Red Star over Europe: Threat or Chimera?

By Burton Pines

Communism has sometimes succeeded as a scavenger, but never as a leader. It has never come to power in any country that was not disrupted by war, internal repression or both.

--John F. Kennedy, July 2,1963

It is doubtful that an American President could confidently make that kind of statement today. In a handful of European countries, Communist parties are approaching the threshold of political power--not at the barrel of a Soviet cannon but in open and free elections. As a result, the specter of a Communist presence in Western Europe is stirring more concern and debate than at any time since the early years of the cold war, when the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine and the Atlantic Alliance blocked Moscow's attempts to suborn democracy in France, Italy and Germany. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger broods about this new Red menace in background talks with newsmen and in conferences with aides and U.S. ambassadors, at which he has called the Communists the Trojan horses of totalitarianism and NATO officials meet secretly to discuss the Communist threat. The focus of the debate: How dangerous would it be if the Communists came to power and what should and could be done to prevent it.

The country most likely to vote Communists into office is Italy. Such an occurrence would greatly encourage the French Communists, who for almost four years have been closely allied with the Socialists. In Portugal, the Communists have been in the government since the 1974 coup, and Spain's Communists (though still underground) have formed a coalition with left and center groups.

The Communist gains are, to some extent, the result of local conditions. In Italy, for example, there is dissatisfaction with the flabby, scandal-ridden 30-year dominance of the Christian Democrats. Western Europe's Communist parties, though, have also benefited from the policy of detente with the Soviet Union. Just as the Russians are now said to be less threatening to peace, local Communists--who were long suspected by many voters because of their tie-in with the Kremlin--similarly seem less dangerous. Moreover, a new generation in the West is too young to remember the militantly Stalinist attitudes and often violent actions of Communist parties in both Western and Eastern Europe in the post-World War II years.

The Communists have deliberately tried to make themselves appealing to a wider spectrum of voters. The Italian and French parties have explicitly disavowed the old Marxian dogma of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the need for violent revolution. Instead, they claim to be committed to such democratic principles as political pluralism and freedom of speech and religion. Italian Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer--perhaps Western Europe's most articulate advocate of "socialism with a human face"--has often proclaimed his commitment to "a pluralistic and democratic system." He most recently and dramatically reaffirmed this in Moscow, at the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Is the "new look" of Communism genuine? Some political observers think it could be and argue that bringing Communists into Western governments might speed their conversion from revolutionary, potentially disruptive outsiders to evolutionary insiders. It might also widen the gap between the local parties and Moscow. The Soviets, in fact, do not conceal their irritation with the independence shown by some of their Western comrades. Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev recently complained that "some have begun to interpret [proletarian internationalism] in such a way that little is left to internationalism."

Some political analysts have argued that the Communist parties would allow themselves to be voted out of office if and when the electorate rejected their programs. According to this argument, the Communists in Europe have clung to power illegally only when the Soviet army was at the border, ready to enforce a coup with armed might. But there is always the possibility that a Communist government in Western Europe might not need Russian help if it had firm control of the country's police and internal security forces and key segments of the armed forces.

The strongest argument in favor of allowing Communists to participate in Western governments is that neither the U.S. nor any other country has the right to block from office a party freely elected by the voters. This argument would have more validity if the Communists differed from other leftist parties merely in their programs. Yet history advises skepticism where Communists are concerned. Unlike Socialists, they have not sought the democratic evolution of a Marxian society; instead, until very recently they have always stressed the radical transformation of a society by authoritarian means.

For all their talk about democracy, the Communist parties themselves are closed and often conspiratorial societies. The Italian party, widely regarded as the paradigm of humanistic Communism, does not permit dissent to grow within the ranks. Decisions are imposed from above, and a political control commission enforces the orthodoxy of the moment. French Party Leader Georges Marchais has stated his belief in a democratic multiparty political system. Exactly what he has in mind, however, may not be reassuring; in 1974, for example, a French party congress praised the "democratic achievements" of the near-totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe. No wonder Harvard Sovietologist Adam Ulam concludes: "Communist parties have always tried to maximize their power to the point where they would eventually achieve a one-party state." If progressive party leaders like Berlinguer are sincere, they still may not be able to deliver on their promises that their parties would observe the rules of democracy. Irving Howe, editor of the socialist quarterly Dissent, warns that in a moment of crisis "the old Stalinists and younger neo-Stalinists . . . could become a serious force pressing for an authoritarian 'solution.' "

