Eurocommunism: A New Test for the West
KISSINGER, HENRY A.
Thinking Aloud EUROCOMMUNISM: A NEWTEST FOR THE WEST BY HENRY A. KISSINGER The cohesion of the industrial democracies of Western Europe and North America plus Japan has been for 30 years the...
...We take the view rather that the overriding interests of the . . . people in their present-day situation prescribe a different method . . . namely the method of establishing a democratic anti-Fascist regime, a parliamentary democratic republic with full democratic rights and liberties for the people...
...In Eastern Europe, boredom, intellectual emptiness, inefficiency, and stultifying bureaucratism have been obvious for decades...
...Third, the United States should conduct its policies toward its allies in a manner that strengthens the moderate, progressive and democratic governments of Western Europe...
...The very success of Western societies in maintaining prosperity at a level undreamt of even 40 years ago sometimes contributes to their malaise...
...In addition, no serious observer disputes that the Communist parties in Western Europe have in fact occasionally demonstrated some degree of independence from the Soviet Union...
...Much was made of this change as a gesture of independence...
...who did not vote by anti-American reflex...
...Thinking Aloud EUROCOMMUNISM: A NEWTEST FOR THE WEST BY HENRY A. KISSINGER The cohesion of the industrial democracies of Western Europe and North America plus Japan has been for 30 years the bulwark of peace and the engine of global prosperity...
...For we must ask: In what sense and on what issues are they independent...
...More specifically: 1. The character of (he Alliance would become confused to the American people...
...of all strata of the working people...
...While the United States can never be indifferent to the extension of Soviet hegemony to Western Europe, the permanent stationing of American forces in Europe could hardly be continued for the object of defending some Communist governments against other Communist governments...
...The developing countries yearning for progress also turn to the West, not the East, for assistance, support and the measure of what man can achieve when he aspires...
...And yet, with all these difficulties, the democratic forces of the West have it in their power to determine whether the Communist parties have opportunities to succeed...
...Klement Gottwald, Communist party leader of Czechoslovakia, in January 1947: "The Communist party seeks to attain Socialism, but we are of the opinion that the Soviet system is not the only road to Socialism...
...Massive impersonal bureaucracy disillusions the citizen with the responsiveness of his government, and simultaneously makes the task of elected officials more difficult...
...The Communist party does not approve of the idea of a one-party system...
...No Communist party governing alone has ever done so, and the vast majority of democratic parties that entered coalitions with European Communists are now in the indexes of history books rather than in ministries or parliaments...
...Those parties have had their differences with the Soviet Union, but in practically every case it has been on a matter of relations within the Communist movement...
...It is coupled with the proposition that a Soviet threat against Western Europe is inconceivable...
...The interdependence of economies causes inflation and recession to surge across national boundaries, compounding the sense of individual impotence...
...The Italian Communist party, of course, left the government following its disastrous defeat by the Christian Democrats in 1948...
...And a few weeks ago, to the great irritation of their Socialist allies, the French Communists estimated the cost of the economic program of the two parties at over $100 billion...
...But the situation is greatly changed...
...In the Iberian peninsula, where hopeful steps are being taken toward democracy, Communist parties have fought with ruthlessness and disciplined organization to increase their influence...
...be expressed in constitutional law...
...There is no way we can substitute for either...
...A majority for this coalition in the parliamentary elections that must take place by March 1978 would bring Communist leaders into key ministerial positions...
...The Sino-Soviet conflict may indeed be the most profound and potentially explosive current international conflict...
...history was with the democratic nations of the Atlantic Commu nity...
...the final decision must be that of the European voters...
...Anti-Communism is not enough...
...As I have said, the crucial role must be played by the European governments...
...The Communist program —by definition—calls for the radical transformation of society...
...The nations of the West would mortgage their future if they closed their eyes to this reality...
...In France, in the Presidential election of April 1974, a coalition of the Communist and Socialist parties came Henry A. Kissinger's article is adapted from a paper delivered at the Conference on Italy and Eurocommunism sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Hoover Institution...
