosphere and obviously good rapport between the two leaders, the summit failed to stop left- and right-wing speculation in the Italian press that the United States was about to accept the inevitability of a compromesso storico. There were a few notable exceptions, though. Some experienced journalists, like Uno Stille of the leading conservative daily, Corriere della Sera, con- cluded that the summit had revealed that the Carter administration shared its predecessors’ “opposition to any formula involving the Communist party’s entry into the government in Italy.”68 The only problem with Stille’s analysis was that it found very little support in the public record of the summit. Measured against the 16 March memorandum and Carter’s public warnings against the Eurocommunists in April and May, it is surprising how little the president and other U.S. ofªcials were willing to say or do publicly in order to convey their nonindifference policy to the Italian public. Only once during Carter’s and Andreotti’s public appearances did the U.S. president mention the PCI, and then only en passant as a dinner table joke.69 He was also very discreet in his support of the DC and paid less attention to the political crisis in Italy than one might have expected given his previously expressed concern. These circumstances did not pass unnoticed by the pro-Communist Ital- ian press, which interpreted the absence of any explicit U.S. criticism of the June accord as a genuine “historic turning point in American attitude” toward the PCI. La Repubblica, which of late had come out increasingly in favor of a DC-PCI coalition government, proclaimed on its front page, “Carter Accepts the PCI.” The liberal La Stampa was less forthright, but its commentator Vittori Zucconi asserted that Andreotti went back to Rome “after having won

67. The letters, from Senator Claiborne Pell and Representative Frank Annunzio to Carter, 5 March 1977 and 21 March 1977 respectively, were read and reported to the President by Frank Moore, who also provided copies for Vance. In their letters Pell and Annunzio referred directly to the PCI challenge, claiming that the PCI leadership saw the current situation “as probably the best opportunity it has had over 25 years to gain control of the government.” JC Library, WHCF—Subject File, Box CO-36, Executive File, 1 July 1977–31 July 1977 Folder. 68. For this and other media reactions, see Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 257–258. 69. At a White House dinner in honor of Andreotti on 26 July 1977, Carter said jokingly before he toasted his guest: “I got through with my ªrst conversation with him today, and I discovered after- wards that we had promised to build 19 water projects in Italy. And he had promised to send the Communists over to me to help me run the Government. So we decided from then on to use an inter- preter.” PPP, pp. 1358–1359.

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Washington’s green light for a political formula that involves the Commu- nists.”70 What all these Italian observers shared was the suspicion that Carter’s low proªle on Eurocommunism signaled that his administration had decided to support whatever governmental formula Andreotti found most suitable for lifting Italy out of its crisis. Contrary to the public record, however, declassiªed materials from the summit show that Carter, like his predecessors, remained strongly opposed to any formula involving the PCI’s entry into the Italian government. Some evidence of this even surfaced in public. During the visit, Carter and other U.S. representatives praised Italy’s positive role in NATO and endorsed Andreotti’s approach to the Italian political crisis. The ofªcial White House statement after the two leaders met on 27July emphasized how the president had ex - pressed his appreciation of Italy’s “continued contribution to Western cooperation and Allied solidarity, and its commitment to democratic institutions.”71 The full meaning of this statement becomes clear only when one considers how Andreotti presented his positions to the U.S. public during the visit. In interviews with the U.S. press, as well as in talks with congressional leaders, the Italian premier stressed that the recent programmatic accord did not fore- shadow Communist participation in the government. He also explained that any formal alliance between the PCI and the DC would be “a great mistake” because it would “create such a political vacuum in the opposition as to lead to a dangerous counterreaction from both the extreme right and the extreme left.”72 By praising Andreotti and his approach to the political crisis, the Carter administration indirectly conªrmed that it, too, believed that a line should be drawn between obtaining parliamentary support from the Com- munists and actually inviting the PCI to join the government. Moreover, Carter used the summit to arrange for an increase in U.S. material support to Italy. In the true spirit of George F. Kennan, Carter and Andreotti spent much of their time discussing how the United States could help bolster the Italian economy to diminish the risk of a deep socioeconomic crisis. Like the fathers of containment before them, they feared that such a crisis could breed antidemocratic sentiments and undermine the legitimacy of Italy’s 1948 constitution. Because economic issues had always been an important ingredient in U.S.-Italian relations, Andreotti expected tangible economic beneªts from the United States that would help the DC prevail in the struggle with the PCI. In the lead-up to the summit he indicated that he

70. L’Unità, 29 July 1977, quoted in Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and Italian Tricolor, p. 258–259. 71. PPP, p. 1363. 72. “First-Hand Appraisal of the Communist Threat in Italy,” U.S. News and World Report, 1 August 1977, pp. 30–31.

