What If the Communists Win a Role?

How should the U.S. react to the growing Communist threat in Western Europe? Last week three advisers to Democratic presidential candidates and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tried to answer that question at a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington. George W. Ball, a New York investment banker and former Under Secretary of State; Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Columbia government professor and onetime member of the State Department's Policy Planning Council; and Washington Attorney Paul Warnke, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, all attacked Kissinger for pursuing too rigid a policy toward the Western Communists.

Though he avoided the term, Kissinger invoked a qualified domino theory. "I believe that the advent of Communism in major European countries is likely to produce a sequence of events in which other European countries will also be tempted to move in the same direction," he said. With Communists installed in power, European nations would retreat from Western concerns, concepts and defense policies, Kissinger argued. Ultimately, NATO would collapse and the U.S. would be dangerously isolated. Domination by Moscow of Western European Communist parties is not the crucial issue, said Kissinger. Since the parties have a "Leninist" internal structure and are undemocratic, they will change the priorities of European nations.

Ball, who is advising Democratic Presidential Candidate Henry Jackson, agrees with Kissinger that Communist control of Italy or any other European country would have "terrible consequences." But he objects to Kissinger's tactics. "He is destroying our maneuverability. These public statements of doom are having a negative effect and only serve to encourage the Communists." While the Christian Democrats have grown "corrupt and flabby, almost a useless force," says Ball, the Communists have emerged as an effective party capable of finding jobs for people. They cannot be defeated, he added, by American broadsides.

Ball would prefer to bring collective pressure on the Communists. He suggests that the U.S. should work through the Common Market. Its members could quietly pass the word to Italy: we will give you maximum possible support if you discourage Communism. "If not, then the Community shuts down its markets to Italy." Ball rejects a European version of the domino theory. Communist power in Italy, he says, "would frighten the devil out of other Europeans and stiffen everybody else's resistance."

Brzezinski, who is advising Jimmy Carter, would go further than Ball in accommodating the Italian Communists. He would initiate talks with them. "A common Western response designed to aid Italy in its economic-social crisis is what is needed, and that will not be obtained by public denunciations. It doesn't do us any good to go around talking loudly and carrying a weeping willow. Hectoring the West Europeans about the Communist threat simply makes the Communists more popular."

Brzezinski argues that Communism is a genuine threat only in Italy; in other Western nations, the right may prove to be more of a danger. Crucial to the future of Italy, he says, is whether Yugoslavia can maintain its independence. "We should be reassuring the Yugoslavs that we would support them. And we should make certain that the Soviets have no illusion about this."

Warnke, who tenders advice to Morris Udall, declares that he is "not prepared to say that anything is unacceptable when the prospects are that I may have to accept it. And if I considered that the alternative might be American intervention to shoot Italians in Italy, I suggest that this is not a starter." Communist power, he says, cannot be prevented by "lecturing the Italians or by sloughing off another $500,000 to an Italian general." Warnke urges the U.S. to "adopt a cautious, prudent and certainly a very negative attitude toward Communists' coming into power in Western Europe, but we ought to do the things necessary to see to it that the phenomenon doesn't mean the end of the North Atlantic Alliance."

The criticism by the Democratic advisers was echoed in much European comment. Even conservatives objected that Kissinger was taking an unrealistic position. Privately, however, Kissinger has been known to argue that if and when Communists come to share power in, say, France and Italy, the U.S. may have to moderate its position. "But we're certainly not going to help them," Kissinger told the group, "and nothing is lost by taking this attitude and letting Europeans know it." A firm stand against totalitarian tendencies, Kissinger feels, is a sign not of diplomatic rigidity but of national strength.

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