...This disdain for democratic procedures?whether it is presented in the usual form of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or wrapped in Antonio Gramsci's more elegant phrase, "the hegemony of the working class"—is precisely what has historically distinguished the Communist from the Socialist parties...
...That danger exists today in Western Europe, and that threat could have consequences throughout the community of democracies and the world...
...Communist parties are riddled with weaknesses and internal strains, and marked by a fundamental flaw: Parties that do not speak for the humane values that have inspired the peoples of the West for centuries are unlikely to appeal to a majority in a Western nation, except in a moment of unsettling crisis...
...there must be a response to legitimate social and economic aspirations, and there must be a reform of the inequities from which these antidemocratic forces derive much of their appeal...
...It would do so, moreover, in conditions of constitutional crisis, for the Constitution of the Fifth Republic has not yet faced the test of a President and a Prime Minister from different parties...
...Intellectuals condemn society for materialism when it is prosperous and for injustice when it fails to ensure prosperity...
...The strong role our allies play in defending Western interests in many parts of the globe—such as President Giscard's courageous actions in Zaire—could not be expected from a nation where Communists share power...
...The Communists have already achieved a virtual veto over government programs in the Italian Parliament...
...in the spheres both of institutions and of general orientations...
...The coalition of the Communists with other parties is not opportunistic, a temporary limited coalition, but the expression...
...Here we cannot be neutral...
...With able leadership—and Western cohesion—the democracies can overcome their challenges and usher in a period of dramatic fresh advance...
...The first permanent peacetime security alliance in U.S...
...their principal asset is the myth of their inevitability...
...By the same token, the response to it has to come in the first instance from European leaders and voters who are persuaded that democracy is worth the effort...
...But, just as in the Italian case the following year, the popular revolt against the Communists took place within the framework of a united West with a clear perception of an external and internal threat to its survival...
...In 1977, Italian Communists participate in the governments of most major cities and regions, have enormous trade union strength along with substantive support from intellectuals and the popular culture, and have reduced the role of the Socialists to a fraction of what it was three decades ago...
...The widespread economic difficulties of the last four years —recession and inflation unparalleled in a generation, to a large extent induced by the extraordinary increase in oil prices—fuel the frustration of all whose hopes for economic advancement are rebuffed...
...It is hard to visualize how the present nato structure could continue, with its exchange of highly classified information, its integrated military planning and political consultation, if Communists had a significant share of power in West European governments...
...We must avoid facile projections that seek to escape difficult choices by making the most favorable assumptions about what might happen...
...In February 1976, for instance, Berlinguer told a London Times interviewer that "the Soviet Union's peace policy is in the general interest of mankind...
...These questions miss the central point...
...Wladyslaw Gomulka, Communist party leader of Poland, in January 1946: "In [our country] there is a division of functions, and State power is based on parliamentary democracy...
...2) would have fundamental consequences for the structure of the postwar world, and for America's relationship to its most important alliances...
...Is not the Soviet Union uneasy about the prospect of new Communist regimes that they may not be able to control...
...Our technology, our creativity, our unequaled economic vigor, not some bureaucratic doctrine of economic determinism, are the forces that will shape the future if we mobilize the energies of free peoples...
...They can be counted on to reorient the Common Market toward closer ties with the state economies of Eastern Europe and toward the more extreme of the Third World's demands for a "new international economic order...
...The following quotations from European Communists illustrate the point...
...In the same way, Communist governments in Western Europe, however independent of Moscow they may be on intraparty issues, can be expected to demonstrate their basic Communist convictions on major international issues—giving rise to significant foreign policy divergences between Europe and the U.S., and between the European states with Communists in their governments and the others...
...It is a system of dogma, of a "party line," of authority and obedience, of suppression of dissent and purge of dissenters...
...Some have argued that such a policy would be counterproductive, that it would encourage Communist protest votes...