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would privately urge the United States to buy more of its military equipment from Italian defense contractors. Carter’s personal notes from the meetings conªrm that Andreotti raised the subject.73 Although nothing was said about this matter in the ofªcial White House statement issued after the summit, the discussions did in fact result in an unofªcial U.S. promise to give Italy a larger share in future procurement programs for the U.S. military. This was a controversial move inasmuch as it would require a waiver of the traditional “buy American” procurement policy and would likely provoke a storm of criticism from the U.S. defense industry. The promise to Andreotti was given on a strictly bilateral basis, several months before the subject was discussed more generally within the alliance. A few weeks after the Carter-Andreotti summit, the administration agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Italian government that would formalize the commitment made by Carter.74 Carter’s handwritten notes from his private conversations with Andreotti conªrm the crucial importance that the U.S. government attached to the DC as the chief guarantor of a nonCommunist government. To the extent that the length of Carter’s notes on the discussion topics is indicative of their relative importance, the Communist problem was by far the most time-consum- ing and salient issue on the agenda.75 According to the notes, both men favored a continuation of the present policy, and Carter urged Andreotti to insist on the maintenance of a one-party government as the only acceptable alternative. A new election, they believed, would be undesirable because the “Com[munists] may win.” At the same time Carter emphasized that the DC should take advantage of the PCI’s favorable attitude toward Andreotti to “in- duce Com[munist] moderation.” When Carter asked Andreotti whether he believed that the PCI’s expressions of moderation had been sincere, the Italian leader stressed the fundamental difference between Communist loyalties in peace and war. Carter noted that the attitude of the PCI leadership was “most parallel” to that of the Yugoslav Communists, implying that nobody could tell in advance which side they would support in a particular international conºict. Carter’s notes clearly show, however, that neither he nor Andreotti seri- ously wanted to moderate the PCI to the point where it could become a trust- worthy partner for the DC. Instead, the moderating strategy was seen very much as a tactical device, with two distinct advantages: ªrst, it would help make the Christian Democrats “look better” (the reason for this was not elab-

73. Notes, “Andreotti,” 27 July 1977, JC Library, WHCF—Handwriting Files, Box 40, 27 July 1977 [1] Folder. 74. Memorandum, Treverton to Brzezinski, 2 September 1977, JC Library, WHCF—Subject File, Box CO-36, Executive File, 1 August 1977–30 June 1977 Folder. 75. Of Carter’s ªve handwritten pages, almost two full pages concerned the domestic political situa-

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orated upon in Carter’s notes); and, second, it would render the PCI less po- tent. As the Communists were moderating their positions, Carter observed, they were “losing fervor” in the eyes of Italian voters and were also losing So- viet support.76 A careful moderating strategy would thus help undermine the domestic and international power base of the PCI. Or, as Carter explained some years later, “If the Communist Party could be brought to moderate its position, to become in effect more conservative and alienating itself in some degree from the Soviet Union, then it would certainly be to our advantage.” When asked whether this would make a good summary of his thinking at the time, Carter replied, “That was the way I felt. And I would presume that Andreotti and I agreed.”77 In fact, Brzezinski had laid out the essentials of the moderating strategy in his meeting with Ambassador Gaja three months earlier. Brzezinski acknowledged that certain trends within the West European Communist movement, such as de-Stalinization and de-Leninization, were “to our advantage and should be abetted.” These trends, he noted, were most pronounced in the PCI. This observation, however, did not signal American support for a historic compromise. To the contrary, Brzezinski maintained that Communist participation in the government would probably retard these trends. Therefore, it would not be the position of the United States to encourage participation, nor would the United States symbolically enhance the importance of the Left (e.g., by placing great signiªcance to [sic] some contacts with Italian Communists).78 In short, Carter’s policy in the spring and summer of 1977 was based on three closely connected assumptions: ªrst, that a policy of noninterference was the best way to help keep the DC in power; second, that the more the PCI moderated its policies, the more it would undermine its domestic and international power base; and, third, that the PCI leadership would be more inclined to moderate its positions even further when kept out of government.

A Return to “Kissinger Politics”?

The chief drawback to the Carter administration’s effort to contain and weaken the PCI (so that it could more easily be kept out of power) was that

tion in Italy and how these were related to the issue of Communist participation in the government. Notes, “Andreotti,” 27 July 1977. 76. Ibid. 77. Carter, interview, 20 October 1993. 78. MemCon between Brzezinski and Ambassador Goja, 31 March 1977.

