Silvio Pons Cold War Republic

The "external constraint" in Italy in the 1970s

During the 1970s, the crisis of the Cold War as an accepted system, the worldwide economic disorder, and the waves of social unrest had a far more traumatic and dramatic impact on Italy than elsewhere in the West. The political arrangement that had overseen Italy's reconstruction and modernization was upset. At the same time, the Republic’s basic political groupings reproduced themselves, reflecting the persistence of the bipolar order and confirming the foundations of a “blocked democracy.” The formula used at the time of Italy as the “sick man of Europe” gave only a superficial sense of the country’s crisis – one hard to compare to the Western European situation - given the combined impact of economic suffering, public corruption, violence endemic to society, the heights of barbarism attained by terrorism, and the declining international standing at a crucial time when the entire Mediterranean setting was being redefined. Consequently, a furrow deeper than in the previous quarter century was dug between Italy’s development and that of the other leading European countries. From the start of the decade, endogenous sources of tension and instability appeared inseparable from exogenous factors – this was the case in Italy as elsewhere in Europe, but in extreme form. The political responses to the impact of 1968 were most diverse in Europe and did not constitute a single pattern. The needle on the scale swayed back and forth between conservative and progressive responses, and this was to go on for a decade, following the "long wave" of 1968. The uniting element, on the other hand, was European détente connected with Western Germany's Ostpolitik, which outlined a scenario distinct from

that of bipolar détente. It was a scenario open to change, albeit over the long term, instead of being aimed at maintaining the status quo1. The new policy of Western Germany, based upon the Social Democratic turn in 1969, laid bare Italy’s solitude among European democracies. Italy was now the only democracy not to experience alternating government. The very bipolarization of the political system between the DC and PCI, meant casting such prospect further into the distance. While Ostpolitik was a vision of foreign policy and an affirmation of sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany as well – bringing about a significant change of this notion2 - Italy maintained a sovereignty much more closely linked to the initial phase of the Cold War. The Italian crisis was seen by many as one of authority and legitimacy of the government class, largely identified with the DC party and with the state. Historians have appraised this essential element3. However, such crisis of legitimacy has not been adequately connected to the erosion of Cold War certitudes, to the country’s uncertain drifting in the new "world disorder," and to the leadership crisis of the United States. The interaction between the United States and Italy had two aspects. Kissinger’s attempt to stabilize the bipolar order placed an impassable limit upon any idea of détente as a scenario for national political change. At the same time, it was precisely the Kissinger years that were to mark a decline in US hegemony, producing a notion of American interest unharnessed from the universalistic tradition of Cold War Liberalism, and a limitation upon the consensual procedures for managing crises in the West 4 . Consequently, the traditional legitimating resources necessary for                                                                                                                1 On the Italian post-1968 crisis and its international context, see L'Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni Settanta. Vol. I, Tra guerra fredda e distensione, edited by A. Giovagnoli and S. Pons, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2003. L. Cominelli, L'Italia sotto tutela. Stati Uniti, Europa e crisi italiana degli anni Settanta, Le Monnier, Firenze, 2014. 2 D. F. Patton, Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany, London, Macmillan, 1999. 3 P. Craveri, La repubblica dal 1958 al 1992, Torino, UTET, 1995, p. 539. 4 M. Del Pero, Henry Kissinger e l'ascesa dei neoconservatori. Alle origini della politica estera americana, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2006.

the Christian Democratic leadership class suffered an impoverishment. The United States subjected Italy to close and alarmed monitoring, carried out largely through the prism of traditional anti-Communism and inattentive to the changes generated by 19685. But they did not demonstrate seeing that their own shortfall of hegemony was part of the problem. On the other hand, the legitimating resources that the PCI had received in the past from the Socialist Camp were largely dissolved. The Communists potentially constituted the country’s back-up leadership class, but they had to reinvent their own international position, as the persistence of their link with the USSR was a factor of flaws, not strength - even more after 19686. Crisis and change In the aftermath of 1968, the Italian establishment increased its inner division between a moderate majority looking for democratic responses and small but dangerous sectors leaning for authoritarian solutions to prevent any shift to the left. Especially after the bomb strike in Milan of December 1969, such divergence became dramatic as a violent "strategy of tension" terrorized the country, with the aim of fuelling crude anti-Communist feelings. The unifying element of the Christian Democratic strategy was the confirmation of the party's central place in the Italian democratic system, founded upon its axis with the United States. The alliance between Washington and the DC was not at issue, despite the mutual observation of an "Italian problem" that had sharpened. Although he never excluded adopting neo-authoritarian solutions for Italy - and even supported Ambassador Graham Martin's hazardous covert

                                                                                                               5 U. Gentiloni, L'Italia sospesa. La crisi degli anni Settanta vista da Washington, Torino, Einaudi, 2009. 6 S. Pons, Berlinguer e la fine del comunismo, Torino, Einaudi, 2006.