...Western Europe, our closest partner and the cradle of much of our civilization, is too precious to us for us to do otherwise...
...Western unity defends not simply our security but our way of life and the most basic moral values of our civilization...
...will to pay the costs of maintaining forces in Europe...
...Eventually, massive shifts against us would occur, not because a majority freely chose such a course, but because the upsetting of the overall balance left them no alternative...
...He answered: "We would choose the Soviet side, of course...
...On balance, I consider it important that Europe know of America's interest and concern...
...The spirit of freedom can never be crushed...
...3. The military strength and unity of NATO would be gravely weakened...
...they are a movement that appeals to a different tradition and uses a largely misleading vocabulary...
...Interestingly, Marchais speaks of "Socialism in the colors of France," and in 1938, George Orwell described French Communist strategy as "marching behind the tricolor...
...Yet can we take these declarations at face value...
...With nato thus weakened, while the Soviet Union continued to increase its strategic and conventional strength and maintained its grip on the Warsaw Pact, the essential East-West equilibrium in Europe would be fundamentally threatened...
...I find it hard to believe that after decades of vilifying Social Democracy and treating it as their mortal enemy, especially in every Communist country, Communist parties have suddenly become Social Democrats...
...The dictatorship of the proletariat or of a single party is not essential...
...Granted, the centrifugal and polycentric tendencies in the Communist world are one of the most striking developments of our age...
...It is not democratic pluralism but the stern Leninist precept of "democratic centralism" that continues to guide the internal structure of all European Communist parties...
...Still, the reaction of the United States necessarily has to be complex...
...The Italian Communist newspaper denounced nato last year as "one of the fundamental instruments for American manipulation of the politics and economy of our country and Western Europe," and declared that "relations between the countries of Western Europe and the two superpowers must be rediscussed...
...If we cherish freedom, we will face the peril, marshal joint efforts to overcome it and begin an era of new fulfillment for our peoples...
...The men and women of Eastern Europe are certainly aware that the West, for all its doubts and spiritual dilemma, is the vanguard of modernization, the vital source of learning and of much of modern culture, and the haven of the free human spirit...
...On the contrary, the real danger may well be the other way...
...The Communist party holds that it does not have a monopoly, and it does not need the monopoly, to work among the masses for the reconstruction of the new [nation...
...Why should we think that Communist parties in Western Europe would be more friendly to us than the most independent East European state, which has been engaged for nearly three decades in an open dispute with Moscow and whose government the Kremlin has sought repeatedly to undermine...
...many usual opponents of the Communist parties may be lulled by voices, attitudes and ambiguities in this country implying that our traditional opposition has changed...
...I am talking less of formal statements—which depend on tactical judgments difficult for any outsider to make?than of a clear U.S...
...It can be assumed that they will not encourage European political unity to foster cooperation with the United States...
...While the ultimate decisions are for the voters of Europe to make, we all would be indulging in wishful thinking if we did not acknowledge that such an eventuality (1) would represent a massive change in European politics...
...A leading member of the Italian party's Central Committee was asked in a recent interview with Radio Free Europe: If the French and Italian Communist parties were in power, what would you do in the event of "a grave international crisis between the Soviet Union and the West...
...that was soon followed by our commitment to the security of Japan...
...In many European countries disillusionment with democratic government and democratic leaders is pervasive...
...In our common efforts to improve the world economy and stimulate progress in both the developed and developing worlds, divisions would soon be apparent...
...Since then, the agenda of cooperation among the industrial democracies has spread from collective defense to common action on energy policy, on the international economic system, and on relations with the Communist countries and with the Third World...
...For in the end, Western Europe's Communist parties find their opportunities less in their inherent strength than in the demoralization, division or disorganization of their opponents...
...Independent of Moscow or not, Communists represent a philosophy that by its nature and their own testimony stands outside the "bourgeois" framework of Western constitutional history...
...To be sure, the French, Spanish and Italian Communist parties have recently declared their resolve "to work within the pluralism of political and social forces and to respect guarantees and develop all individual and collective freedoms...