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it caused the enemies of the DC government to misconstrue the U.S. position. Under normal political circumstances in Italy it is possible that the administration’s plan could have worked, but the Communists were eager to take advantage of Carter’s noninterference approach in their bid for political power. From the PCI’s perspective there was much to be gained from the ambiguity of the U.S. position. The party’s earlier gains in popular support had, as Kissinger once observed, occurred at the margin, “among voters who had not voted Communist before, who did not vote by anti-American reºex, who for one reason or another were persuaded that the Communists [had] now become acceptable or indispensable.”79 A more pragmatic U.S. approach would enable the party to maintain the support of these voters and to make new inroads into the constituencies of the parties to its right. In similar fashion the ultraconservative parties beneªted from the U.S. approach because they were unhappy with the programmatic accord, which allowed the DC to rule without their support. To rectify the situation, they tried to evoke fear among moderate and conservative voters that the policy of the DC would sooner or later help the Communists gain power. Because of the traditionally close ties between the DC leadership and the U.S. government, the credibility of that warning would be enhanced if evidence emerged that the United States had turned “soft” on the Eurocommunists and tacitly accepted the idea of a historic compromise. Whether Italy’s right-wing leaders actually believed this or simply made their claims for self-serving political reasons is irrelevant. What matters is that the ambiguity of Carter’s initial policy and his low-key public demeanor during the July 1977 summit caused a great deal of uncertainty among Italian voters—uncertainty that the Communists and right-wing parties could exploit to undermine the position of the forces that the U.S. government was trying to keep in power. When the PCI leadership launched a new offensive in favor of a compromesso storico at the end of 1977, speculation about alleged U.S. prag- matism reemerged. The new PCI drive started in earnest on 7December when Berlinguer called for an emergency government of “unity and national solidarity”—which would include Communists, Socialists, and Chris- tian-Democrats—to deal with Italy’s deepening economic and sociopolitical crisis. His proposal won immediate support from Bettino Craxi, the leader of the Socialist Party, who on 11 December declared that the PCI should be per- mitted either to participate in the government or to support it as part of the ofªcial parliamentary majority. Adding to the pressure on the Andreotti government was its failure to live up to the strict budgetary limits it had accepted

79. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, p. 252.

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in an understanding with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June 1977. To increase employment and productivity, the government planned for a larger public sector deªcit than recommended by the IMF. The ªve other parties that supported the programmatic accord were initially willing to nego- tiate a new, slightly more expansionist budgetary agreement with the DC. In the eyes of the main trade unions, however, the proposed measures did not go far enough. On 15 December union leaders met with Andreotti and threatened to stage a one-day general strike in early January unless the government adopted more expansionist economic policies.80 When the Communists repeated their call for an emergency government, many observers saw it as the opening move in an endgame that would eventually bring the Communists into the cabinet. Ambassador Gardner watched these developments with increasing concern. At his swearing-in ceremony at the White House in March he had promised to let his work be guided by the old Venetian dictum Prime di parlare, taci—Before you speak, be quiet.81 By mid-December he had become so alarmed by the PCI’s “massive efforts” to get hold of Cabinet posts that he decided it was now necessary to speak up about the Communist threat, not only in his conversations with the Italian news media but also to his superiors in Washington. In a sharply worded warning to Brzezinski and Vance, he averred that senior members of the DC leadership were toying with the idea of forming a PCI-DC coalition government. Gardner informed Brzezinski that both Andreotti and Moro were still holding their own against the procoalition members of their own party but that pressure to form such a coalition was mounting every day. Moro had conªdentially told Gardner that the DC might at some point ªnd it necessary to make the PCI an ofªcial part of the government. Other high-ranking DC ofªcials, Gardner added, were ready to go further than that. The ambassador had recently been in touch with a group of younger DC leaders who felt it was necessary to strike a deal with the PCI and form a broad coalition government. Moreover, Amintore Fanfani, the inºuential president of the Italian Senate, supported the prospect of a historic compromise. Fanfani, who as prime minister in 1962 had been in charge of the initial “opening to the left” in Italian politics when he brought the Social Democrats into his government (a development that presaged Aldo Moro’s opening to the PSI the following year), had told Gardner that he was consid- ering a trip to Washington to ask for Carter’s support of the compromesso storico. Gardner was able to convince him that this would not be a wise move.

80. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 2 June 1978, p. 29,005A. 81. Remarks at the Swearing in of Richard Gardner, 18 March 1977, PPP, p. 463.