operations in favor of the extreme right - Kissinger eventually maintained himself faithful to the model of anti-Communist guarantee represented by the tradition of Alcide De Gasperi7. At the same time, the Christian Democratic leadership provided a diversified range of political responses, oscillating between Giulio Andreotti’s neo-centrist solution - by far Kissinger's best choice - and the new version of the centre-left inspired by Aldo Moro. The political choices made first by Andreotti after the 1972 elections, with the attempt to restore a pre-centre-left anti-Communist front, and then by Moro, with the attempt to open a post-centre-left season, were different inflections of a single paradigm. Their common base was seeking more solid foundations for Christian Democratic centrality, following the tracks of a well-established model of understanding with Washington - while also claiming the DC's autonomy as to the specific modes of solutions to be adopted8. The troubles in relations between the United States and the DC in the following years arose from the fact that Andreotti's orientation proved to be too weak, while Moro's looked quite uncertain in terms of internal and international stability. The precarious nature of the life of post-1968 governments was not the sign of a new fluidity in Italian politics, but the result of immobility and deafness in providing responses to changes in the public spirit and social mores. The immobility of Italian politics began to change only in 1973, chiefly under the pressure of outside factors, which entwined with a crisis that was already full-blown and marked by growing violence. Détente's steps forward in the middle of Europe - with the conclusion of the agreements between the two Germanies - and the enlargement of the European Community to Great Britain, appeared to many as

                                                                                                               7 Cominelli, L'Italia sotto tutela, pp. 126-29, 166-69. 8 Gentiloni, L'Italia sospesa, pp. 70 ff.

the prelude to an autonomous European role in world politics9. However, though such scenario fuelled expectation for new opportunities, the main impetus for change in Italy came from the apprehension generated first by general Pinochet’s coup d’état in Chile in September 1973, and then by the economic shock at year’s end, which rapidly led the country on the edge of financial collapse. Moro drew a link between Chile and Italy, implicitly pulling back from the United States’ behaviour, albeit with extreme prudence10. His reference to the "sinister omens" generated by the affair hinted at the perception that Kissinger’s options featured the possibility of separating the defence of America’s interests from the defence of democracy not only in Latin America but in Southern Europe as well. Implicit in Moro’s alarm was the idea of an Italian fragility that had now been laid bare. From this moment forward, he firmed up a detachment from the traditional formulas of Italian politics, and worked towards the possibility of expanding the margins for manoeuvre permitted by the "external constraint"11. The coup in Chile marked even more of a turning point for Berlinguer and his strategy of "historic compromise" with the Catholics. Underlying this option was the persuasion that a society as divided as Italy could not be governed by following the European models of alternation. The only road that could be taken to avoid the “Chilean” spiral between internal fractures and Cold War constraints was that of recovering the national unity experience dating back to the end of the Second World War. Since that time, Berlinguer thus linked his internal strategy to seeking to create a Western Communist pole based upon the positive recognition of the European Community, thereby legitimizing the profile of a Communist force capable of                                                                                                                9 A. Romano, From Détente in Europe to European Détente. How the West Shaped the Helsinki CSCE, Peter Lang, Bruxelles, 2009, pp. 206 ff. 10 Archivio centrale dello Stato, Archivio Aldo Moro (hereafter: AAM), b. 28, f. 612. 11 G. Formigoni, L’Italia nel sistema internazionale degli anni Settanta: spunti per riconsiderare la crisi, in L’Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni Settanta, I, pp. 285-88.

governing a Western country12. In other words, the advent of the military dictatorship in Chile - an event linked to the worldwide arrangements of the Cold War - prepared the terrain for a political revision in the leaderships of both Italian party blocs, which was destined to accelerate since late 1973, fuelled by the economic consequences of the Yom Kippur War. In a matter of just a few months, the impact of the global crisis combined unpredictably with the "long wave" of 1968 in Italian society, and its contribution to long-term secularization processes. With the crushing defeat suffered by Fanfani’s DC in the divorce referendum of May 1974, the option of an anti-Communist front based upon a clerical-moderate bloc left the stage of the country’s political perspectives. Moro now could present himself as his party’s main resource. In the summer of 1974 he affirmed his idea of building a form of "national solidarity" to face the crisis and keep Italy out of a spiral of marginalization and impoverishment - though maintaining the distinct roles of government and opposition. When he retook the reins of government in November, the alternative between old centrism and centre-left now sounded dated and insignificant, though Italy remained a "difficult democracy"13. The political redefinition set in motion by both parties one year earlier led to the definitive launching of Moro’s "strategy of attention" towards the Communists and Berlinguer’s decision to abandon Communist opposition towards the Atlantic alliance14. At this point, the main national leaders had decisively changed the respective alignments’ attitude towards the traditional landscape of the Cold War. The DC’s axis with the United States remained central, but the Christian Democratic vision of anti-Communism differed from the American one even more than in

                                                                                                               12 Pons, Berlinguer e la fine del comunismo, pp. 30-37. 13 Gentiloni, L'Italia sospesa, p. 130. 14 R. Gualtieri, L'Italia dal 1943 al 1992. DC e PCI nella storia della Repubblica, Roma, Carocci, 2006, pp. 183-84.

the past, as it was no longer simply a moderate "containment of containment"15. It was an attempt to establish some cooperation with the long-standing political rivals. The PCI’s link with the Soviet Union had definitively lost its traditional significance of representing an outpost of the "Socialist camp" in the Western world and a political force defining its own interest in accordance with the Soviet interest16. This was, however, only the start of a roadmap that required building consensus within the body of the two blocs, whose identities were largely constructed upon the inheritance of mutual ideological counter-positions and incompatibility of values representing a basic cultural structure as well as the imperative precondition for accepting any compromise. At the same time, such roadmap entailed serious questioning as to its consistency with the international order, even at the time of détente. The strategies prevailing in the leaderships of the DC and of the PCI mirrored one another. Both were an attempt to provide responses to the crisis of an entire postwar arrangement, although the former aimed at containing the long wave of 1968 and the latter at exploiting it. Both bore the mark of the task inherited from the Republic’s founding fathers - governing Italian bipolarism by controlling its most inconsistent and destabilizing aspects. Moro and Berlinguer ended up sharing the idea that the self-containment of the two Italian blocs in the Cold War did no longer guarantee the Republic’s democratic arrangements, and that it was insufficient for achieving an exit from the crisis. They also shared the idea that détente might make it possible to negotiate a renewed "external constraint" and to modify the rules of the game of Italy’s bipolarism, although without dismantling it. This vision was to lead both leaders to conceive of national