...No European Communist party suggests that it wishes to be part of the Western Alliance to withstand Soviet expansion...
...But we must not delude ourselves about what the accession of Communist leaders to executive power will mean to the basic premises of American foreign policy...
...Until quite recently, they have consistently fought advances in European unity...
...It is a time for confidence, determination and hope...
...and (3) would alter the prospects for security and progress for every free nation...
...The winds of change are ultimately blowing from the West...
...They have rarely, if ever, diverged from the Soviet position on an international issue...
...In no Western European country has the Communist party ever fairly won more than about a third of the vote...
...A relativist age debunks authority and puts nothing in its place as an organizing principle of society...
...The gradual gains scored by the Communist parties over the past years occurred—by definition—at the margin, among voters who had not voted Communist before...
...But their internal organization and management speak against the likelihood...
...There is no evidence that voters are influenced to vote Communist by American attitudes...
...Portugal is a member of nato...
...Most of the causes of this phenomenon are indigenous to the individual countries...
...Paradoxically, we even weaken whatever moderate elements may exist in Communist movements by settling too eagerly for verbal reassurances...
...Similarly, we must not weaken the resolve of those in allied nations who take our judgments seriously by treating a Communist electoral victory as inevitable?which it is not—or by imagining it would be a transitory or inconsequential matter...
...Let the other parties operate and organize as well...
...Their most powerful weapons are fear, distrust and discouragement...
...In the Middle East, in Southern Africa, in relations with the Third World, on Berlin, on arms control and European security, the parallelism of views that has existed between the United States and its European allies would almost certainly be eroded...
...The signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty pledged in 1949 that "they are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of lav...
...We seek at present to make certain that our new democratic parliamentary methods...
...their elders too often have lost confidence in their own values...
...Violence—like that currently tormenting Italy—drives many to support Communism in desperation, convinced that drastic remedies are required to end a state of siege...
...If the United States has a responsibility to encourage political freedom throughout the world, we surely have a duty to leave no doubt about our beliefs on an issue that is so central to the future of the Western Alliance, and therefore to the future of democracy...
...We must have a program for supporting the forces of moderation and progress in this critical period, and for rallying them should a Communist party nonetheless prevail...
...We cannot be indifferent to this, or delude ourselves that it would amount to anything short of a watershed in Atlantic relationships...
...Western collective defense provided the shield behind which the United States, Western Europe and Japan developed the institutions of European unity and the progressive world economic system...
...by the very nature of their beliefs Communists will be driven to bring about institutional changes that would make their ascendance permanent...
...Erno Gero, Communist party leader of Hungary, in November 1944: "The great national task facing the country cannot be solved by either the Communist party or by any other party alone...
...Lately they have come to accept the European Community as a fact of life...
...In too many democratic countries the young are offered too little inspiration...
...Why was there not at least one lonely soul willing to adhere to the original view...
...For the key issue is not how "independent" the European Communists would be, but how Communist...
...But could they permit the democratic process to reverse what they see as the inevitable path of "historical progress...
...Only in Western Europe and the United States are there still illusions about the nature of Communist parties...
...Human rights is not an abstraction concerned only with judicial procedures and unrelated to basic questions of political and geopolitical structure...
...Those who take a less grave view often claim that the European Communist parties are independent of Moscow, that they have been effectively democratized'and assimilated, and that they therefore pose no international problem in the broader East-West context...
...Communist participation in the government of either country would have serious consequences for Western security...
...Fostering these principles deserves the same dedication and commitment that inspired the most imaginative diplomacy in the history of our country...
...rather they will urge it, if at all, to encourage Third Force tendencies...
...They had to contend with a younger and more united Christian Democratic party, a strong Socialist party, and a determined Western Alliance alarmed by Stalin's adventures in Greece and Czechoslovakia...
...they now say they seek to make it more "democratic" and to transform it, in Berlinguer's words, by "a process of innovation...