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Nonetheless, the very fact that Fanfani raised the issue was indicative of how strong the pressure for an agreement with the PCI had become within the DC leadership.82 Gardner informed Washington that the time had come when a word from the U.S. government could “tip the balance in favor of Italian democracy and of U.S. interests in Italy.” Speciªcally, he called for a statement that would once and for all establish that the Carter administration was opposed to any kind of historic compromise that would help the Communists to power.83 For Brzezinski, the cable from Rome arrived at exactly the right moment. He had been trying to draw Carter’s attention to Italian politics for several weeks, but with limited success. In the NSC’s Weekly Report to the President of 2 December, Brzezinski warned that the Italian situation was increasingly serious. Noting that the PCI had recently entered the regional government in Sicily and that the DC’s will to keep the Communists out of the national government seemed to be ºagging, he informed Carter that the NSC staff would convene a special interagency group to see whether there was anything the administration could do “to stiffen the Christian Democrats’ will.”84 Over the next few weeks Brzezinski also began to worry that a major political and economic crisis could engulf Italy because of the DC government’s poor handling of its ªnances. On 16 December 1977 he decided to alert the president that Italy had been unable to satisfy the IMF’s conditions on the reduction of public spending and wage controls. He expressed concern that investor and bank- ing conªdence in the DC government would collapse once new economic ªgures were made public in February. In Brzezinski’s view the PCI would not hesitate to exploit the situation politically.85 Carter responded to these warnings by authorizing Brzezinski to speak up publicly against the dangers of Eurocommunism. In a meeting with the press on 20 December Brzezinski afªrmed that the United States would have to be “very, very cautious and skeptical” about the depth and sincerity of the West European Communists’ self-proclaimed evolution away from their Mos- cow-directed past.86 In the meantime Brzezinski sped up the preparations for an interagency debate on the issue. However, because Carter was about to

82. Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001. 83. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, p. 267; and Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 312. 84. Brzezinski to Carter, 2 December 1977, JC Library, NSC Weekly Report 38, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 41. 85. Brzezinski to Carter, 16 December 1977, JC Library, NSC Weekly Report 40, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 41. 86. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 265–266.

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leave for a short but politically important tour of Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, the administration’s focus was concentrated on other issues, and no ªnal decision on U.S. countermeasures against Eurocommunism was made. While in France Carter used the opportunity to issue a warning to French and Italian democratic leaders against inviting the Communists to join their governments. According to the president, it was precisely when democracy was up against difªcult challenges that its leaders had to show “ªrmness in resisting the temptation of ªnding solutions in nondemocratic forces.”87 This statement was prompted by a dramatic turn of events in Italy, where it seemed increasingly likely that the PCI would withdraw from the June accord and attempt to force the DC to dissolve its minority government. On 4 January 1978 Berlinguer demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Andreotti and his entire cabinet in favor of a broad coalition government that would include the Communists. For a short while Rome seethed with rumors. Nobody seemed sure whether the Christian Democrats would accept the PCI’s demand. On 11 January the DC leadership ofªcially rejected the proposal for a new governmental setup, though it indicated its intention to seek a review of the programmatic accord in order to bring about “a broad and fruitful parliamentary convergence,” a statement widely understood to mean inclusion of the PCI in the ofªcial parliamentary majority, but not in the government itself.88 At this point the U.S. government was ªnally ready to fulªll Ambassador Gardner’s request for a stronger stand. During Carter’s absence from Wash- ington a consensus had developed among his advisers that it was necessary for the administration to issue an explicit warning not only against any government role for the Communists, but also against developments that would make such a role inevitable. After summoning Gardner to Washington, the Policy Review Committee of the NSC gathered in the basement of the White House to discuss the appropriate reaction. All participants agreed that the situation called for an ofªcial U.S. response. There was no dispute about the general content of the planned statement, which had been drafted by Gardner and slightly modiªed by the NSC staff.89 At the meeting Brzezinski and Gardner pressed for the strongest possible language, whereas the State De- partment, in Brzezinski’s account, “was for fuzzier, or vaguer, or more neutral

87. Statement Issued by the Department of State, 12 January 1978, American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents (Washington: Department of State, 1983), pp. 514–515. 88. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 2 June 1978, p. 29,005. 89. Wollemborg, Stars, Stripes, and the Italian Tricolor, pp. 267–268.