The coming of Communists to power in Western Europe would have serious consequences for the Atlantic Alliance. If they do not force their countries to quit NATO, the Communists would probably fashion a foreign policy that favored the Soviet Union and undermined the alliance. To be sure, Western Europe's Communists are no longer under the Kremlin's thumb as they were in Stalin's days, but even Italy's Berlinguer, one of the West's most independent Communists, has repeatedly emphasized his party's historical "unbreakable ties of solidarity with Soviet Russia." Thus there is at least some danger that a Communist Cabinet member, for example, might take orders from Moscow and deliver up NATO secrets. A more likely prospect is that the presence of Communist party members in a NATO government would result in their country being kicked out of the alliance. There is no guarantee, moreover, that a Western Communist party currently independent of Moscow will always remain so. A change in leadership could push that party--and the country it ruled--into the Soviet orbit.

If Communist ministers did not take direct orders from Moscow or deliberately try to undermine NATO, they nonetheless would probably be unsympathetic to the alliance and would try to slash defense budgets even in the face of mounting threats of a Soviet buildup. In the long run, this could affect the East-West military balance upon which coexistence rests. The disparity of military might between the democracies and the East bloc might then lead to the "Finlandization" of Western Europe, producing a kind of neutrality that would be responsive to pressure from Moscow. In addition, the gains of Communism within the ever shrinking community of democratic nations would represent an ideological setback for the West.

A weakened NATO and a less credible American defense commitment to the alliance might prompt Bonn to reassess its security needs. One possible result: a more heavily rearmed West Germany, perhaps even with a nuclear deterrent. This would unsettle all of Germany's neighbors and might re-create the tensions that twice in this century sparked a general war. Short of this "worst case" scenario, the strategic balance still would probably shift decisively toward Moscow, since the Soviets could start drawing --undoubtedly, at favorable terms --on Western Europe's advanced technology and industry.

A strong case can be made that there are unacceptable risks to the West in allowing the Communists to come to power. But what, if anything, can be done about it? Washington has been pursuing a kind of quarantine policy, to deny the Communists any claim to legitimacy; American diplomats in Europe maintain only minimal contact with local Communist politicians. Current U.S. policy seems to be that the most hard-lining ruling Communist parties represent the least threat to the strategic balance. At a closed-door meeting in London last December, a top Kissinger aide told European-based U.S. ambassadors that "overzealous" attempts to woo the East bloc countries away from Moscow might be counterproductive. The reason: pluralistic ferment there, like the 1968 Alexander Dubcek experiment in Czechoslovakia, could lend respectability to Communists in the West.

Washington could provide sizable economic aid to European countries with growing Communist movements, to bolster existing regimes and help create strong economies that would lessen the Communists' appeal. Beyond this, however, there seems little the U.S. can do. Military intervention is out of the question so long as the Communists act legally. Any excessively muscular U.S. action runs the risk of a backlash, arousing popular sympathy for the Communists, because they would appear to be bullied by the Americans.

Action by Common Market states might be far more effective. Christoph Bertram, director of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggests that tough political conditions could be attached to continued EEC support for the Italian economy--with an understanding that the present government, which excludes the Communists, stay in office until the next elections. Because of the vital importance of the Common Market to Italy's future, Bertram feels the impact of such conditions would be much more effective than any U.S. threats to read Italy out of NATO. Bertram's policy might also be applied to Greece and Spain, both of which hope eventually to gain full membership in the Market.

Beyond that, the established socialist parties of northern Europe could provide moral and financial help for their relatively weak ideological allies in the south--as they have, to some extent, with Mario Scares' Portuguese Socialists. Above all, the ruling non-Communist parties could and should undertake internal reforms to become more appealing to the millions who vote Communist not because of ideology but as protest. These moderates must again demonstrate--as they did after World War II--that they are capable of responding to the aspirations of dissatisfied voters.

If diplomatic, political and economic measures failed to keep Communists out of a Western government, the U.S., and the rest of the West, could isolate that country by cutting off all but minimal economic and diplomatic relations. This, however, might lead to the kind of chaos that would justify the Communists in taking strong authoritarian measures.

A more advisable policy, at least initially, would be one of vigilant tolerance. Risky though it may be, the major Western countries should perhaps not interfere with Communist participation in Western Cabinets, if it comes, but instead give the party a chance to prove that its democratic protestations are genuine. At the same time, however, the West should make it unmistakably clear to the Communist party involved, and to Moscow as well, that any move to establish an authoritarian or pro-Soviet regime would not be tolerated. Appropriately tough action would then follow Burton Pines

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