...The Western Alliance has been held together by a system of close consultation based on shared goals and compatible philosophies...
...One need not be a cynic to wonder at the decision of the French Communists, traditionally perhaps the most Stalinist party in Western Europe, to renounce the Soviet concept of dictatorship of the proletariat without a single dissenting vote among 1,700 delegates, as they did at their party Congress in February 1976, when all previous party Congresses had endorsed the same dictatorship of the proletariat by a similar unanimous vote of 1,700 to nothing...
...In short, what the leaders of the Western Communist parties are saying today about their affection for democracy is not significantly different from what East European Communist leaders declared with equal emphasis in the 1940s—before they seized the total control they have never relinquished...
...I believe the opposite to be true...
...At best, West European Communist parties can be expected to steer their basic policies closer to the so-called nonaligned block and in an anti-Western direction...
...This was the purpose of the economic summits among Western leaders begun by President Ford at Rambouil-let and Puerto Rico, and continued so successfully in London by President Carter...
...however, contribute to it...
...If Communists entered governments in allied countries, the engagement to help maintain the military balance in Europe would lack the moral base it has stood on for a generation...
...It should also be noted that professions of the national road to Communism and of devotion to democratic principle are not really something new...
...Nonetheless, it is sometimes asked: If the United States can deal with Communist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, and even Cuba or Vietnam, why can we not accept and learn to deal with Communist parties seeking power in Western Europe...
...Either outcome would be destructive of European unity and Atlantic solidarity...
...they succeed only when the democratic system seems unable to solve the social problems of the day, when the center does not hold and societies become polarized...
...There is no doubt that a Communist breakthrough to power or sharing of power in one country will have a major psychological effect on the others, by making Communist parties seem respectable, or suggesting that the tide of history in Europe is moving in their direction...
...We are entitled to a certain skepticism about the sincerity of declarations of independence that coincide precisely with electoral self-interest...
...Countries that used to be leading industrial powers have been reduced to mediocrity and stagnation...
...Whatever hypothesis we consider, therefore, Communist participation in governments of Western Europe would have a profound impact on the international order as it has developed in the postwar period...
...Unity and cooperative action among the democracies are crucial to all that America does in the world...
...In Italy, in the parliamentary elections of June 1976, the Communist party obtained 34 per cent of the vote, strengthening its position as the second largest party and as a powerful rival of the Christian Democratic party that has governed the country throughout the postwar period...
...instead, they would use their positions to diminish the combined defense effort of Western Europe and inevitably sap the U.S...
...Throughout their existence, the guiding principle of the Communist parties has been their insistence that a minority had to seize power as the vanguard of the working class and impose its views on the rest of the population...
...After all, Marchais has listed Bulgaria, Poland and East Germany as countries having a "pluralistic" party system...
...who for one reason or another were persuaded that the Communists have now become acceptable or indispensable...
...we must not close our eyes to the effect on freedom throughout the world if the global balance tips against the West...
...Georgi Dimitrov, leader of the Bulgarian Communist party, in February 1946: "The crux of the matter, and we Marxists should know this well, is this: Every nation will effect its transition to Socialism not by a mapped-out route, not exactly as in the Soviet Union, but by its own road, dependent on its historical, national, social, and cultural circumstances...
...A development of this kind could be justified only on the crudest balance of power grounds that would be incompatible with American tradition and public sentiment...
...nations with long democratic traditions have seen the destruction of civil liberties and democratic practices...
...By contrast, there are currently many people on both sides of the Atlantic who have permitted themselves to be convinced that European Communism is only Social Democracy with a Leninist face...
...That would force a major change in nato practices, as happened temporarily when Portugal had to exclude itself from classified discussions because its political future was in doubt...
...As recently as 1972, French Communist doctrine was that "there can be no return from Socialism to capitalism...
...Atlantic unity could not be maintained in such circumstances, even in the area of security...