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positions on the subject.” In the end, Brzezinski felt conªdent that his own “point of view prevailed.”90 On 12 January 1978 the Department of State issued a statement on the administration’s attitude toward West European Communist parties, with particular reference to the situation in Italy. The crucial part of it read: Administration leaders have repeatedly expressed our views on the issue of Com- munist participation in West European governments. Our position is clear: we do not favor such participation and would like to see Communist inºuence in any Western European country reduced. . . . The United States and Italy share profound democratic values and interests, and we do not believe that the Com- munists share these values and interests.91 In addition, the statement reiterated President Carter’s belief that the best way to keep Communists out of power was to ensure that the democratic forces in Italy and elsewhere were able to meet the aspirations of their people. It closed by quoting from a portion of Carter’s press conference in Paris the previous week in which he had warned democratic leaders in France and Italy against inviting Communists to join their governments.92 For obvious reasons Carter’s statement was received with mixed feelings in Italy. The DC responded by issuing its own statement that, on the one hand, rejected “any interference” by the United States but, on the other hand, acknowledged that the party paid “attention to the concern of an ally to which we are linked by ties of friendship and common interest.” The DC leadership and the moderate right most likely welcomed the strong U.S. intervention because it ensured that the PCI could no longer claim that the United States had ceased to oppose Communist participation in the government. For the same reason, the pro-Communist press in Italy reacted to the statement by accusing Washington of “Kissinger politics”; that is, of attempt- ing to interfere in the political process of a friendly, democratic country. More important, Berlinguer repeated his call for a national “emergency government” with Communist participation.93 U.S. ofªcials continued for some time to watch Italian politics with concern as Andreotti and Berlinguer began talks that, at least for a while, seemed to bring the two parties closer to an understanding. On 7February Berlinguer announced that the PCI had decided to drop its demand for Communist seats in the government; instead, the party was ready to consider participating in an “emergency pact” that would ensure a clear parliamentary majority for

90. Brzezinski, interview, 19 October 1993. 91. Statement Issued by the Department of State, pp. 514–515. 92. Ibid. 93. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 2 June 1978, p. 29,006.

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the DC government.94 Two days later Brzezinski informed Carter that he suspected the DC leadership had, in effect, cut a deal with the PCI that would eventually bring the Communists into the parliamentary coalition. Com- bined with the expected victory of the Socialist and Communist parties in the upcoming parliamentary elections in France, the prospect of a DC-PCI part- nership in Italy would signify “major Communist advances in Europe” and cause a political backlash at home, “with the Administration being criticized for doing too little too late.”95 This time, however, Brzezinski’s warnings failed to sway the president. Carter’s recent trip to Europe had convinced him that developments in Italy and France were not harbingers of much wider political instability in Western Europe.96 Instead, Carter believed that U.S.-European relations were on the right track and that the United States had little to worry about in that part of the world. After his stop in Paris he was also conªdent that voters in France as well as in Italy would prove capable of handling the Communist problem on their own. President Giscard d’Estaing had likely conveyed to him the same reassuring observation he had already communicated to Brzezinski a few months earlier—namely, that the French leftist parties “would be unable to maintain their unity” and that the prospects were “quite hopeful” for both the parliamentary election in 1978 and the presidential election in 1981.97 As it turned out, Brzezinski, too, soon shifted to a more upbeat assessment of the political trends in Europe. The outcome of the political crisis in Italy was one reason for his change of heart. In early March the DC leadership decided after extensive discussions to seek a formal policy agreement with the PCI that would allow the Communists to be part of the parliamentary majority under certain “precise and limited conditions.” The conditions included the continued membership of Italy in NATO and the EC, the retention of the existing market economy, a ban on further major nationalizations, acceptance of the need for the continued accumulation of capital by private businesses, and a concerted governmental effort to defeat crime and terrorism “with all the means at the disposal of a democratic state”—a package that would be extremely hard for the Communists to swallow. Only if the PCI subscribed to

94. Ibid. 95. Brzezinski to Carter, 9 February 1978, JC Library, NSC Weekly Report 46, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 41. 96. Ibid. Carter’s skepticism can be seen from his handwritten comments in the margin. 97. MemCon between Giscard d’Estaing and Brzezinski, 26 September 1977, JC Library, NSA, Brzezinski Material, SF, Box 33, “Memcons: Brzezinski January–September 1977” Folder. D’Estaing would eventually be proved wrong about the 1981 presidential election, however, which he lost to Mitterand. Shortly afterward the Leftist alliance also won the parliamentary election and formed a coalition government, thus bringing Communists to power in Western Europe for the ªrst time in twenty-three years.