                                                                                                               15 M. Del Pero, Containing containment: rethinking Italy's experience during the Cold War, "Journal of Modern Italian Studies", 2003/8, 532-55. 16 S. Pons, L'URSS e il PCI nel sistema internazionale della guerra fredda, in Il PCI nell'Italia repubblicana, a cura di Roberto Gualtieri, Carocci, Roma, 2001, pp. 3-46.

change as a fait accompli that could induce an adjustment of international compatibilities17. Not only such convergences, but also differences emerged between the two leading personalities in Italian politics. Moro thought that the axis between US hegemony and Christian Democratic centrality remained imperative in terms of domestic legitimacy, though it demanded redefinition. He believed that collaboration between government and opposition could produce a slow amendment of democratic anti-Communism. He understood interdependence in the Western system, but still hoped in the acknowledgement of an Italian peculiarity, with the aim of involving the Communists in institutional responsibility while not associating them with government18. Berlinguer aimed instead at forcing the constraints of the Cold War by associating the PCI with government and recovering as a national peculiarity the primacy of anti-Fascism over anti-Communism. He insisted exploiting the crisis of US hegemony and traditional Cold War politics. In his view, Communist legitimation was sufficiently provided by the combination between national growing consensus and the Western European choice19. The Italian transition of 1973-75 cannot, however, be understood exclusively from the standpoint of the leading national players. It must be viewed in light of changes that took place on the European stage. The fall of the dictatorships in Portugal and Greece respectively in April and July 1974, alongside the parallel demise of Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, radically modified the landscape of Southern Europe and prompted responses from both the United States and the European Community. Repercussions on Italy were significant. Firstly, the very disappearance of right-wing dictatorships in Europe dealt a blow

                                                                                                               17 On Moro, see Aldo Moro nella dimensione internazionale. Dalla memoria alla storia, Francoangeli, Milano, 2013. On Berlinguer, see Pons, Berlinguer e la fine del comunismo. 18 A, Moro, L'intelligenza e gli avvenimenti, Garzanti, Milano, 1979, pp. 283 ff. 19 E. Berlinguer, La proposta comunista, Einaudi, Torino, 1975, pp. 5-30.

to the possibility of imagining or carrying out an authoritarian coup – an alarm that had returned to the fore because of bomb assaults carried out by black extremists. It may even be said that 1974 represented an end to long standing projects by influent, if minor, radical anti-Communist sectors in the Italian ruling classes and state apparatuses, dreaming an authoritarian turn of the Republic and counting on a benevolent attitude of the United States20. Secondly, Western international policy saw a serious change precisely after the fall of the South European dictatorships. In particular, Portugal’s Carnation Revolution led to the emergence of different ideas on the governance of the Western crises on both sides of the Atlantic. While Washington considered the possibility of applying to Portugal the same illiberal version of containment that had been affirmed in Chile - so long as a drastic shift of the government’s axis to the left could be averted - Great Britain, West Germany, and France ruled out this possibility and aimed at supporting the political players that could guarantee a democratic transition, starting with the Socialists21. Thirdly, Soviet warnings as to the perils of Italy’s domestic situation - enhanced by appeals to the precedents of Greece and Chile and aimed at bringing the PCI back to the motivations of the organic link of the past - became even more useless. After 1974 the Soviet capacity to influence the PCI and Italy - even by financial means - definitively declined. Moscow could only maintain an indirect influence, by supporting in practice Kissinger's view of détente as status quo and his veto against Italian Communism22. The US Administration and European governments alike adopted the vision of Southern Europe as a unitary and interdependent theatre of crisis, which also included Italy.                                                                                                                20 Cominelli, L'Italia sotto tutela, p. 172. 21 M. Del Pero, La transizione portoghese, in Id., V. Gavin, F. Guirao, A. Varsori, Democrazie. L'Europa meridionale e la fine delle dittature, Le Monnier, Firenze, 2010, pp. 95-171. 22 S. Pons, L'Italia e il PCI nella politica estera dell'URSS di Breznev, in Giovagnoli, Pons (eds), L'Italia repubblicana nella crisi degli anni Settanta, I, pp. 78-81.

During 1975, the resistance of Europe’s leading countries to adopting a doctrine of "limited sovereignty" in the West turned out to be a successful choice, and also guided the conduct of the American partner. Each in his own way, leading national personalities as Moro and Berlinguer cultivated the hope that the new European leadership role would have produced a significant loosening of the "external constraint." However, instead of playing to Italy’s advantage, the redefinition of Western governance played against it. Precisely because Italian democracy presented a bipolar structure consolidated in its basic players, and not a fluid scenario, the Western partners’ attitude was more rigid and intransigent in handling the crisis. Not all European leaders shared Kissinger's stance that the PCI still believed in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and would represent a destabilizing factor, re-orienting "the map of the postwar world", regardless of its relative independence from Moscow. But the idea that communist participation in Italy’s government would jeopardize arrangements in the Atlantic Alliance was maintained as common sense23. Italy was to remain a separate case within the setting of Western governance. "National solidarity" and international constraints The Italian question even appeared to foster the rise of a new model for managing crises, which emerged immediately after the Italian elections of 20 June 1976 - when the PCI reached its historic maximum at the polls while still remaining the country’s number-two party. In retrospect, the Puerto Rico meeting of the leading Western powers held in late June - the first G7 summit that followed the G6 summit of November 1975 in Raimbouillet -