...The French and Italian Communist parties opposed the creation of the European Common Market as a conspiracy of monopoly capitalism...
...There are too many recent instances of resorts to violence, attempts to censor newspapers and broadcasting, and efforts to control the functioning of universities to be optimistic about their character...
...Spain is strategically crucial and tied by special agreements to the United States...
...The dynamics of the Communist parties and the program they would be elected on suggest that their foreign and domestic policies are not likely to be consistent with the common purposes of the members of the Atlantic Alliance...
...No major Communist split has ever been generated or sustained by deliberate Western policy?in fact, the Soviet Union's disputes with Yugoslavia and with China had been festering for months and possibly years before the West became aware of them...
...They have the intellectual capital and the resources to usher in a new period of creativity...
...Consequently, we do our friends in Europe no favor if we encourage the notion that the advent of Communists and their allies into power will make little or no difference to our own attitudes and policies...
...United States hesitation or ambiguity can...
...Over time, the governments with Communist participation will manage to pull the others in their direction, or deep fissures will open up between the traditional Atlanticists and the "New Left" in the European Community...
...The French Communists were similarly removed from the government in 1947, following the intensification of the Cold War...
...The basic causes of Communist gains, in other words, go deep and are not easy to remedy...
...Yugoslavia—whose independence from Moscow on East European issues is by now traditional—has emerged as a champion of anti-Western and anti-American positions on most international issues outside of Eastern Europe...
...The solidarity of the great industrial democracies has maintained global security for 30 years...
...position...
...Now it turns out that the new Soviet Constitution, in preparation for years, drops the phrase as well...
...They have the capacity to put their economies on the path of steady noninflationary expansion...
...Certainly Communist parties are willing to come to power by democratic means...
...This is a doctrine of iron discipline, not a principle of free and open dialogue...
...4. The hopeful progress toward European unity would be undermined...
...They remind us that the West's latent intellectual and political vitality, even more than its material prosperity, is the envy of the world...
...But freedom can be lost gradually...
...Symptomatic is the fact that the Soviet Union has used military force in the postwar period only against other Communist countries—in East Berlin, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, and on the Sino-Soviet border...
...Would they maintain the institutions, the freedoms that could turn into instruments of their future defeat...
...And the character of the Atlantic Alliance would be totally transformed, even should the United States, for its own reasons, eventually decide to support a revisionist Communism...
...Too frequently democratic leaders are consumed by winning and holding office and are unable to demonstrate the philosophical self-assurance of their radical opponents...
...All of these would be severely jeopardized if Communists came to power in allied governments...
...We cannot fail to reckon the setback to European freedom that will result if Communist minorities gain decisive influence in European politics...
...Furthermore, if Communists participate in key European governments, nato may turn by default into a largely German-American alliance...
...It has been the keystone of our foreign policy in every Administration from President Truman to President Carter...
...The Italian Communist party has hailed the Cubans in Angola as "freedom fighters," condemned the Israeli rescue of hostages at Entebbe as an "intolerable violation of Uganda's national sovereignty," applauded Soviet policy in Africa, and denounced America's diplomatic efforts in Southern Africa as an attempt to "save the neocolonial and military-strategic interests of imperialism...
...President de Gaulle cherished France's independence from the United States, but in major crises, over Berlin or Soviet missiles in Cuba, he stood firmly with his allies...
...This cohesion rests not simply on material considerations of wealth and power but on a common moral foundation as well—on the shared conviction that the consent of the governed is the basis of government, and that every individual enjoys inalienable rights and is entitled to constitutional liberties...
...The power of free men and women and free nations acting in concert, confident of their strength and of their destiny, cannot be matched by any totalitarian regime or totalitarian movement...
...Many voters in allied countries value the friendship of the United States and appreciate the security supplied by the Atlantic Alliance...
...Even if some West European Communist parties should prove more difficult than the better disciplined satellites of East Europe, and thus pose new problems for Moscow, they would pose far more serious problems for the West...
...This is not the time for resignation or acquiescence...