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these principles would the DC be ready to accept the “parliamentary solidarity” of the PCI. On 8 March an agreement on these terms was reached between the DC and four other parties: the Communists, the Socialists, the Social Democrats, and the Republicans (the Liberals had already decided to join the opposition). The new DC minority government under Andreotti was sworn in on 13 March and received votes of conªdence in parliament three days later, only a few hours after the Red Brigades had kidnapped DC party leader Aldo Moro.98 Apparently, the moderating strategy hammered out by the DC leadership in close understanding with the U.S. government worked according to plan. The PCI, while still kept out of government, had been brought around to accept a political platform that, in effect, committed it to preserve the DC-directed status quo in Italy. The PCI’s credibility as a radical alternative to the existing government would thereby be much more difªcult to uphold. On top of that, the Red Brigades’ seizure and subsequent execution of Aldo Moro made it increasingly difªcult to sell any radical or revolution- ary programs to Italian voters. Contrary to the Red Brigades’ expectations, the Moro case strengthened rather than weakened the democratic system in Italy.99 But developments in Italy were not the only reason that Brzezinski gradu- ally took a more optimistic view of political trends in Europe. The setback for the Communist Party and the Left Alliance in the French national elections in March and the successful NATO summit in Washington in May provided a much-needed psychological boost for the West. Equally important was a series of scattered but consistent polling results from Western Europe and Japan suggesting that the United States was about to recapture the political-ideolog- ical initiative in the Cold War, reversing the trends of the 1960s that had favored the Soviet Union. By the end of 1978 Brzezinski told Carter that the latest surveys of European and Japanese public opinion showed that the psychological underpinnings of America’s central alliances were “in improving shape.”100 This optimistic conclusion was reafªrmed by the ªndings of “Com- prehensive Net Assessment 1978,” a top-secret study prepared by the NSC staff in early 1979 to give Carter a sense of the main trends in the global competition with the Soviet Union. According to this study, the political situation

98. Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 2 June 1978, p. 29,006–29,007. 99. Richard Drake, The Aldo Moro Murder Case (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 100. Brzezinski to Carter, 2 December 1978, JC Library, NSC Weekly Report 83, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 42.

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in Western Europe was one of the few areas of the U.S.-Soviet competition in which the trends in 1977–1978 had shifted in favor of the United States.101 Nothing could illustrate this change better than the latest developments in Italian politics. After the PCI’s bid for power proved unsuccessful, the party began to lose public support. Partly for that reason and partly because of increasing frustration with the DC government’s policies, Berlinguer withdrew the PCI from the ªve-party parliamentary majority in January 1979. This move triggered a lengthy political crisis that lasted until the beginning of April when President Alessandro Pertini dissolved the parliament and called for early general elections in two months. In the elections, held in June, the PCI experienced a major setback, as its share of the electorate dropped to 30.4 percent, eight percentage points behind the DC.102 As a result, the Communists decided not to rejoin the parliamentary majority unless the DC offered them cabinet posts. After several failed attempts by the DC and the Socialist Party to form a new government, former Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga ªnally succeeded in establishing a DC-led coalition government with the Social Democrats and the Liberals. The Socialists formally declared that they would support the Cossiga government by abstention; thereby ensuring that no majority could be formed against it as long as the coalition partners held together. For the PCI this result was a double setback. The party’s bid for a role in the government had been crushed, and whatever inºuence the Communists had derived from their inclusion in the parliamentary majority was lost. To make matters worse for the PCI, the choice of Cossiga as prime minister was widely seen as a victory for the right wing of the DC, which had been increasingly critical of Andreotti’s readiness to consider a pact with the PCI. The inevitable conclusion was that the PCI was more isolated and was less hopeful of gaining a signiªcant say in government than at any time in the recent past. The reduced Communist inºuence in Italian politics was soon to be felt in the foreign policy establishment as well. As late as January 1979 the new Italian ambassador to Washington, Paulo Pansa Cedroni, had come to see Brzezinski to express his government’s concern about the American decision not to invite Italy to the Guadeloupe summit. Cedroni said that this decision had been viewed with dismay by the Italian public and had provided ammu- nition to those who wanted to undermine the stability of Italy’s Atlantic and

101. Comprehensive Net Assessment 1978, 9 February 1979, JC Library, attachment to NSC Weekly Report 92, 30 March 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 42. 102. In comparison, the DC claimed 38.3 percent, down 0.4 percent from the 1976 election. The second biggest loser was the other extremist party, the neofascists, who received 5.3 percent in comparison to the 6.1 percent it received in 1976. Serfaty and Gray, The Italian Communist Party, p. 76.