                                                                                                               23 National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter: NARA), RG 59, Records of Henry A. Kissinger, 12 December 1975, 23 January 1976. NARA, RG 59, Kissinger's staff meetings, 1 December 1975, 1 July 1976.

had the meaning of reaffirming the “external constraint” on Italy and adjusting it to the times, by establishing an intertwinement between economic and political conditionalities. Puerto Rico reaffirmed the unwritten rules of the bipolar order, with the decision to deny or limit economic aid to Italy in the event of the Communists’ inclusion in government, made public in a statement attributed to German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on 15 July, before the formation of the new Italian government. This was an obvious interference in the internal affairs of a country that had never been – or wanted to be – sheltered from it. At the same time, the modes of intervention in Italian politics changed. Once the moment of American unilateralism had passed - and the “Chilean” temptations had fallen by the wayside - the perspective prevailed of a stabilizing intervention under the banner of defending democracy and economic conditionality24. It was a model less inspired by pessimistic domino theories than by a positive vision of Western interdependencies. Kissinger adjusted to the position of the Europeans in the name of a coordinated action among the Western allies aimed at strengthening transatlantic relations. However, such model also marked a distance from the dynamic interpretations of détente as a way to domestic political change. Democratic transitions in Southern Europe affected the development of the Western system, not relations between the two Europes. Caught between the Puerto Rico warning and the formation of a government that could not come into being without a compromise between the two poles of Italian politics, the national forces gave life to the "government of abstentions" led by Giulio Andreotti. Such national unity was quite different from the one of thirty years earlier, based as it was not upon joint participation in the country’s government, but upon the asymmetry between the full control over the executive by the Christian Democrats,                                                                                                                24 A. Varsori, Puerto Rico (1976): le potenze occidentali e il problema comunista in Italia, in "Ventunesimo secolo", VII (2008), 89-121.

albeit in a parliamentary position of minority, and the sharing of responsibility by the Communists, confined to parliamentary role. "National solidarity" represented the temporary and precarious outcome of a realistic cooperation between the two political blocs. At the same time, it also marked the apex of the mutual siege dating back to the origins of the Republic and of the Cold War. This ambivalence was to be the main feature of the 1976-79 period. The installation of "national solidarity" presupposed the unchanged existence of antagonistic blocs, and if anything their mutual recognition – entirely to be built and shaped – in the longer term. The Italian political class accepted or faced the "external constraint," preparing to use it or try to force it. The Andreotti government received its investiture from the United States. Its contorted formula respected, in substance, the warning of Puerto Rico. On 17 September 1976, Kissinger wrote to Andreotti, expressing the United States’ full support, and promising financial aid25. This support was not to see substantial changes after Jimmy Carter’s victory in the American elections of November 1976. The programme declarations by the new Democratic administration – based upon the principle of "non-interference" in the allies’ internal affairs – appeared in fact to encourage the experience of the new government. In his trip to Washington in December 1976 - before the establishment of the new Administration - Andreotti presented himself as the most reliable figure in Italian politics from an anti-Communist standpoint, although he was certainly unable to provide total reassurance as to the DC’s role, or formulas of use for the country’s future26 . Since that time, the Christian Democratic strategy had the ambivalent nature of a necessary truce with the Communists, but also of wearing down their popularity in the country, by keeping them in the uncomfortable position of

                                                                                                               25 Istituto Sturzo, Archivio Giulio Andreotti (hereafter: AGA), Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 601, 17 September 1976. 26 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 624.

having to share responsibilities for the austerity measures adopted by the government without truly influence its choices. The launching of the "non-interference and non-indifference" approach by the Carter Administration brought about ambiguous change. Such change is scarcely reflected in the memoirs of Ambassador Richard Gardner, who somewhat overlooks the attempts that were made to consider a context of interdependence different from Kissinger’s "geopolitical pessimism" and provides a retrospective account of American policies more coherent than they actually were27. Divided as it was between different personalities and ideas, the Carter administration embraced the new common sense that was being affirmed as to the notion of human rights, misunderstood by Kissinger in the name of presumed nineteenth-century golden rules. Even the strategy outlined by the "hawk" Zbignew Brzezinski aimed at marking a distance from his predecessor, by forgetting the notion of détente as status quo and emphasizing Soviet vulnerability over the issue of human rights in Eastern Europe. Brzezinski looked at Eurocommunism as an opportunity more than a problem, as it cast into crisis Moscow’s influence over Western Communism28. This did not mean the United States adhering to the prospect of dynamic détente – a misunderstanding into which observers, intellectuals and even leading figures of Italian policy fell – but only adopting a more interdependent and challenging approach, aimed at linking the scenarios of détente in Europe and competition in the Third World to one another29. In other words, the Italian players were not wrong in perceiving some change in American policy. But the nature and stability of Washington's new orientation were largely

                                                                                                               27 R. Gardner, Mission Italy. On the Front Lines of the Cold War, Rowman&Littlefield, Oxford, 2005. 28 Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, Cyrus Vance and Grace Sloan Papers, Memorandum on foreign policy priorities for the first six months, 3 November 1976, box 9, f. 19. 29 U. Tulli, Tra diritti umani e distensione. L'amministrazione Carter e il dissenso in URSS, Francoangeli, Milano, 2013.

