Italy Looks Outward
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F .
DOUBTS ABOUT REAGAN Italy Looks Outward BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome In the early days following the unification of Italy (1870), when the fledgling country was taking its first fumbling steps...
...Under Enrico Berlinguer's stewardship, the PCI has accepted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a fact of life, and the Communists no longer maintain that the European Community is a gimmick devised by the United States that is to be used as an anti-Soviet tool...
...According to Repubblica, even America's most steadfast friends in this country, including Italian Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini, are deeply perturbed by the abrupt U.S...
...Even the most cursory glance at the front pages of the Italian newspapers shows that Italian statesmen hardly feel they can devote themselves exclusively to the home front...
...The return of the boys should not embarrass the government...
...Communist opposition to Craxi has become so relentless that Berlinguer may soon make overtures to the Christian Democrats (DC) aimed at toppling the Prime Minister and replacing him with a Left-wing DC government...
...In any case, after Washington's sudden change of mind and unilateral decision to pull back the Marines, the peacekeeping mission of the Italian contingent was no longer viable...
...Thus until the Lebanese events can be analysed in a dispassionate and thorough fashion, a measure of bitterness lingers here in Rome that official denials couched in diplomatic language cannot dispel...
...Moreover, their dignified departure from the battlefield has drawn the praise of much of the international press, with the London Times almost lyrical about it...
...According to them, Italy did not need a Foreign Ministry because it had no foreign policy of its own anyway...
...Moscow' s unquestionable responsibility for breaking the missile status quo in Europe in 1977, coupled with its ada-ment refusal to negotiate, has prevented the Communists from waging a successful anti-American campaign that could seriously embarrass the Craxi government...
...Indeed, Italian observers are perhaps being unfair to the Reagan Administration...
...Italy has put itself squarely on the American side in this case, with a firm commitment to allow the installation of Pershing II and cruise missiles on Italian soil...
...But these days that is not the case...
...turnabout...
...The best the PCI has been able to suggest is a one-year moratorium to give both sides time to reach a satisfactory agreement...
...The editorial concluded with the prediction that any appraisal of the Western undertaking in Lebanon will have to focus on the disconcerting finale...
...The political calender tells everyone that 1984 is an election year...
...and its allies...
...The Comiso base in Sicily is already in operating condition...
...DOUBTS ABOUT REAGAN Italy Looks Outward BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome In the early days following the unification of Italy (1870), when the fledgling country was taking its first fumbling steps in the international arena, cynical observers used to say that it needed a Ministry of Foreign Affairs as much as Switzerland needed a Navy Department...
...Decades later, in the 1950s to be exact, Italian Communist Party (PCI) leaders were harping on the same theme, albeit from a different point of view...
...The White House's present more moderate approach has not gone unnoticed, but the uneasy impression lingers that it is really intended for U.S...
...Not surprisingly, they have a common denominator—namely, the extent to which Italy can maintain its confidence in American leadership...
...It should be noted, for example, that the most severe editorial appeared in the Rome daily Re-pubblica, an independent, often anti-Communist paper...
...Americans, on the other hand, are generally considered crude and heavy-handed...
...This may be contributing to the doubts in Rome about America's ability to lead the West out of the current nuclear impasse and into a safe detente with the Soviet Union...
...Washington's tacit rejection of consultations with the London, Paris and Rome governments, and its sudden decision to pull the Marines out of Beirut without informing Italy's military, was in sharp contrast with the loyalty shown by the Italians (as well as the British and the French) in refraining from any unilateral move that might have cracked Western solidarity...
...The Communist opposition has not been very effective either...
...At the time of this writing, Italian peacekeeping troops had just withdrawn from their positions in West Beirut's Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps to Navy vessels offshore...
...Other newspapers, among them Rome's Messaggero, which is very close to Craxi's Socialist Party, have criticized Washington's garbled explanations regarding the heavy naval gunfire bombardments on Syrian-held territory around Beirut...
...That remains a far-fetched notion, though, for the DC leadership seems unwilling to be seduced into a present or future partnership with the Communists...
...The second prominent foreign policy topic, the serious deterioration of USSR-U.S., Warsaw Pact-nato relations, has taken on new significance in the light of the Euro-missile controversy...
...Another thirty years have gone by...
...It ran the risk of bringing about Druse and Syrian reprisals against the Italian and French contingents, people here point out...
...Italians, and all Western Europeans for that matter, like to picture themselves as traditionally endowed with finesse and adroitness...
...One thousand members of the 1,400-man contingent are sailing home, while 300 will remain on ship off Beirut and 100 Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader from Rome...
...A closer look at the press reveals that the major international issues as seen from Rome are the Near East and East-West relations...
...the Rome government was merely following guidelines formulated in Washington...
...Nonetheless, they seem convinced that Washington's verbal toughness over the last three years has scared the Soviet leaders to the point where the Kremlin actually believes President Reagan is an enemy and refuse to negotiate with him...
...And after an initial outburst, peace demonstrations have been reasonably tame...
...Their performance was remarkably good...
...are staying on shore to serve as a cleanup crew...
...All the more so because the Reagan Administration made precisely the move that it had been repeatedly warning its allies against...
...This was a corollary of the PCI's condemnation of Italy's allegiance to the Atlantic Alliance and full confidence in America's leadership...
...In addition, there is a growing fear on the part of the public at large that somehow, possibly by miscalculation, war may break out and, conveniently enough for the two superpowers, Europe will be the battleground...
...The inference might then be drawn that in the absence of foreign-policy friction the government is able to pay full attention to pressing domestic economic problems, such as stagflation, the high cost of labor and the staggering public deficit...
...The rationale behind the sarcasm was that after centuries of fragmentation and outside domination, the task of cementing the newly attained unity was so immense that Italian rulers should devote themselves strictly to domestic problems and forget about the vagaries of international prestige...
...Rather, it is widespread concern over the renewed virulence of the Cold War that keeps the discussion of them very much alive...
...As for the upcoming foreign policy debate, recent press comments here on Lebanon are an indication of the way the wind is blowing...
...This has been intensified by a definite lack of confidence in the wisdom and flexibility of American diplomacy that is apparent in Italy's political circles and media...
...At most this may be delayed because of the ever worsening relations between the Socialists and the PCI...
...The first issue is the more topical...
...domestic consumption...
...Thus what we are likely to continue to see in Italy is the Communists' traditional aversion to a reformist Socialist regime determined to correct the economic situation by taking measures unpalatable to the labor unions...
...Under the title "A Hardly Credible Ally," it denounced the "communication vacuum" between the U.S...
...No specific problem about the missiles exists, then...
...What is nevertheless virtually inevitable, although Prime Minister Bettino Craxi could do without it, is a post-mortem of the Lebanese expedition—nastily described as inglorious by the Soviet news agency tass—and the analysis would perforce entail an analysis of Italy's relations with the United States...
...The widespread opinion in Italian political circles is that while protection of the Marines was an understandable necessity, the heavy shelling of Syrian-controlled territory to prop up Lebanese President Amin Gemayel's government—as openly stated by Navy Secretary John Lehman —was uncalled for...
Vol. 67 • February 1984 • No. 4