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European relationships. Given the precariousness of the situation in Italy, he argued, it was important that “such exercises as Guadeloupe be avoided in the future.” Brzezinski replied that because of the frequent changes of government in Italy, it was difªcult for other Western leaders to establish long-term personal relationships with Italian ofªcials—the sorts of relationships that the Guadeloupe summit was intended to foster. He then suggested that it might be useful if the Italian public asked itself why Italy had been excluded and then took the appropriate steps—that is, voting against the PCI—to ensure that next time Italy would be invited.103 The June 1978 election can be seen as an important step in that direction. Rather than becoming an unreliable partner and divisive force in NATO, Italy began to demonstrate a new ªrmness in its alliance policies, a change that was obviously welcomed in Washington. In October 1979 Brzezinski reported to Carter that the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Italy had all taken “ªrm internal government decisions” to support NATO’s controversial intermediate range nuclear force modernization plan. He added that the Italians had even backed away from their initial insistence on some kind of physical veto over the operation and possible use of the 112 ground-launched cruise missiles to be deployed in Italy.104 In fact, even the PSI supported the deployment—a shift that fulªlled another important aim of U.S. policy, namely, to isolate the PCI and to bring the Socialists closer to the democratic forces in Italian politics.105

Conclusion

From 1948 on the U.S. government had opposed the inclusion of Commu- nists in the Italian government. U.S. ofªcials believed that Communist participation in a NATO government would threaten the viability of the alliance and thus run contrary to the national security interests of the United States. President Jimmy Carter shared these concerns but with less alarm. There were several reasons for his more relaxed attitude. First, the PCI had changed a good deal by the late 1970s. It was less dependent on Moscow and more inclined to respect the values and institutions of Western democracy. Second, Carter faced a Soviet leadership whose ability to control Communist parties

103. MemCon between Ambassador Pansa and Brzezinski, 12 January 1979, JC Library, NSA-Brzezinski Material, SF, Box 33, “Memcons: Brzezinski September 1978–February 1979” Folder. 104. Brzezinski to Carter, 26 October 1979, JC Library, NSC Weekly Report 114, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 42. 105. Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001.

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in the West was on the decline—a trend that led some Italian observers to wonder whether Moscow might have more to fear from a historic compromise than Washington did. Recent evidence that Soviet intelligence agencies wanted to destroy the personal authority of the main Eurocommunist leaders in the 1970s is a tantalizing indication that these observers may have been right.106 Finally, Carter was more willing than many of his predecessors to accept George Kennan’s dictum that the greatest threat to the West was not Soviet expansionism but domestic instability caused by the failing economies of the West European countries. As long as the Eurocommunists wanted to mini- mize rather than maximize the economic and social crises in their countries (thus becoming, in Carter’s own words, “more conservative”), Carter might have been willing to tolerate a larger role for the PCI than previous U.S. presidents would have condoned. But was he ready to accept the party’s entry into the government? Because the ultimate test of Carter’s position never came to pass (in the sense that the DC itself never sought a compromesso storico), there is no conclusive answer to this question. Nevertheless, the evidence presented in this article suggests that Carter would have had a difªcult time accepting Com- munist participation in either the Italian or the French government. On at least two occasions—after the “soft” statement of 6 April 1977 and prior to the “tough” statement of 12 January 1978—he intervened to make sure that the Italians understood how strongly the United States would oppose such a development. He also emphasized that he would do his utmost to prevent it, within the scope of what his administration considered legitimate diplomatic conduct between friends and allies. The widespread notion that the Carter administration represented a new and more pragmatic U.S. attitude toward Eurocommunism had less to do with the substance of Carter’s policies than with the way those policies were presented to the public. The inability or unwillingness of Italian parties to accept the fact that Carter was opposed to a compromesso storico added to the general confusion. However, even if part of the blame for the doubts about the U.S. position must be placed on Italian journalists and politicians, the bulk of the problem was self-inºicted. The Italians misconstrued what the Carter administration was saying, but only because the administration refrained from saying it in an unequivocal and forceful way. Five speciªc factors contributed to the widespread misinterpretations of U.S. policy toward the PCI in 1977–1978: First, Carter’s sharp criticism of the foreign policy of his Republican pre-