misinterpreted as either hazardous or beneficial "open-mindedness." Many feared or hoped that the margins of national politics had substantially broadened. The road was thus opened to what we might call an elusive sovereignty - an attempt to focus on the domestic experience in order to influence external compatibilities in one way or another. The Communist strategy continued to follow its dual track of the "historic compromise" and Eurocommunism, in the conviction that this was the key to complete PCI's legitimation as a government party. Up to this point, the Soviets had been coldly tolerant towards Eurocommunism. To our knowledge, they showed no reaction even after Berlinguer’s statement to Corriere della sera of June 1976, in which the Italian Communist leader recognized in the Atlantic Alliance a greater guarantee of the PCI’s autonomy than what would be provided by the Warsaw Pact. Berlinguer took part in the conference of European communist parties that was held in Berlin in late June, re-affirming his peculiar reform thinking. The Soviets and the Italian leader made an effort to avoid conflict30. Moscow may have seen then the PCI’s inclusion in the Italian government as a blow to the United States’ credibility in the Western bloc, but the balance between advantages and shortcomings was quite uncertain to assess. Such an event was likely to enhance the PCI's distancing from Moscow, threaten destabilization in the regimes of Eastern Europe and compromise the credibility of the Soviet leadership. These concerns prevailed by early 1977, in coincidence with the campaign on human rights of the Carter Administration and the end of Kissinger's guarantee over détente as status quo. The Eurocommunist summit in Madrid in February 1977 confirmed ideas of exploiting the space of détente for the purposes of substantial political change in the sphere of national government, while challenging the Soviet orthodoxy. Moscow raised the stakes of hostility against Eurocommunism and even                                                                                                                30 Pons, Berlinguer e la fine del comunismo, pp. 85-89.

started covert operations aimed at discrediting Berlinguer31. The Italian Communists had certainly banked on a reaction from Moscow. Nevertheless, Berlinguer kept the conflict from coming to light, believing that a break with Moscow would damage the PCI more than it would be hindered by the persistence of ties, which could allow Western communists to exert some influence for stimulating change in Eastern Europe. Consequently, serious strain emerged between the goal of Western legitimation and the identity of reform communism. Though Eurocommunism ensured the PCI growing national consensus and international resonance, it could not provide complete legitimacy. It created empathy in sectors of Western public opinion, but no significant understanding. The Italian Communists’ only allies were the French Communists, who had no influence in international politics. This was really quite little for a party that aspired to govern a key country in the West and break the vetoes of the Cold War. Soviet hostility was not balanced by an opening of Western credit, not only in Washington but in Bonn or London as well. The attraction exerted upon some of the establishments in Eastern Europe – Warsaw and Budapest above all – could not offset the weakness of the other Western Communist parties. The Italian Communists cultivated an Ostpolitik but did not really outline a Westpolitik, which is to say a policy aimed at establishing concrete relations with the Western European governing Left, and also with the Carter administration32. Quite probably, their optimistic view of détente, combined with their persisting liaison with the Communist world, prevented them from undertaking a Westpolitik - as it was felt less crucial than it actually was. The

                                                                                                               31 Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, Archivio del Partito Comunista Italiano (hereafter: APC), Estero, 1977, mf 0297, 1494-95. Ch. Andrew, V. Mitrokhin, L’archivio Mitrokhin, Rizzoli, Milano, 2000, p. 372. 32 Both the efforts and limits of PCI's Westpolitik are apparent from the memoirs of G. Napolitano, Dal PCI al socialismo europeo. Un'autobiografia politica, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2005, pp. 128-29, 158-59.

PCI’s relationship with European Social Democrats remained vague and fragile, despite similarities in the respective political agendas33. Much more than Moscow, Washington was aware of the flaws of Eurocommunism as an alliance and started focusing on the problem represented by the PCI in Italy34. Unlike the PCI, the DC continued to enjoy significant international support, even if the axis with Washington was subject to tension and contrasting thrusts. But the party was also divided between different visions of anti-Communism and diverging ideas of how relations with the American and European partners could be managed. A significant portion of the party was openly claiming the end of any collaboration with Communists and had its own contacts with Gardner35. Even more important, there was a difference between Andreotti and Moro. Moro imagined gradually expanding the institutional foundations of the Republic and convincing the Western allies to accept some change in Cold War constraints on Italy - though not to the point of envisaging a political alliance with Communists. Under this respect, he was the main architect of the government program negotiated with the PCI during May-June 1977 - and so the US Administration perceived him36. Andreotti saw "national solidarity" simply as a necessary passage for recovering the DC’s guarantee role in the traditional context of relations with the United States. At the meeting with Carter of 26-27 July 1977, Andreotti aimed clearly at consolidating his own government from this standpoint. He presented a vision of détente that ruled out any concept of sudden change, by remarking that it was necessary not to "confuse, as has occurred at times, détente with a lack of vigilance, because détente (...) rests upon the balance of strengths." On internal policy, Andreotti maintained that the                                                                                                                33 M. Di Donato, I comunisti italiani e la sinistra europea (1964-1984). Il PCI e i rapporti con le socialdemocrazie, Carocci, Roma, 2015. 34 NARA, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 7 April 1977. Gardner, Mission Italy, p. 68. 35 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 598, 1 February 1978. 36 AAM, b. 34, fasc. 740. Gentiloni, L'Italia sospesa, p. 200.