...Our country] can proceed and is proceeding along its own road...
...But even such a split would hardly diminish the danger to existing Alliance relationships...
...The freedom of many European countries, allied or neutral, to chart their own future would be diminished in direct proportion to the growth of their fear of Soviet power...
...And in this process it is vital that the United States encourage an attitude of resolve and conviction...
...There is a crucial difference between managing a conflict with adversaries and maintaining an alliance among friends, particularly when the prospects for stable East-West relations depend vitally on the cohesion of the Western Alliance...
...In 1948, the Communists were a far smaller party, with little regional or municipal power...
...By the time it occurred—and it would surely take years to develop?the damage to the nato structure would probably have become irreparable...
...This specter could then be used in other West European countries to undermine what remains of Atlantic cohesion...
...The American people would be asked to keep their Alliance commitment on the basis of two highly uncertain, untested assumptions: that there is a new trend of Communism which will in time split from Moscow, and that the West will be able to manipulate the new divisions to its advantage...
...So it is ironic that at the moment when the industrial democracies are most unified in their opposition to external threats, at a time when their cooperative efforts cover a broader range than ever, their unity should be jeopardized by an internal danger: the growth of Communist parties and the possibility of their accession to power in some of the countries of Western Europe...
...In addition, the Communists are unlikely to give nato defense a high budgetary priority...
...Second, we must avoid giving the impression that we consider Communist success a foregone conclusion by ostentatious association or consultation with Communist leaders, or by ambiguous declarations...
...2. The effect on Alliance cohesion generally would be disastrous...
...Italy's Enrico Berlinguer anj France's Georges Marchais pledged their devotion to national independence and political pluralism at a conference of Communist parties in East Berlin in June 1976...
...Societies that try to avoid difficult choices by making comforting assumptions about the future win no awards for restraint...
...The Communists' growth has been primarily at the expense of the Democratic Socialist groups, and is part and parcel of an increasing polarization of Italian politics...
...In an era of peace, in a world of bureaucracy and mass production, there is no galvanizing crisis and little opportunity for heroic performance...
...On the other hand, the United States can contribute to a sense of accomplishment by offering vigorous cooperation in joint efforts to solve common problems in the fields of diplomacy, arms control, energy, and economic growth...
...And, indeed, one could hardly bank on Leninist parties dedicating themselves with any conviction to an alliance whose primary purpose was and remains to counter Soviet power...
...And these Communist challenges do not exist in isolation from each other...
...Granted, too, these schisms are made doubly intense by the passions of a quasi-religious battle over what is true dogma and what is heresy...
...America cannot make their choices for them or decide the outcome of free elections...
...The stagnant societies of the East to which I have referred serve as both a warning and a hope...
...within one percentage point of victory on the final ballot...
...From a proclamation of the (East) German Communist party in June 1945: "We take the view that the method of imposing the Soviet system on [our country] wcu'd be wrong, since this method does not correspond to present-day conditions of development...
...Both of these propositions are open to the most serious doubt...
...Worse, active opposition, especially in regions of long-standing European cultural and political influence, is probable...
...We must, on the one hand, avoid demands or lectures which, regardless of their intrinsic merit, magnify domestic fissures in European countries or the sense of impotence of European governments...
...We should not ignore them, or demoralize them, or undercut them...
...And what are the objective consequences for the West of their policies and programs...
...Such "support" of nato as is expressed is explicitly tactical, and rests upon a distortion of detente...
...We cannot know, beyond all doubt, whether or not a fundamental change has occurred in these parties' traditional goals and tactics...
...Communist success is not a foregone conclusion...
...But this hardly exhausts the subject...
...First of all, we must frankly recognize the problem that we will face if the Communists come to power in Western Europe, and we must understand the practical decisions this will impose on us as a nation...
...If you want the view of the Communists, I can only say that they will be the strictest guardians of the new Constitution...
...they only speed their own demise...
Vol. 60 • July 1977 • No. 15