106. See note 5 above.

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decessors caused pro-PCI observers in Italy to have inºated expectations of the new U.S. president’s willingness to choose a radically different approach to Eurocommunism. Second, unrealistic expectations arose among supporters of the compromesso storico because of Carter’s strong commitment to the principle of noninterference. What they failed to see, and what Carter failed to clarify, was that his reluctance to inºuence the Italian democratic process probably had less to do with his attitude toward the PCI than with his deep contempt for the meddling that Nixon and Kissinger had done in the domestic affairs of Asian, African, and Latin American countries. Carter had objected to U.S. actions in Vietnam, Angola, the Dominican Republic, and Chile on moral grounds. He did not want to make a heavy-handed attempt to inºuence the outcome of popular elections held in a Western democracy, but he was very apprehensive about the prospect of a Communist takeover in a NATO country.107 Carter could not let his commitment to the principle of noninterference prevent him from taking an anti-Communist stand. He initially had tried to solve this dilemma by introducing yet another principle: nonindifference. But this awkward double negation caused more ambiguity than it erased. Third, the administration’s willingness to launch a dialogue with moderate representatives of the PCI and to start loosening up the ban on entry visas for Italian Communists further contributed to the lack of clarity in its position. Because the true rationale behind the attempted accommodation could not be fully spelled out in public, these moves initially created the false impression of a process aimed at normalizing relations between the PCI and the U.S. government. Fourth, the “soft” statement of 6 April 1977 was a self-inºicted wound. In an ill-advised attempt to ride two horses at the same time—helping Mitterrand contain the French Communists and Andreotti the PCI—the State Department ended up with a message that was interpreted as a green light for a compromesso storico so long as the PCI was not granted a dominant position within the Cabinet. Finally, the administration may have squandered a ªrst-rate opportunity during the Carter-Andreotti summit to eliminate all lingering doubts about its position on the Communist issue. At the time, however, both Carter and

107. In the second televised debate with President Gerald Ford, Carter assured voters that he had “never advocated a Communist government for Italy,” adding that “that would, obviously, be a ridiculous thing for anyone to do who wanted to be President of [this] country.” Presidential Campaign De- bate of 6 October 1976, Public Papers of the Presidents, Gerald Ford, 1976–1977: Book III (Washing- ton, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofªce, 1979) p. 2412.

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Andreotti believed that the moderating strategy was best served by a low-key public approach on the part of the U.S. government. The statement issued on 12 January 1978 succeeded in removing whatever doubts still remained about the U.S. position on Eurocommunism. Pre- cisely because many Italian and U.S. observers had exaggerated the element of change in Carter’s initial policy, the statement was widely interpreted as a dramatic retreat to “Kissinger politics.”108 This article suggests a different interpretation. Rather than representing a radical departure from earlier policies, the statement made explicit what had been only tacitly conveyed from the time Carter ªrst addressed the PCI issue during the 1976 presidential campaign. Because the administration was still careful not to threaten the Italians with countermeasures if the PCI came to power and because administration ofªcials not only upheld but even expanded their efforts to establish better contacts with moderate Italian Communists, the most crucial differences between Carter’s approach and the Ford-Kissinger approach remained intact.109 It is not clear what impact, if any, the ªrmer and more outspoken anti-Communist stand taken by the Carter administration in January 1978 had on subsequent political developments in Italy. The fact that the governmental crisis was resolved without inviting the PCI into the cabinet suggests that U.S. policy might have been of some importance, even if domestic factors were more crucial. In the end the Communists’ unsuccessful bid for power in 1976–1978 simply convinced many Italian voters that the PCI was not the best choice after all, particularly if the objective was to promote real change. Other voters were frightened by the Moro case and resolved to give their full support to the democratic forces in Italian politics. Thus, in the 1979 national election large numbers of Italian voters turned away from the

108. This charge was common not only among pro-Communist Italian newspapers. A similar view could be found in the American press. For instance, an editorial in The Washington Post on 9 January 1978 claimed that Carter’s warning to Mitterand “suggested more the activism and alarm that marked Henry Kissinger’s approach to ‘Eurocommunism’ than the rather relaxed pose the Administration had struck earlier.” 109. To be sure, Gardner used the occasion during his trip to Washington in January 1978 to inform the leadership of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), widely known for its strong anti-Communist feelings, about his plans to establish contact also with Georgio Napolitano and other moderate Communist members of the inºuential Socialist Trade Union. The AFL-CIO accepted this as long as they were assured that Gardner would not also establish contact with the Communist trade union associated with the PCI. Gardner, interview by telephone, 23 July 2001. Gardner’s meeting with the AFL-CIO was fully in line with the Carter administration’s policies. Since November 1977 Brzezinski had held regular monthly meetings with George Meany and Lane Kirkland to review U.S. foreign policy. As Brzezinski reported to Carter, the conversation was very friendly and Meany—who once had remarked that “foreign policy is far too important to be left to the Secretary of State”—indicated “that he would like to be as helpful to us as he can.” Brzezinski to Carter, 11 November 1977, JC Library, NSC Weekly Report 36, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection—Weekly Reports, Box 41.

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PCI. With the beguiling spell of the historic compromise ªnally broken, Washington began to look at Italy with less concern and pessimism. As Brzezinski noted with satisfaction in his memoirs, “by the end of the Carter Administration, Italy had a ªve-party government with a majority in Parlia- ment, with the Communists isolated in the opposition.”110 From a U.S. Cold War perspective this was very close to the best of all possible Italian worlds.

110. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, pp. 312–313.

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