government programme - as agreed between the main parties by mid July - would have been "unachievable" without political and trade union understandings. But he also pointed out that the austerity policy had "created difficulties for the PCI," and that the DC’s line remained firmly and consistently opposed to including Communists in the government. He presented the order and austerity programme for dealing with the terrorist and economic emergency in Italy - which was enabled by the "situation of non-belligerence between the parties" - as a priority for the Western system37. In other words, Andreotti argued with deftness in defence of his own government as national guarantor of the Western alliance. Carter even avoided repeating the American veto against Communist participation in government, as he probably considered it superfluous after the Italian leader's statements38. In other words, Andreotti presented a vision of "national solidarity" coherent with the constraint of the Cold War and implying a strategy of attrition. Thus, a plan had emerged aimed at wearing Italian Communism down far more than including it in the sphere of government legitimacy. Andreotti was its most consistent exponent, though all the Christian Democratic leaders, Moro included, shared the idea of eroding and limiting the PCI’s popularity. Such strategy was not contradicted by the document signed in October-November 1977 by all parties of the “national solidarity” majority in Parliament on Italy’s foreign policy, re-affirming the country’s link with both the European Community and the Atlantic Alliance. The vote marked the moment of greatest cohesion of “national solidarity”39. The international stance of the PCI was enhanced by Berlinguer’s speech in Moscow on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the

                                                                                                               37 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 589, 26-27 July 1977. 38 Gardner, Mission Italy, p. 103. 39 F. De Felice, Nazione e crisi: le linee di frattura, in Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, vol. III, L’Italia nella crisi mondiale. L’ultimo ventennio, t. 1, Einaudi, Torino, 1996, pp. 59-60.

Revolution, in which he invoked the universal value of democracy and raised tensions with the Soviet leadership to the highest point 40 . However, the document on foreign policy concluded at the end of 1977 appeared to be a mere corollary to the previous agreements on domestic politics, in accordance with a perspective based on temporary understanding between the leading national forces. The knot of "external constraints" was quite difficult to untangle, as the international players remained insensitive and even hostile to change in Italy, and as the identities of the national blocs and their constituencies continued to reflect the Cold War’s bipolar arrangement. Back to the Cold War The government crisis that opened in late 1977 – triggered by the ultimatum of the PCI demanding entry into the government – brought to light both the mutual siege between the two blocs and the imperatives of the "external constraint." Berlinguer tried to get out of the corner and provide a response to the troubles and protest growing in the party’s social base as well as in the settings of the radical Left. The DC replied by opening to the possibility of including the Communists in the majority, but firmly ruled out their participation in the government. The United States reacted with the declaration of 12 January 1978, reaffirming their veto against Communist participation in the government of a country included in the Atlantic Alliance. Gardner had urged such declaration and played a role to work it out in Washington. In spite of increasing contacts with Communist leaders, he poorly appreciated the detachment of the PCI from Soviet orthodoxy41. Gardner claims of having contributed to forging a "bipartisan

                                                                                                               40 APC, Fondo Berlinguer, serie MOI, fasc. 151. A. Rubbi, Il mondo di Berlinguer, Napoleone, Roma, 1994, pp. 108-14. 41 Gardner, Mission Italy, pp. 114-15, 143 ff.

position in American policy on the PCI issue", but going back to Kissinger's paradigm was an outcome that the Carter Administration had not intended to achieve42. Without a doubt, Carter's policy proved to be wavering and inconsistent, as the principle of "non-interference and non-indifference" was not translated into an authentic strategy 43 . On the other hand, Washington had never really encouraged the ideas of open-mindedness on the Communist question, which was rather a product of the perception of the Italian Left. This was the moment of the clearest detachment between a national course that registered the Communists’ legitimate demand to take a step forward in the sphere of government, and an international environment that made such demand "illegitimate" - even more so as the crisis of détente was emerging. The divergence between the domestic and the international contexts aggravated tensions and weakened the scenario of collaboration. The PCI reacted angrily to the US statement, but suffered from a major frailty, facing the government crisis in conditions of international isolation, between the predicament of Eurocommunism, Moscow’s hostility, and Washington's veto44. In the field of the DC, the statement prompted a reflex of irritation, not so much out of national pride as because it weakened its autonomous profile before the challenge of the Communists45. Nevertheless, by placing an explicit limit upon national margins of manoeuvre, Washington actually facilitated the DC’s unitary hold, because it reassured its more conservative members, strongly opposed to "national solidarity" and representing a conglomerate of forces exclusively driven by blind anti-Communism - even in Gardner's eyes46. Since before the government crisis, Moro’s political discourse had                                                                                                                42 Ibid., p. 117. 43 I. Wall, L’amministrazione Carter e l’eurocomunismo, "Ricerche di storia politica" 2006/2, 181-196. 44 Gualtieri, L'Italia dal 1943 al 1992, p. 198. 45 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 598, 13 January 1978. 46 Gardner, Mission Italy, pp. 121, 137-8.

been centred upon policy convergences, ruling out more significant political understandings. In November 1977, he coined the famous turn of phrase "parallel convergences" – a formula in which the adjective was no less important than the noun. Though Moro appreciated the importance of a "common feeling" to face the country’s crisis, he never neglected to recall that DC and PCI were "ideally alternative parties" and any agreement between them presented impassable boundaries. He became guarantor of the operation of creating "more advanced equilibria" and established a dialogue with Berlinguer after the opening of the government crisis. But he also justified in no uncertain terms his refusal to accept the PCI in the government, both for internal reasons (the risk of a break in the DC and even more radical opposition to "national solidarity" among broad sectors of young people) and for international reasons (Washington’s opposition, but also that of the other leading European allies)47. On 21 December, Moro asked Gardner for the United States to support the attempt to negotiate the inclusion of Communists into the parliamentary majority, while thinking for US intervention in Italian politics in the event of failure in negotiations and early elections 48 . In his last meeting with Gardner, on 2 February 1978, Moro told that it was necessary " to continue to buy time" as one more year was needed "to create an electoral atmosphere in which the PCI would loose considerably and the DC gain strongly". According to Gardner, Moro expressed his understanding for the US declaration of 12 January49. In his Memoriale written when he was a prisoner of the Red Brigades, Moro recalled that the Ambassador "neither agreed nor objected" to his strategy "to move from non-opposition to assent", while excluding "a general political alliance"50. In other                                                                                                                47 L. Barca, Cronache dall'interno del vertice del PCI. Volume II. Con Berlinguer, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2005, pp. 704-5, 709-10. 48 Gardner, Mission Italy, p. 139. 49 Ibid., p. 159. 50 Ibid., p. 181.

words, there was a cold mutual understanding between Gardner and Moro, that actually came only as a sequel to contacts between the Ambassador and Andreotti's entourage. The day before, Gardner had expressed to Andreotti's Diplomatic Advisor US support for the choice to avoid early elections and create a new government51. Such difficult equilibrium allowed Moro to obtain his party’s green light for a new Andreotti government, this time supported by a parliamentary majority that was to include the Communists. In his speech to the DC’s parliamentary groups on 28 February 1978, Moro underscored the risk of "mutual paralysis" between the two blocs and the pressure of emergency on the choice of including Communists in the parliamentary majority, while, however, ruling out "a full political solidarity with us". He claimed Christian Democratic "hegemony," albeit admitting that it had been "attenuated." And he appealed to defend the DC’s "identity," which was obviously linked to its central importance in the Italian political system52. In other words, Moro saw as necessary the opening of a new chapter of "national solidarity," but failed to point to any prospect for national unity in government, and in fact theorized that this was impossible53. Gardner endorsed such strategy of the DC at the NSC meeting on Italy held in Washington early in March54. Moro’s tragic kidnapping and assassination by the Red Brigades between 16 March and 9 May 1978 has been, on a number of occasions since that time, linked to the "external constraint" on Italy, according to the vision of an international plot schemed by Washington or Moscow, or, subordinately, by major forces in the Middle Eastern conflict somehow interlaced with Cold War frameworks. The most informed reconstructions rule out the

                                                                                                               51 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 598, 1 February 1978. 52 AAM, Serie scritti e discorsi, b. 35, fasc. 768. 53 A. Giovagnoli, Il caso Moro. Una tragedia repubblicana, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2005, p. 30. 54 Gardner, Mission Italy, p. 164.

reliability and seriousness of such a vision, which reduces the Brigades to being mere executors manipulated by others55. To be sure, Gardner offered Andreotti US collaboration in acquiring information on the Red Brigades and on their international connections. According to the US intelligence, no responsibilities of Communist regimes emerged "in precise terms," except for "vague hints" that pointed to Czechoslovakia 56 . Italian Communists had similar clues, but we do not know their sources57. The basic assessment of Brzezinski, even before the "Moro affair", was that red terrorism in Italy represented "essentially a domestic phenomenon"58. At any rate, the United States strongly supported Andreotti and the choice to refuse any negotiating with terrorists. A few days after the kidnapping, on 22 March, talking to the Diplomatic Advisor of the Prime Minister, Gardner criticized Moro for "having given the impression to resign himself to the Communists' entry in government" - thus showing that he had not fully believed in what Moro told him and publicly affirmed during February - and declared that Andreotti was "from our point of view the only political leader able to govern Italy"59. In early May, Brzezinski expressed to Andreotti, through Gardner, Washington’s appreciation for the firm line of his government, and concern over any "destabilizing" consequences of the position of the Italian Socialists in favor of negotiations with terrorists60. From this standpoint, the American presence in the "Moro affair" should not be neglected – not as a source of dark plotting, but as a visible player exerting influence in consolidating the orientation that prevailed in the DC and the                                                                                                                55 On the question of the international links of Italian terrorism, see G. M. Ceci, Il terrorismo italiano. Storia di un dibattito, Carocci, Roma, 2013, pp. 55-70, 263-70. 56 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 598, 22 March 1978. 57 U. Pecchioli, Tra misteri e verità. Storia di una democrazia incompiuta, Baldini&Castoldi, Milano, 1995, p. 80. 58 Gardner, Mission Italy, p. 173. 59 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 598, 22 March 1978. 60 AGA, Serie Stati Uniti d'America, b. 598, 3 May 1978.

government, with the PCI's consent. It was a role in line with the history of the "external constraint." In his letters from prison, Moro often hinted at the role he felt the US were playing against the possibility to open negotiations61 . It is not necessary to entertain conspiracy theories in order to understand that the "Moro affair" had enormous political implications. He symbolized many things all at once: Christian Democratic power and the attempt to reconstruct its hegemony on new foundations; the co-optation of a major Communist party into a sphere of Western power; a national change partly conceived outside the schemes of the Cold War. Each of these aspects won him many enemies. As far as we know, the Red Brigades’ questioning revolved around the concept of Christian Democratic "regime" as a mere emanation of American capitalism, but their language revealed awareness of the intertwining of all these elements. The year 1978 has often been seen as marking an era in contemporary Italian history, due to Moro’s assassination and the removal from the scene of national unity. In many respects, such perspective unavoidably focuses on the consequences of violence and terrorism in Italian republican history. Nevertheless, the era-marking significance of 1978 should be understood in a larger context. It is not a matter of diminishing the enormous emotional and symbolic impact of terrorist violence on the entire national community, even less of devaluing the standing of Moro’s personality. However, two points must be stressed. First, the "national solidarity" experience already appeared to be in trouble before the "Moro affair," and the inclusion of the Communists in the majority was unlikely to be an enduring solution - let alone a step towards their participation in government. Second, the "Moro affair" coincided with the definitive crisis of détente between the superpowers, which made the international environment even more impervious to any national unity in Italy. Berlinguer's combination between the "historic compromise" and                                                                                                                61 A. Moro, Lettere dalla prigionia, a cura di M. Gotor, Einaudi, Torino, 2008, pp. 7-8, 29, 41, 171.

Eurocommunism was in crisis, and the leader of the moderate wing of the party, Giorgio Amendola, criticized him in a letter written in June 197862 - even though such political predicament did not mean rapprochement between the PCI and Moscow. Indeed, October 1978 saw relations between the PCI and the USSR reach the pinnacle of conflict, as on the themes of pluralism and human rights Berlinguer held positions hardly reconcilable with the Soviets 63 . Moscow's reaction had divided the Eurocommunists, but no realignment along traditional Cold War patterns was feasible for Italian communism. However, in spite of such peculiarity, the reality of international policy again proved to be decisive on the Italian national theatre. The crisis of détente and the new pacifist mobilization that was in sight in Western Europe by late 1978 interacted with the scenario of increased economic conditionality, as the Andreotti government planned to join the European monetary system. The door was open for the final crisis of "national solidarity" and the return of the PCI to the role of opposition, confirmed after the elections of June 1979. When the Euromissiles crisis broke out, a center-left coalition government confronted a strong communist opposition, along a well established pattern. The PCI's condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had no significant impact on the Italian domestic context. The exhaustion of "national solidarity" and the return to the more traditional game of bipolarism marked an epochal passage in Republican history. It may be said that the Cold War was the overarching element presiding over the Italian tragedy as an obvious obstacle to changing Italy's "blocked democracy." At the same time, it also eventually represented the only stabilizing factor in the political system. Cold War bipolarism provided seemingly the only possible outcome at the

                                                                                                               62 APC, Fondo Berlinguer, Politica interna, fasc. 525. 63 APC, Direzione, Allegati, mf 7812, 19 ottobre 1978. S. Pons, Meetings Betxeen the Italian Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Moscow and Rome, 1978-80, “Cold War History” 2002/3, 157-66.

end of a decade of crisis, violence, conflict, compromise, and dissent. Conclusions In Italy, the global crisis of the 1970s marked the end of the relationship between national politics and international system as it had emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War64. The interaction between the Cold War and the configuration of domestic politics could not maintain the features of the past, but neither did it open the way to a new arrangement. The leaderships of the two main national political forces called in different ways for a change to the external constraints, imagining forms of collaboration more demanding than what the bipolar order suggested. Their political discourse aimed at liquidating past schemes and reflected the growing detachment of important parts of public opinion from the legacy of the Cold War. However, the same poles of Italian public life bore in their own identity and structure profound signs of the previous three decades, while the constraints of the Cold War were still standing. Such dilemma was to mark, even tragically, the "national solidarity" experience. The paradox of "national solidarity" was that it proved effective to contain the economic crisis, even adopting significant measures of welfare, but ended in political failure. The complex of forces militating against "national solidarity" in Italy appeared robust and fierce, as well as being distributed on a number of fronts of national and international politics, between movements, parties, and governments. The terrorist violence of the Red Brigades ended up being part of this reaction, although it is not for this reason to be seen as a manipulated pawn in a conspiracy plotted by obscure forces. The crucial point was the                                                                                                                64 G. Formigoni, Una democrazia travagliata nella guerra fredda. Italia 1943-1978, forthcoming.

combination between external conservative influences and the cleavage of the Italian political nation along the Cold War divide. The basic weakness of "national solidarity" was that cooperation undertaken to face emergency created no common domestic front to re-negotiate the "external constraint." Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, Moro and Berlinguer did not have any understanding on a shared design, but only a common need to work together to deal with the country's emergency and a vague mutual consensus about enlarging the foundations of the Italian state. The two leaders were at the same time divided by the need to confirm opposing identities foundational to their respective constituencies and by outward compatibilities. The legacy of mutual siege between the two poles of the political nation co-existed with solidarity, and eventually prevailed by imposing a return to Italy's long-standing bipolarity. The Cold War resulted the central factor for restoring some stabilization in Italy's political order, in spite of its manifest decline as an accepted framework, a disciplined worldview, and a mobilizing tool, especially among young people. However, such restoration of the internal Cold War was hardly a solution in the long term. There was no real rescue from the crisis of legitimacy emerged in the 1970s. "Blocked democracy" meant stability for some time, but also paralysis and an increasing erosion of credibility of the main political parties in large sectors of Italian society. The late Cold War consensus fuelled transatlantic alliances, but could not provide any innovative identities and perspectives. Indeed, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, irreversible de-legitimation led soon the Italian political system to collapse.